Translating Rebbe Nachman into Yiddish
Recently I’ve been working on helping out with the final touches of a monumental project for the Yiddish/Yiddish-interested world. It’s kind of hard to imagine, but Helena Shot out in Lviv, Ukraine has been working on a daily calendar (one that you would flip through, day after day), where each and every day would be a quote in Yiddish from prose or poetry, and its English translation. Each passage is accompanied by a colorful illustration.
This project has taken years, and from what I gather, many tears, between all of these Ukrainian Yiddishists and their friends. Helena, out of her own funds (and in between blackouts due to Russian attacks), employed an illustrator and local translators. My role, prompted by Reuben Hollander's recent visit to Lviv, is to edit.
The editing involved is on a pretty tight deadline. The calendars need to print ideally at the New Year. Though it’s taken me a lot of time and brainpower, I've learned so much poetry in the process. But one of the final tasks today was a rather unusual and audacious one. I was asked to translate some English Rebbe Nachman quotes into Yiddish!
Rebbe Nachman famously spoke and had his words written down in Yiddish, but most of his work, especially where interesting quotes come from, are in Hebrew. It of course would have been helpful to know what the sources of these quotes were, but I tried my best to look past that and imagine what these could sound like in a Modern Yiddish removed from Rebbe Nachman's time, but not removed from his vocabulary or his way of looking at things. Here’s a look at a sample of my attempt, and an explanation of why I chose the words I did.
QUOTES
Faith is an immensely strong thing, and through faith and simplicity, without any subtleties, one becomes worthy of attaining the rung of grace, which is even higher than that of holy wisdom…
די אמונה איז אַ מוראדיקע און שטאַרקע זאַך, און דורך אמונה און פּשטות, אָן שום קנײטשן, מע װערט זוכה צו דערגרײַכן די מדרגה פֿונעם חסד, װאָס איז גאָר העכער פֿון דער מדרגה פֿון
דער הײליקער חכמה
I think one of the interesting changes I made to Yiddish syntax itself for this was to adapt a Yeshivish varient of "meriting" (Zoykhe, זוכה) not accompanied by its normal "being" verb as non-European verbs tend to be, but rather made into a noun that can be achieved through the word "becoming" (װערן, vern). In Yeshivish, one can say that "I hope to become zoykhe." In Yiddish, you can only say "I hope to be zoykhe, or have zoykhe."
This was because I understood the spiritual worthiness of attaining a certain mystical level is something that is only specifically expressed with this word Zoykhe, and this demanded the flexibility to make it something one can become in oneself, a "meritor" and not merely "merit."
357
All thoughts of man are speaking movement, even when he does not know it.
אַלע מחשבֿות פֿון אַ מענטש זאָגן תּנועות, אַפֿילו װען ער איז אומװיסיק פֿון דעם.
Tnues, תּנועות, is the only word that could have possibly mapped onto "movement" as it is presented here. A bavegung, באַװעגונג or movement works for both the physical movement as well as a societal movement, but a Tnue exists in a metaphysical realm, given that along with gesture, it also can mean "niggun," or wordless melody or a spiritual variant. I have also seen this in broader spiritual contexts. Speaking movements, therefore, could only be possible under a word that inherently, can contain movement as well as feeling and sound.
No limits are set to the ascent of man, and to each the highest stands open. Here your choice alone decides.
קײן גרענעצן זענען געשטעלט אַקעגן דער עליה פֿון דעם מענטש, און צו יעדען אײנעם די העכסטע מדרגה בלײַבט אָפֿן. דײַן בחירה שטײט אַלײן.
I honestly found this passage most difficult to translate directly. Here, sticking to something that would sound correct in English feels absolutely wrong in Yiddish. An example. "Here your choice alone decides" cannot possibly work in a literal Yiddish translation: 'do, dayn klaybung aleyn klaybt oys' sounds like a very early version of Google Translate. This is because in Yiddish, shtayn, legn or blaybn, standing, lying or staying, can do the work of describing the existence of something, that it remains or that it is there. I gravitated towards that because here, I reasoned that 'choice' is actually closer to 'free will' in its meaning, and בחירה bekhire, means free will but can also be carelessly translated over as choice, and as a noun that has an abstract existence, I needed to use the verbs that work with that.
All this being said, I recognize that I have a lot to go with my translations to Yiddish, and given that I’ve never really done this before, I’m a bit nervous. But I gave it a shot because that was the least I could do for someone who had given up everything to make this kind of calendar, and being from the country of Rebbe Nachman himself, who am I to stop her? I’ll have more information about how to get a calendar as they come out.
