|
Toury, Gideon 1998. "Hebrew [Translation]
Tradition". |
Hebrew is a member of the
north-western
branch of the Semitic family of languages. It
started as one of many Canaanite dialects, but
its beginnings as a language in its own right
can be identified with the adoption of that
dialect by the Israelites who settled in the
of
use it during their periods of national indepen-
dence (c.1000 BC-587 BC and 517 BC-AD
70). Outside those periods of national indepen-
dence, spoken Hebrew was replaced, first by
Aramaic and Greek, then - when the Jews
were forced to leave their land - by the
various languages amongst whose speakers
they settled. At the same time, wherever Jew-
ish identity was not lost, Hebrew continued to
be used as the language of religious rites and
retained the prestige that goes with its status as
the ‘Holy Tongue’, this being a mixture of
Hebrew and Aramaic. It also continued to be
used in a limited range of written functions.
All later uses of the language were thus closely
related to Jewish life and culture. Contact with
other languages resulted in constant changes to
its original form, including some of its most
fundamental traits, especially as more and
more of the languages in question were non-
Semitic.
Like the use of the
language itself, transla-
tion into Hebrew is characterized by inherent
discontinuity: its history is marked by a series of
new beginnings, each one charting a set of new
routes, to be followed for a limited period of
time before being abandoned for yet another set.
And since the centres of Jewish
culture shifted
continually, a new beginning normally coin-
cided with a territorial shift. It is fair to
say,
however, that this description applies first and
foremost to Western traditions; our knowledge
of translational behaviour in other parts of the
Jewish Diaspora is still too scanty to support a
reliable account of non-Western traditions.
The Hebrew Bible includes clear references to
translation, including liaison interpreting (e.g.
Genesis 42: 23). Also, several passages reveal
traces of actual translation (e.g. Ezra 1: 7-8 in
Hebrew vs. Ezra 5: 14 or 6: 5 in Aramaic). On
the evidence of, among other things, the
interference of other, often easily identifiable
languages and textual traditions, it seems
reasonable to suggest that quite a number of
passages in the Old Testament may have been
translated from other sources. However, there
is very little one can say about these passages
as translations due to the absence of any con-
crete texts which might have been taken as
their immediate sources.
There can be no doubt
that some translation
into Hebrew took place during the early phases
of the post-biblical period. However, the actual
texts that have come down to us are mainly
confined to biblical verses quoted in Mishnaic
texts and translated, as part of their interpreta-
tive treatment, into the new brand of Hebrew
which was in use at the time (Bendavid 1967
and 1971). Later on, in the
well as in neighbouring countries where the
Jews had settled (most notably
lation started to be carried out from Hebrew,
mainly into Aramaic and Greek - first orally,
then in writing. The main objective of this
translational effort was to render the Scriptures
accessible to the less learned so as to enable
them to follow the services (See TORAH
TRANSLATION). Mishnaic literature also con-
tains many important observations on the
nature of translation and the proper ways in
which it should be performed, as well as on the
440 Hebrew Tradition
(in
principle inferior) status of translating,
translators and translated texts in the Jewish
culture of the time.
In the post-Mishnaic history of Jewish
culture, where Hebrew was retained as a
privileged language but other languages were
used for most communicative purposes,there
were two periods/territories wheretranslation
into the Holy Tongue enjoyed a special status,
both quantitatively and qualitatively; these
were south-western Europe of the Middle Ages
and certain parts of Central and Eastern
Europe during the Enlightenment and Revival
periods. In both cases, not only did translations
account for a large percentage of all texts
produced, but certain cultural and textual
‘slots’ were filled mainly, sometimes exclu-
sively, by translations. In some instances, as in
the case of the medieval maqāmāt and
modern
fables, translating served as a means of experi-
menting with, and later introducing in original
composition, text types which were hitherto
unknown in Hebrew.
Following a long
interval, translation into
Hebrew resumed in medieval
in full swing by the end of the twelfth century.
Most of the texts translated were now ‘works
of wisdom’, i.e. scientific texts.
