1. I use “border” in D. Emily Hicks′s sense of the term: “What makes border writing a world literature with a ‘universal’ appeal is its emphasis upon the multiplicity of languages within any single language; by choosing a strategy of translation rather than representation, border writers ultimately determine the distinction between original and alien culture.” Hicks, Border Writing: The Multidimensional Text(Minneapolis, 1991), p. xxiii. Further complicating this issue, Andre Lefevere notes that translations themselves are “texts produced on the borderline between two systems.” Lefevere, “Mother Courage′sCucumbers: Text, System and Refraction in a Theory of Literature,” Modern Language Studies12, no. 4 (1982): 4.

2. See for example Samia, Mehrez, “Translation and the Postcolonial Experience: The Francophone North African Text,” in Rethinking Translation: Discourse, Subjectivity, Ideology,ed. Lawrence, Venuti (London, 1992); Tejaswini Niranjana, Siting Translation: History, Post- Structuralism, and the Colonial Context(Berkeley, 1992); and Lawrence Venuti, introduction to Rethinking Translation.Google Scholar

3. E.g., Carlos Fuentes′ Terra Nostra, Doyle, Michael S., “Contemporary Spanish and Spanish American Fiction in English: Tropes of Fidelity in the Translation of Titles,” Translation Review 30–31 (1989): 41–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4. Rogelio Reyes, “The Translation of Interlingual Texts: A Chicano Example,” in Translating Latin America: Culture as Text. Translation Perspectives VI,ed. William Luis and Julio Rodriguez-Luis (Binghamton, 1991), p. 301.

5. Ibid., p. 302.

6. Ibid., p. 303.

7. Ibid.

8. “Marginality may have been the Jew′s archetypal experience,” says Ruth R. Wisse in her introduction to A Shtetl and Other Yiddish Novellas(New York, 1973), p. 14.

9. Madison, Charles A., Yiddish Literature: Its Scope and Major Writers (New York, 1968), p. 48.Google Scholar

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11. As a microcosmic example of the issues in this article, the title of this journal has been translated variously as “The voice which brings tidings,” Joseph and Frances Butwin, Sholem Aleichem(Boston, 1977), p. 29; “A Heralding Voice,” Dan Miron, A Traveler Disguised: A Study in the Rise of Modern Yiddish Fiction in the Nineteenth Century(New York, 1973), p. 5; and “Voice of the Herald,” Wisse, A Shtetl,p. 3.

12. Fishman, Joshua A., Yiddish: Turning to Life (Amsterdam, 1991), p. 30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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18. Miron, , Traveler Disguised,p. 7.Google Scholar

19. Ibid., pp. 18, 64. Again, this is not unique to Yiddish. All languages which were oral, when textualized, have needed an infusion of new vocabulary (e.g., Spanish under Alfonso X, nineteenth-century Romanian; even Latinate terms in English can be traced to this).

20. Roskies, David G., “Introduction to Sholem Aleichem: The Critical Tradition,” Prooftexts 6, no. 1 (1986): 1.Google Scholar

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25. Ibid., pp. 133 ff.

26. J.R., Rayfield, The Languages of a Bilingual Community(The Hague, 1970), p. 55.Google Scholar

27. Fishman, , Yiddish,p. 27.Google Scholar

28. Sholem, Aleichem, “Hodl,” Tevye the Dairyman and The Railroad Stories,trans. Hillel Halkin (New York, 1987), pp. 53–54.Google Scholar

29. Sholem, Aleichem, The Jackpot,trans. Kobi Weitzner and Barnett Zumoff (New York, 1989), pp. 46, 53.Google Scholar

30. Lord, Albert B., The Singer of Tales(Cambridge, Mass., 1960), pp. 25, 65–67.Google Scholar

31. Jack, Goody, The Interface Between the Written and the Oral (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 263–264.Google Scholar

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35. Benjamin, Harshav, The Meaning of Yiddish(Berkeley, 1990), p. 91.Google Scholar

36. Ong, Orality and Literacy,pp. 68–69.Google Scholar

37. Ibid., p. 69.

38. Harshav, , Meaning of Yiddish,p. 100.Google Scholar

39. Sholem, Aleichem, “A Note to the Reader,” Adventures of Mottel the Cantor′s Son,trans. Tamara Kahana (New York, 1952), no pagination. Similarly, Jeffrey Shandler quotes a 1948 tribute to Sholem Aleichem that labels him “the most untranslatable of writers.” Shandler, “Reading Sholem Aleichem from Left to Right,” YIVO Annual20 (1991): 309.Google Scholar

40. Harshav, , Meaning of Yiddish,p. 105.Google Scholar

41. Sholom, Aleichem, Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories,trans. Hillel Halkin (New York, 1987), p. xxxix.Google Scholar

