Ri J. Turner
Photo courtesy of Ri J. Turner
Bio
Ri J. Turner is a graduate student in Yiddish Literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She has also studied Yiddish language and literature at the Medem Library (Paris Yiddish Center), the Warsaw Summer Institute for Yiddish Language and Culture, and the YIVO Institute in New York, and she was a 2014 translation fellow at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts. She has translated the work of Yiddish writers Malka Locker, Malka Lee, Joseph Tunkel, Fischel Schneersohn, Ida Maze, Aaron Zeitlin, Chaim Grade, and Aaron Shmuel Tamares, and has published translations in the journals Pakn Treger, In Geveb, and others. Her translations of vignettes by Lyala Kaufman were included in the 2016 anthology Have I Got a Story for You: More Than a Century of Fiction from the Forward (Ezra Glinter, ed., New York: W.W. Norton & Co.).
I became a translator completely by accident (and actually, I’m still a bit ambivalent about the role). I got my start in the framework of the Yiddish Book Center Translation Fellowship in 2014, which I applied for not so much because I was interested in translation in and of itself, but because I was (and am) obsessed with Yiddish. During that fellowship, I set out to translate what I thought was a one-volume, 150-page novel – but turned out to be a three-volume, 600-page novel! (That’s Chaim Gravitzer by Fishl Schneersohn). The vast landscape of that novel (whose translation I hope to complete this year) has kept me hooked for the last five years. At first, it was tough going, as I learned how to relax my hold on the literal meaning of every single word in the original text (these literary works are sacred, but they’re not the Bible) and take the creative mental leaps that lead to a translation that is fluent and lively while still being an accurate reflection of both the content and “feel” of the original. It also took some time to get used to the ergonomics of translation (seriously! It’s certainly not backbreaking labor, but it is a task that lends itself all too easily to repetitive stress injury, especially if you’re working from a physical book rather than a scanned original). In any case, receiving the NEA grant this year was the impetus for me to “stop worrying and love translation” – because even on days when I feel the most doubt, obviously someone out there thinks that I’m doing a good job and that the works that I’m translating are interesting and worthwhile for an English reader. And the truth is that it’s a lot of fun – every day when I wake up and start translating, I feel like I’m living a pretty decadent life.
from “An Unusual Library” by Joseph Tunkel
[translated from the Yiddish]
“How did it happen, you ask? It’s a simple story: Our parties, despite their solidarity and cosmopolitanism in establishing the culture-factor, i.e., our library, nevertheless exploited the territory of the library as an arena for waging their campaigns of ceaseless class warfare and interparty-struggle. In other words, no party could bear the presence of the books and journals of its opponent, and thus each party secretly began to cleanse the library of its opponent’s literature.”
“Which is to say?”
“Which is to say, the Bund, couldn’t bear the books of the Zionists, and the Zionists couldn’t bear the books of the Bund; for example, the Bund made off with the books written by Herzl, Lilienblum, and Ahad Ha’am, because they ‘cause setbacks in the consciousness of the working masses,’ -- and so in response, the Zionists came and secretly snatched up the Bundist books and the entire literature of socialist agitation by Marx, Lassalle, Bakunin, Osip Dymov, Kazdan, A. Litvak, and Kautsky, which ‘disclaim the national feeling.’ Then the Yiddishists came and stole the Hebrew books, and the Hebraists came and stole the Yiddishist books. Meanwhile, the Orthodox came, headed by the Agudah, and stole both sides’ books, piled up some wood, and burned all of them on an Inquisition-style pyre. And that’s how we ended up without a single book -- all that remained were the empty bookshelves.
“It was just the same with the newspapers: a Zionist grabbed the People’s Newspaper from the table, so a Bundist came and pilfered the Zionist Pages; they both stopped by to steal the Jewish Daily. The Labor Zionists came and took away the Freedom (the organ of the Labor Youth), so the Labor Youth members came to cleanse the library of the New Path (the organ of the Young Zionists), and the members of Young Bundists disposed of The Jewish Voice (the organ of the Agudas-Israel Workers). The Revisionists came and did away with the Bundist Call to Awaken, so the Communists came and got rid of the rest of the journals and newspapers, more or less. By then it was pandemonium. The organ-stealing went on for so long that by the end, we were left all hollowed out.
“And just so with the walls: the same behind-the-scenes demagoguery. A Yiddishist stole Bialik’s portrait off the wall, so a Hebraist came and stole Peretz and Asch. Someone else came and tore down both sets and hung up Medem and Marx. A Labor Zionist came and took down all the portraits so he could hang up Zerubavel and Levin, and then a mainstream Zionist came and took down Zerubavel and hung up Balfour and Chaim Weizmann. A Revisionist came and took down Balfour and Chaim Weizmann and hung up Jabotinsky and Trumpeldor. A member of the “Time to Build” faction came and hung up Louis Marshall; a member of the “Young Guard” tore down Louis Marshall and hung up Podlishevsky. A Communist came, took everything down and hung up Litvakov’s sister; and then a Folkist came and tore down Litvakov’s sister and hung up Solomon Beaver and Wormwood.
“In this way, portraits were hung up and torn down until the walls ended up as bare as those of an abandoned ruin.
“And now we’re left with what you see before your eyes -- a battlefield, with no sign of what was once here. Some library!”
About Joseph Tunkel
Joseph Tunkel (1881-1949). Tunkel—better known by his pen name Der Tunkeler—was one of the most prolific humorists of modern Yiddish literature, yet he has been almost entirely untranslated into English. In his lifetime, he published more than 30 books, including one-act plays, novellas for children, collections of humoresques (humorous monologues and sketches), as well as some 1,500 feuilletons in the Yiddish press. He was born in modern-day Belarus, but throughout his adult life moved between Lithuania, Ukraine, New York City, and Poland until he was sent to a concentration camp during World War II, from which he escaped back to New York City. This collection will include approximately 50 of Der Tunkeler's humoresques, which highlight timeless human foibles while offering an unusual perspective on the political, cultural, and literary landscape of his day.