Many of the scholarly
works first selected
for translation were treatises in Arabic on
Jewish law (Halakha) and ethics (Musar)
written by Jews in Muslim Spain or
Africa
when the Jewish readers lived in areas where
Arabic was a shared literary language. How-
ever, by the twelfth century, Jewish families
had already moved to Christian territories,
most notably in southern
read Arabic. Interest in the achievements of
Jewish scholarship remained strong, and a
pressing need to have the texts translated
therefore emerged. Hebrew, which was in use
as a privileged literary language, became the
target language partly because Jews living in
different places no longer shared any other
means of communication. A recurrent pattern,
even though not an exclusive one, was thus to
have a treatise translated at the request of an
interested patron, who merely required the
prospective translator to be reasonably fluent
in Arabic. There is no explicit mention of
remuneration, but it stands to reason that at
least some translators received some payment,
either from the individual ‘commissioners’ or
from the local congregation, in which the
commissioners often occupied key positions.
Among the most influential translations of
Jewish ‘works of wisdom’ completed during
this period are Bahya ibn Paquda's Hovot ha-
Levavot (Duties of the Heart), Maimonides'
Moreh Nevukhim
(Guide of the Perplexed),
and Judah Halevi's Sefer
ha-Kuzari.
Interest in scholarship
soon spread to non-
Jewish books and themes, leading to numerous
translations into Hebrew of works of philoso-
phy, logic, grammar, astronomy, medicine,
physics, and various other medieval sciences.
Here, Arabic was often a mediating language
only, especially in the case of Greek and
Latin, including many of Aristotle's works.
Other source languages were later added to the
list. The most comprehensive presentation of
Hebrew translations in the Middle Ages and
the Renaissance period, as well as the role of
Jews as cultural mediators between East and
West, is still Steinschneider (1893); most of
the texts mentioned throughout this 1077-page
volume are still buried in manuscripts.
Although the translation
of medieval
‘works of beauty’ has had much less impact on
the Jewish tradition, it was no doubt a lot more
common than we have come to think, due to a
long tradition of devoting scholarly attention to
‘serious’ texts only. True, ‘literary’ translation
was considered inherently inferior, at best on
the threshold of legitimacy, and Jews indulged
in it with some reluctance - whether for per-
sonal diversion or in an attempt to fill empty
slots in the literary sector of their culture.
However, it seems reasonable to assume that
many of the texts that did exist at the time
simply failed to reach us. Not having been
submitted to copying and recopying, like many
of the scientific texts, very few of them existed
in more than one copy to begin with, and even
these copies were soon lost. The number of
literary translations which were subsequently
considered fit to be printed was even smaller.
Finally, when Hebrew medieval texts became
an object of scholarly interest within modern
Hebrew tradition 441
Judaic studies, it was
again first and foremost
‘scientific’ writings which were taken into
consideration and (re)printed.
A significant exception
to this rule was
Mahbarot Iti'el,
the Hebrew translation by
Judah Al-Harizi of Al-Hariri's maqāmāt
in
Arabic. Al-Harizi undertook the translation as
a preparatory exercise for writing his own
collection of maqāmāt, entitled Tahkemoni.
Probably as a result of the canonization of the
maqāmāt in Arabic literature, as well as
Al-
Harizi's own prestige, Tahkemoni
came to be
held in high esteem in Jewish culture. Other
literary translations which enjoyed consider-
able prestige and distribution include Abraham
ibn Hasdai's Ben ha-Melekh ve-ha-Nazir
(= Barlaam and Josaphat),
Kalila and Dimna,
Mishle Sendebar
(a version of The Seven
Sages) and the Alexander Romance. The
marginalization of medieval literary transla-
tions in scholarly work, especially those which
did not originate in the East, has lately begun
to show signs of weakening, as witness the
recent printing of a 1279 Hebrew translation of
King Artus (Leviant
1969) and the reprinting
of a 1541 translation of Amadis de Gaula
(Malachi 1981).
