nuances. One thing that undoubtedly facilitated the work of translating the literary works included in the 26th volume, particularly in the case of Yiddish texts, was the closeness of the language to Polish," says Agnieszka Żółkiewska, PhD. In the texts of Ringelblum's younger collaborators and writers, the Polish language appears very often, in unexpected places and forms - mainly as neologisms.
Marta Dudzik-Rudkowska had to face other challenges while translating Kalonimus Szapira's texts written in rabbinical Hebrew, which even for contemporary Israelis is often incomprehensible, and with fragments written in Yiddish and Aramaic. The texts deal with Jewish mysticism concepts and phenomena that do not appear in Polish. It took us quite a long time to find Polish equivalents for Hebrew words, to establish a glossary of Polish notions," she says. Similar problems occurred in the case of Rabbi Huberband's texts, which, although written in Yiddish, have a parallel Hebrew layer, associated with the cultural circle in which the author functioned and which the translator, who is only familiar with Yiddish, is unable to understand and translate.
Agnieszka Żółkiewska, PhD, recalls yet another aspect. The authors of the texts collected in the Ringelblum Archive have never been given a chance to improve, perfect, stylise or refine them, which the reason for various translation problems. How do you render the text? How do you present it for the benefit of the author himself? If the text was unfinished or had some shortcomings - stylistic or logical - we had to make certain decisions. Such decisions are difficult for translators who do not want to interfere with the texts and correct the author.
Piotr Kendziorek, PhD, talks about another issue: when translating personal relations, one has to face gruesome descriptions. It is a litany of various inconceivable sufferings. We have to find a language that reflects the horror. The translator, however, cannot introduce more vivid terms than those used in the original. He or she is a transmitter of the text, the author's idea. In the case of the writings of Jewish councils or official German writings, there was also the question of conveying the specificity of the then language of Nazi bureaucracy, deciphering various abbreviations, references to legal codes, functions of German offices or military hierarchies.