Off-Translation: Bertha Pappenheim’s Yiddish-German

Abstract

Abstract This article centres on Bertha Pappenheim’s translations of Old Yiddish literature, with a particular focus on Die Memoiren der Glückel von Hameln, which was published as a private edition in Vienna in 1910. While the fact that Pappenheim translated Glikl’s Yiddish-language writings into German is well known, little attention has been paid to the particular language of the translated text or to Pappenheim’s techniques of translation more generally. This article delineates Pappenheim’s evolving approach to translation and contextualizes this approach in terms of her feminist and religious commitments. Based on both close and paratextual readings of Die Memoiren der Glückel von Hameln, it identifies a trajectory in Pappenheim’s work from ‘translation proper’ to ‘off-translation’.