Many medieval
translations were preceded
by lengthy introductions, which were over-
whelmingly apologetic in tone. This may be
explained in terms of the problematic image of
translation in traditional Jewish culture, where
there was long-standing resistance to translating
the Hebrew Scriptures. Medieval Hebrew
translators often felt obliged to ask the reader's
forgiveness for indulging in the act of translat-
ing, especially if the translation was initiated by
the translator himself. Many felt obliged to
apologize for tackling the particular text they
undertook to translate: in the case of ‘works of
wisdom’, mainly because of their limited fam-
iliarity with the subject-matter, in the case of
‘works of beauty’, the apology reflected wide-
spread apprehension regarding ‘idle talk’.
Finally, apologies were sometimes offered for
the kind of language used in the translation,
whether out of choice or out of necessity. These
translators may or may not have had genuine
reasons for apologizing to their readership, but
their over-indulgence in apologetics should be
seen first and foremost as a convention of
medieval Hebrew translation.
The introductions also
offer important
insights into prevailing views of the nature of
translation and the proper ways of handling it
under the conditions of the time. Huge gaps
existed between theoretical observations and
normative pronouncements on the one hand
and actual translational behaviour on the other,
and the translators themselves were not totally
blind to such discrepancies. In practice, many
of the problems stemmed from the recurring
need to translate from a rich language, which
was well suited to the purpose it served, into a
language with a rather small repertoire, an
inevitable outcome of its having been so long
confined to a limited range of uses, and ones
that hardly concurred with the nature of the
source texts. When the original at hand was
written in Arabic, additional problems arose
from the family resemblance between the
source and target languages, which often led
the translators astray.
Generally speaking,
medieval translators
had two different strategies to choose from,
depending to a large extent on the prestige of
the text submitted to translation. Translators of
‘important’ works - mostly scientific texts -
usually chose to stay as close as possible to the
Arabic wording, replacing small, relatively
low-rank segments one at a time, and the
resulting text consequently reflected the struc-
ture of the original. In an attempt to reduce the
gap between the two lexical repertoires, new
words were also coined, either through direct
borrowing (with a measure of adjustment to
the target language) or by way of loan-transla-
tion. The Hebrew texts thus abounded in
interference at all levels, both deliberate, or at
least controlled, and accidental. By contrast,
when it came to literary and other less-
privileged texts, the translators - sometimes
the very same persons - stuck much closer to
domestic models, especially those offered by
the quasi-biblical language used in Hebrew
medieval poetry. The two strategies can be
seen most clearly in texts which are both
scholarly and literary in nature, for example
Sefer ha-Kuzari.
These were sometimes trans-
lated as if they were pure science and
sometimes as if they were basically literature.
In retrospect, the
strategy adopted by transla-
tors of scientific texts proved truly innovative.
Originally a clear case of translationese, the
442 Hebrew
tradition
resulting structures and voc5bulary were
gradually assimilated into the language at large.
What came to be known as ‘Tibbonid Hebrew’,
after the most influential family of medieval
translators (see THE TIBBONIDS), crystallized as
a variety in its own right: not just a legitimate
variety, but one which was considered most
appropriate for particular uses. By contrast, the
way literary texts were translated had very little
impact on Hebrew culture and next to none on
the language.
Translation into Hebrew
continued in
Renaissance Europe too, now mainly in
which became a new centre of multilingual
Jewish culture. Interesting as each instance of
translation made between the sixteenth and the
eighteenth century may be, whether in terns of
choice of genre, author, text, or even trans-
lation strategy (including variation in the
language of translation and the varying modes
and extent of ‘Judaizing’ the texts),
translation
was hardly noticed as a distinct cultural activ-
ity during that period. For instance, the
inventory of private Jewish libraries in
the close of the Renaissance (Baruchson 1993)
shows that owners were keen to collect
Hebrew texts but that very few of these were
translations. Moreover, unlike the Middle
Ages, Hebrew translation during this interim
period seems to have lacked any distinct pro-
file. It certainly lagged behind almost anything
Jews did in Hebrew, which in itself was no
longer up to European standards anyway.
