Avraham Rivkas: The ‘Beauty of Yefes’ Doesn’t Include German…

Translating German into English

The endearing biography of Rabbi Yoselman of Rosheim by Rabbi Marcus (read: Meir) Lehmann, given the same name, was first published in 1974.

RYoR was most recently translated, adapted and republished in 2002 by Feldheim Publishers, see here for the cover art and here for excerpts.

The book contains a truncated “Prefatory Note” to the original edition by Selina Sassoon, Rabbi Lehmann’s granddaughter –

“The stories written by my late grandfather, Rabbi Dr. Marcus Lehmann זצ”ל, of Mainz, were for three generations the treasured possession of the German-reading Jewish family. The value of these historical narratives lies partly in the fact that they give the young an incomparable insight into various epochs of Jewish history, holding their interest by a colorful and lively style. But even more important is the inimitable way in which they are permeated with the atmosphere of true G-d-fearing Judaism, that inner climate of Jewish feeling, which is the secret of our people’s survival through the ages. The power to tell a gripping story and at the same time to communicate to the young reader a keen appreciation of the essentially Jewish moral issues with which, in so many different forms, the heroes of those stories grapple – this was the rare gift which endeared my grandfather as a writer to old and young alike and gave his work its unique quality.“

Based on the painfully long strings of clauses, undue commas, et al., I presume this passage, too, was originally translated from Selina Sassoon’s German…

What is wrong with dividing up the run-on sentences into shorter ones?! Isn’t our goal fitting the “Target language”? Worse, perhaps the sentences were broken up…?

Dear Dad: Was this acceptable English in antediluvian 1974?

There is nothing ‘artistic’ about having to read the same long sentences, again and again, to grasp their full import — especially considering these words were not written by either the author or the subject of his book.