42. Ibid., p. 98.

43. Peretz, I. L., “Oyb Nisht Nokh Hekher,” Ale Verk(New York, 1900), 5:136.Google Scholar

44. Peretz, I. L., “If Not Even Higher,” Selected Stories,trans. Eli Katz (New York, 1991), p. 270.Google Scholar

45. Peretz, I. L., “If Not Higher,” The I. L.Peretz Reader,ed. Wisse, Ruth R., trans. Marie Syrkin (New York, 1990), p. 178.Google Scholar

46. Peretz, , Ale Verk,p. 137.Google Scholar

47. Peretz, , Selected Stories,p. 272.Google Scholar

48. Peretz, , Ale Verk,p. 139.Google Scholar

49. Peretz, , Selected Stories,p. 276.Google Scholar

50. Peretz, , I. L. Peretz Reader,p. 180.Google Scholar

51. Sholem, Aleichem, “Tsugenumen,” Ale Verkfun Sholem Aleykhem(New York, 1944), 7:64–66.Google Scholar

52. Sholem, Aleichem, “Eighteen from Pereshchepena,” Tevye the Dairyman and The Railroad Stories,pp. 164–165.Google Scholar

53. Ong, , Orality and Literacy,pp. 49–50.Google Scholar

54. Sholem, Aleichem, Adventures of Mottel,p. 231.Google Scholar

55. Yosef, Haim Brenner, “On Sholem Aleichem [The Writer and the Folk],” Prooftexts 6, no. 1 (1986): 17.Google Scholar

56. Dov, Sadan, “Three Foundations,” Prooftexts 6, no. 1 (1986): 56.Google Scholar

57. Devar Hapoelet,Feb. 5, 1950; this reference is from Kobi Weitzner, Sholem Aleichem in the Theater,forthcoming, p. 134.

58. Steinmetz, , Yiddish and English,p. 16.Google Scholar

59. Butwin, , Sholem Aleichem,p. 14.Google Scholar

60. Ba′al-Makhshoves, , “Sholem Aleichem [A Typology of His Characters],” Prooftexts 6, no. 1 (1986): 14.Google Scholar

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63. Sholem, Aleichem, “Mr. Green Has a Job,” Some Laughter, Some Tears: Tales from the Old World and the New,trans. Curt Leviant (New York, 1968), pp. 233–234.Google Scholar

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66. Sholem, Aleichem, Some Laughter, Some Tears,pp. 237–242.Google Scholar

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68. Sholem, Aleichem, “Motl Peysi dem Khazns,” Ale Verk fun Sholem Aleykhem(New York, 1944), 1:84–85.Google Scholar

69. Sholem, Aleichem, Adventures of Mottel,pp. 264–265.Google Scholar

70. Sholem, Aleichem, “Motl Peysi dem Khazns,” pp. 105–106.Google Scholar

71. Especially when one considers the censorship and other difficult conditions that Sholem Aleichem faced during his career (cf. A. Mukdoni, “Sholom Aleichem as a Dramatic Writer,” in Melech Grafstein ′s Sholem Aleichem Panorama,ed. Melech Grafstein [London, Ont., 1948], p. 222; and Shandler, “Reading Sholem Aleichem,” p. 306). For a detailed description of even more extreme cases of “adapting” and “improving” Sholem Aleichem′s works, see Weitzner, Sholem Aleichem in the Theatre.

72. Shandler, “Reading Sholem Aleichem,” p. 309.

73. Sholem, Aleichem, “Mister Boym in Klozet,”p. 285.Google Scholar

74. Ibid.

75. Ibid.

76. Ibid., pp. 285–286.

77. For a detailed linguistic discussion of bilingual Yiddish-English borrowing patterns, see Rayfield, Languages of a Bilingual Community,chap. 3.

78. Sholem, Aleichem, “Mister Boym in Klozet,”pp. 286–287.Google Scholar

79. Ibid., p. 288.

80. Weinreich, , Modern Yiddish Dictionary,p. 213.Google Scholar

81. Sholem, Aleichem, “Mister Boym in Klozet,”p. 287.Google Scholar

82. Ibid., p. 289.

83. Ibid., p. 288.

84. Sholem, Aleichem, The Jackpot,p. 260.Google Scholar

85. Wisse, , A Shtetl,p. 8.Google Scholar

86. Cf. Anna Halberstam-Rubin, Sholem Aleichem: The Writer as Social Historian(New York, 1989), pp. 13–15, 116; Weitzner, Sholem Aleichem in the Theatre,pp. 4, 7.

87. Georg, Lukacs, The Historical Novel,trans. Hannah and Stanley Mitchell (Lincoln, 1983), p. 21.Google Scholar