Much of this was bound to change with the
next beginning, which was intimately con-
nected with the Haskala;
the Hebrew
Enlightenment movement aimed at bringing
Jewish culture closer to the achievements of
Central European cultures. The new beginning
coincided with yet another territorial shift: the
cultural centre moved first to
further to the east. Finally, it also marked the
end of interruptions in the evolution of the
Hebrew tradition: from now on there would be
an almost direct line of development in transla-
tion activity leading right up to the present.
Haskala in the middle of the eighteenth cen-
tury could see that there was virtually no
chance of catching up with the civilized world
without a major investment in translation.
Translating was not only an obvious way of
producing texts quickly and in quantity, which
is one way of demonstrating the existence of
the new culture, but it was also a convenient
means of experimenting with anything that
was thought worthy of treatment by virtue of
its association with an existing culture of high
prestige. However, right from the start a dis-
tressing tension revealed itself
between these
recognized needs and the inability of Hebrew
to express everything that had been, let alone
could have been, formulated in other cultures.
It was ideology which was mobilized to
alleviate the tension. The solution came from
an ingenious reversal of medieval practices,
which were still very much in force. Apolo-
getics, which were based on exaggerating
deficiencies of translation, were replaced by a
conscious effort to highlight the power and
versatility of the language, even if this
involved using false arguments. As early as
1755-6, a claim was made in the first pre-
periodical of the Haskala to the effect that
whereas ‘words of wisdom’ were indeed
untranslatable, Hebrew could hardly be
rivalled when it came to the translation of
‘words of beauty’, which were soon to become
the centre of attention. By constantly asserting
the ability of Hebrew to do precisely that
which held so many difficulties in store, a
favourable climate was created right from the
start, and this made it possible to pursue a
highly ambitious programme and to achieve
many of its goals. This ideological solution
was supplemented by another congruent move
of far-reaching consequences: linguistic accep-
tability was posited as a major requirement, to
an extreme marginalization of any real wish to
reconstruct the features of the source text. The
priority thus assigned to complying with me
norms of ‘pure’ Hebrew was to protect the
emerging new culture from being submerged
under the weight of a huge volume of imported
texts.
The model within which a
translator, like
any writer, was obliged to manoeuvre was in
fact much narrower than the sum total of
Hebrew resources, because only the language
documented in the Old Testament was made
available for actual use. The decision to restrict
Hebrew
tradition 443
the language used to the most classical form of
Hebrew was ideologically motivated again: it
was part of the overall struggle against any-
thing that smacked of the Jewish Orthodoxy of
the time. Paradoxically enough, this extreme
archaization, which was to govern acceptabil-
ity during the early Haskala
period, had an
important innovative effect on Hebrew, as the
kind of language now made compulsory had
for a long time been out of use. The Bible was
now regarded both as a source of matrices, to
be filled with new linguistic material, and as a
reservoir of actualized forms, to be used as
fixed expressions. Long and complex lin-
guistic items came to be regarded as most
appropriate per se. They were, in a sense,
target-language segments in search of source-
language items to replace. Long word-chains
were often formed by concatenating a series of
phrases taken out of their original contexts,
and this preferred mode of usage obviously
narrowed down the translators' options even
further, which might explain the high level of
uniformity in the texts produced throughout
this period. Very often, texts wer e not identi-
fied as translations; at any rate, it was common
practice to assign a translated text first and
foremost to its translator. The range of activi-
ties, strategies and texts associated with
translation was thus both broad and highly
diffuse, especially as many compositions
which did not draw directly on individual
foreign texts were still based on imported
models.
Given that Hebrew
Enlightenment made its
début in
culture which was called upon to act as a
supplier of texts and models, especially since
mastery of German was another ideal of the
Haskala itself. However, rather than turning
to
the model-culture in its contemporary state,
the new cultural paradigm usually played it
safe by using earlier forms of German as a
reference point, selecting items and models
which had once attained some canonization.
Many of the texts and authors selected for
translation had indeed occupied a position near
the epicentre of the living German system, but
most of them had since been relegated to a
more peripheral position or were considered
significant from a historical perspective only.
For a period of time, inclusion in a German
anthology, the kind of source which rarely
reflects current tastes, seems to have been an
important criterion for selecting a text for
translation, especially since many Haskala
persons initially came into contact with the
German texts through such collections. This
time lag explains why no poem of Schiller and
Goethe, for example, was translated until the
first quarter of the nineteenth century. Both
poets later became extremely popular in
Hebrew circles and remained so for at least a
century, often obstructing the translation of
contemporary writers and texts and hence
perpetuating time lag and stagnation.
During the first decades
of the Haskala,
translation was largely restricted to short texts
or fragments of longer ones, not only because
short texts are inherently easier to handle, but
also because they are particularly suitable for
periodicals and readers, which is where all
first translations and many of the subsequent
ones were in fact published. This is partly why
it took a long time for novels and dramatic
texts, and even novellas and short(er) stories,
to be selected for translation.
Quite a number of the
texts which were
translated from German were themselves
translations from other languages. Thus, the
emerging new Hebrew culture did come into
contact with other cultures as well, if only
through the mediation of German. The mediat-
ing culture naturally adapted the foreign texts
and models to its own needs. A culture which
gives priority to linguistic acceptability in
terms of its own norms and pays little attention
to the features of the source text is unlikely to
question the adequacy of a mediating text and,
indeed, for a very long time proponents of the
Hebrew Haskala hardly stopped to ponder this
point. The overall tolerance for indirect trans-
lation - again, quite a while after the German
model-culture had come to regard it as no
longer appropriate - was reflected in a pro-
liferation of second-hand translations, starting
with the very first modern translation into
Hebrew, a fragment of Edward Young's The
Complaint, or Night Thoughts on Life, Death
and Immortality undertaken in all likelihood
by Moses Mendelssohn (Gilon 1979). Thus,
even someone like Mendelssohn, who could
have just as easily translated from the English
original, adopted the approach favoured by the
444
Hebrew tradition
proponents of the emerging new literature
when operating on its behalf, which was quite
different from his own behaviour when he
operated as a representative of the German
culture (Toury 1988). During the first decades,
most indirect translations were of English and
French origin, so that many ideas of the
French Revolution, for instance, only reached
the Hebrew reader in a mediated and mitigated
form. Those few translations of non-German
texts which were not mediated via German
were seldom accepted as an integral part of the
new paradigm, partly, at least, because they
looked like relics of an earlier historical phase
rather than forerunners of a new era.
An interesting example of
many of the
points made so far is offered by Shakespeare's
fate in Hebrew (Almagor 1975): by the begin-
ning of the nineteenth century, the Hebrew
cultural milieu had come to regard the Bard,
with whom it was acquainted mainly via Ger-
man, as a major figure of world literature.
However, this appreciation in reality amounted
to nothing more than paying lip-service to
Shakespeare's importance in an attempt to
emulate ‘modern’ cultures, and for a long time
Shakespeare's position vis-à-vis Hebrew liter-
ature itself remained marginal. It was not until
1816 that the first known excerpt of a
Shakespearean text was published. Before
1874, when the first play (Othello) was trans-
lated in its entirety, and from the original, only
monologues and other short passages from his
tragedies were translated, and every single one
is likely to have been mediated. These frag-
ments were normally presented and accepted
as instances of poetry. At the same time, no
sonnet - the Shakespearean short poem par
excellence - was translated until 1916, most
probably because Hebrew had had an uninter-
rupted sonnet tradition of its own and did not
need to experiment in this area (Toury 1995:
Chapter 6). Most nineteenth-century transla-
tions of Shakespeare were made by minor, if
not totally obscure figures, and none of them
won any fame through these translations. In
fact, the translations were mostly published in
marginal periodicals, so that the great majority
of the few fragments that did appear in print
went virtually unnoticed.
No single translation
undertaken during the
Enlightenment period stands out as instrumental
in the evolution of Hebrew culture. However,
translation as a mode of generating texts, as
well as the cumulative weight of translated
products - texts and models alike, had as
enormous impact on its course. The most out-
standing domain in this respect is no doubt
children's literature, the like of which Hebrew
had never had and which was modelled almost
exclusively on the German example (Shavit
1986, 1992). In spite of the relative brevity of
close contact between the two cultures, traces of
German influence can still be seen in some
areas of Hebrew culture and language to this
day.
During the nineteenth century, the cultural
centre gradually moved further east, first
within the German cultural domain itself and
then out of it and into the Slavic region. Subse-
quent generations witnessed frequent changes
of attitude and behaviour, but no need was
now felt for a brand new beginning. Evolution
was now proceeding more evenly and transla-
tional norms came closer and closer to those
which operated in other Western cultures.
The gradual shift
eastwards inevitably
brought Hebrew writers into contact with ever
new cultures. These contacts had two comple-
mentary effects: with the new systems in the
background, new gaps were being identified
and, at the same time, various options for
filling them also presented themselves. Nor
were the gaps now confined to the realm of
text-type, theme and composition as they had
been before. Rather, they manifested them-
selves on the language plane as well. In view
of the new tasks it had to perform, the current
form of Hebrew could no longer be regarded
as adequate, not even by way of ideologically
motivated wishful thinking. It soon became
clear that many institutionalized modes of
behaviour, including those imported from
German a few decades back, could not fulfil
the new purposes and had to be replaced.
Starting in the 1820s, Russian had gradually
become the closest available system, and it
was this culture which would now present
Hebrew with most of its new challenges and
provide most of the options for meeting them.
Russian also became the main source of texts
Hebrew tradition
445
for translation, both original and mediated.
Indirect translation was still common, and
at least one important literary complex,
Scandinavian writing of the end of the century,
was imported into Hebrew almost exclusively
in a mediated form (Rokem 1982).
The behaviour of Hebrew in relation to
Russian during this period, which has come to
be known in Hebrew historiography as the
Revival period, involved much more than a
simple recognition of the latter's availability.
One could say that Hebrew behaved as if the
Russian system were part of it, and a dominant
part at that. Especially since the 1860s, when
the dependency patterns had already been
established (Even-Zohar 1990), the new para-
digm which took shape gradually replaced the
previous one based on German and was to
dominate Hebrew culture for many genera-
tions, even after the centre had moved out of
was still strongly advocated, though no longer
on the basis of the Bible alone. However, the
underlying model which was applied to both
original writing and translation, regardless of
source language, was in fact highly Russified.
This contributed much to the process of
enriching and diversifying the available reper-
toire. Among other things, it made it possible
for the first time to create a kind of simulated
spoken language in prose fiction; this became
necessary in view of the new kinds of literature
which were now being translated, and despite
the fact that Hebrew itself had hardly started to
be used as a spoken language again. Extending
the range of options available to the writer and
translator, often one and the same person,
made it possible to narrow down the concept
of translation and increase the relative weight
of dependence on the source text. The border-
line between originals and non-originals thus
became much clearer, and translations no
longer pretended to be original writings, as
they did during the German period; if any-
thing, it was now original texts which were
largely based on translational models. Interfer-
ence in the translation of individual texts as
well as in the composition of non-translated
ones thus played an important role in the very
revival of the language.
All these trends were
further reinforced by
the close contact which now developed
between Hebrew and Yiddish, another lan-
guage used by Jews but regarded throughout
the Enlightenment as corrupt German, to be
abandoned in favour of Hebrew and pure Ger-
man. Yiddish, especially in its Eastern variety,
was now rapidly becoming a literary language
in its own right and was also increasingly being
modelled on the Russian example. For a long
period, Hebrew and Yiddish behaved as if they
were two complementary components of the
same culture, a canonized and a non-canonized
system, respectively. Later on, Yiddish texts
began to be translated into Hebrew, often by
the authors themselves, not in order to increase
their readership (the potential reader of
Hebrew in
Yiddish anyway), but in a deliberate attempt to
enhance their cultural prestige. This process
also helped to fill many lacunae which were
still felt in the Hebrew system and further
reinforced its overall Russification, first and
foremost in the literary domain.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century,
with the rise of Zionism and the first waves of
Jewish immigration to
Hebrew culture started to move back to the
ancient homeland. The immigrants had been
brought up in the Russified tradition, and the
writers and translators among them carried on
their activities in the new environment. Conse-
quently, many of the old habits were
perpetuated, especially as most of the reader-
ship was still in
of World War One, literary translation in
particular became an important means of
supporting the Jewish intelligentsia, and many
elaborate projects were put forward by various
institutions for that purpose. Most of these
projects were never realized in full, but their
activities nevertheless led to a boom in transla-
tion production (Shavit and
Shavit 1977).
At the beginning of the
twentieth century, a
secondary cultural centre was established in
the
immigrants from
importance of this short-lived centre is that it
subsequently provided a small number of
writers and translators who were well-versed
in English and its literature. Many of them
446
Hebrew tradition
later moved to
local scene was ready to absorb them as the
language of the British mandate over
(1917-48) had become current in the country.
English soon became the main source language
in translation, but English texts were still
translated in the old fashion, as if they were
written in Russian. In the 1930s and 1940s, a
struggle for domination ensued between the
old Russified models and some new options
associated with Anglo-American practices; it
was finally settled in favour of the latter.
To be sure, the supremacy
of the Palestinian
centre was not established until the destruction
of Jewish culture (in both Hebrew and Yiddish)
had taken place in the
six million Jews had been murdered by the
Nazis. These events resulted in Hebrew culture
becoming practically mono-territorial again. By
this stage, Hebrew had developed a number of
spoken varieties on its way to self-sufficiency.
But written Hebrew continued to resist these
varieties for quite a while. Translation took
even longer to accept the new varieties of
Hebrew, and it is only recently that the rich
gamut of linguistic options which exist in
practice began to be used in Hebrew transla-
tions (Ben-Shahar 1994).
The emergence of
translational norms which involve drawing on
all varieties of Hebrew has increasingly made it
possible to approximate to the verbal formula-
tion of the source text, and there is even a
substantial subculture now which prefers for-
eignizing to domesticating translations (see
STRATEGIES OF TRANSLATION).
With the end of the
century drawing in,
translation seems to be undergoing a process
of cultural marginalization: while most
Hebrew texts are still products of translation,
there are clear signs that original compositions
are beginning to be preferred by the reading
public.
It is still the norm for an Israeli translator not
to have had any specific training for the job,
and many still practice translation as a sideline.
This is particularly true of literary translators,
most of whom are not even writers any more.
A plea for more professionalism has often
been made, but without much effect.
The first university to
offer a fully fledged
programme in translation and interpreting
was
decades, other institutes of higher learning
went on offering at most a handful of courses
in translation theory and/or workshops in
practical translation within a variety of depart-
ments, and it is only recently that a couple of
new programmes have been launched.
Until 1980, Israeli
translators had no pro-
fessional organization to represent them. In
fact, translators were largely against the idea
of being ‘organized’, and quite a number of
attempts to establish an independent associa-
tion therefore failed. For a long time, the
interests of translators were partly taken care
of by the Hebrew Writers Association, even
though translators would not normally have
been accepted as members. The new Israeli
Translators Association, established in 1980,
has been affiliated to FIT since 1987.
Various awards are
offered to encourage
translation into Hebrew. The most prestigious
is the Tschernihovski Prize, established in
1942. This prize, named after one of the most
prolific literary translators into Hebrew, Shaul
TSCHERNIHOVSKI, is awarded for two cate-
gories: literary and scientific translation.
also has an institute which promotes the trans-
lation of Hebrew literature into other
languages.
Until the 1950s, there was very little work
done in translation studies in
some research on old translations of the Scrip-
tures and on medieval translation practices.
Unlike their counterparts in most Western
cultures, translators and critics did not produce
much writing on translation either, and very
few of the articles that did get published had
any real impact. Not a single book on modern
translation was published until 1977, except
for a concise monograph on the intriguing
figure of Yitshak (Eduard) SALKINSOHN
(Cohen 1942).
Pioneering theoretical
research was under-
taken in the 1950s by the linguist Chaim
Rabin, but since translation failed to acquire
any academic status, very few scholars fol-
lowed suit. The turning point occurred in the
1970s, when a series of high quality doctoral
Hebrew tradition
447
dissertations were completed: Itamar Even-
Zohar (1971), Menachem Dagut (1971; 1978),
and Gideon Toury (1976; 1977). Toury's
approach has inspired a number of doctoral
dissertations and MA theses, mostly descrip-
tive studies on aspects of literary translation
into Hebrew. Interesting work in translation
theory was also done by Yishai Tobin,
Shoshana Blum-Kulka and
Elda Weizman,
mostly in English. Unlike the situation in many
other countries, very little scholarly work has
come out of the programmes for training
translators and interpreters.
In 1973,
Chair of Translation Theory where research
and publications continue to be coordinated;
these include TRANSST (the International
Newsletter of Translation Studies, since 1987)
and Target (since 1989). Both are co-edited by
Gideon Toury (Tel Aviv) and José Lambert
(
Halkin 1971; Shavit
and Shavit 1977; Toury
1977, 1995.
GIDEON
TOURY
SALKINSOHN, Yitshak (Eduard)
(1820-83). Salkinsohn
was born in
and, after spending some time in
moved to
Christianity. He then became a pastor in Scot-
land and finally served as a missionary in
central Europe, mainly
Shakespeare's Othello (1874) and Romeo and
Juliet (1878). His continental background,
combined with his mastery of English, made
him an ideal mediator between English liter-
ature and the Hebrew literary centre of the
time. However, his missionary activities prev-
ented his translations from being fully
accepted. His unfinished translation of the
New Testament was published posthumously.
SHLONSKY, Avraham (1900-73).
Born in
the
1921. A poet in his own right, Shlonsky was
also one of the most prolific translators ever
into Hebrew. He translated mainly from
Russian (including many indirect trans-
lations), Yiddish and French. A key figure in
the Hebrew Modernist movement, he also
introduced significant changes in translational
norms which were picked up by a growing
number of translators. His translations include
Gogol's Revizor (The Inspector General;
1935) and Marriage (1945), Sholokhov's
Virgin Soil Upturned (1935-6) and And
Quietly Flows the Don (1953-9), Pushkin's
Yevgeny Onegin
(1937ff.), Shakespeare's
Hamlet (1946) and King Lear (1955), and De
Coster's Tyl Ulenspiegl (1949).
The
TIBBONIDS. A family which produced
several generations of highly influential
medieval translators into Hebrew. From the
first generation, Judah ibn Tibbon
(c.1120-90) has come to be regarded in Jew-
ish historiography as the ‘father of all
translators’. Among his major translations are
Bahya ibn Paquda's Duties of the Heart,
Halevi's Sefer
ha-Kuzari and Sacadia's
Beliefs
and Opinions His will to his son Shmuel
ibn
Tibbon (c.1160-1230) constitutes an
import-
ant theoretical document on translation. The
most important translation by Shmuel himself
is Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed. The
introduction to this translation is not only
unusually comprehensive, it is also one of the
most important treatises on translation in
the Middle Ages. Other well-known members
of the family include Moses ibn Tibbon
(1240-83) and Jacob ben Machir
ibn
Tibbon (c.1236-c.1312).
TSCHERNIHOVSKI, Shaul (1875-1943).
A physician and Hebrew poet, Tschernihovski
was born on the border between the Crimea
and
1931. His mastery of a large number of lan-
guages served as a basis for a highly varied
and rich translation output. This included, for
example, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey
(1930ff.), Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha
(1913) and Evangeline (1923), Anacreon's
poems (1920), Sophocles' Oedipus the King
448
Hebrew tradition
(1929)
and the Russian epic The Song of Igor's
Campaign (1939).
GIDEON
TOURY