Asaf Galay has directed and written a number of award-winning documentaries for Israeli television. These include series on Israeli humor (In the Jewish Land, 2005); the history of Tel Aviv-Jaffa (Tel Aviv-Jaffa, 2007); the life and influence of the Zionist hero Joseph Trumpeldor (When the Lion Asked Twice, 2008); and the Israeli national poet Natan Alterman (Sentimentality Allowed, 2012). Also premiering in 2015 is a documentary film he directed and produced on how comics reflect Israeli life, entitled The Israeli Superheroes.
Shaul Betser is a well-known director of series and documentaries for the Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA) and Israel's Channel 2. He was also the founder of Nana-NetVision's popular video website. Betser has a BFA from the department of film and television at Tel Aviv University.
This exchange focuses on Galay and Betser’s new documentary film, The Muses of Isaac Bashevis Singer. You can find a trailer here and part 1 here.
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Dear Mr. Betser and Mr. Galay,
Part of what makes your film so intriguing is that the idea that a Nobel prize winning author, arguably the most prominent Yiddish writer of his generation, would use the translation of his oeuvre as an opportunity to meet women is so different from what one might expect from ‘a great artist’ to act like.
Translating great works of fiction is serious business, and It seems mind-boggling that the author that represented Yiddish culture to post-WW2 America chose his co-translators based on hotness rather than on competence. While you do show in the movie that he and his 'muses' worked very hard, it still almost doesn’t make sense that he wasn’t more particular about the people he chose for this important endeavour.
In the film you raise the idea that he may have viewed his English translations as a vehicle for fame and success, and you even present a scholar who claims that their quality pales in comparison to the original Yiddish. Do you think that Singer's translation ‘method’ shows that he didn’t treat his English readership as seriously as he treated his Yiddish creations? Is it a matter of him being an author who is more focused on storytelling than on poetic nuances? What does this whole affair tell us about his attitude toward Yiddish, English, and himself?
Yours,
Shmuel.
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Dear Shmuel,
You ask some tough questions. We'll do our best to answer them. The first thing to say is that Singer was very serious about the language used in the English translations of his works, just as he was in the Yiddish versions. He was anything but careless about translation. He'd been a translator himself – from German into Yiddish – and thought of them as indispensable, the 'very spirit of civilization'.
Singer believed good translators were crucial because of how difficult, impossible even, it was to convincingly render Yiddish writing into English. Yiddish was to him the richest of all languages with its biblical and talmudic references, its nuances, it aphorisms and folk wisdom. How could English, which he considered precise and ill-equipped to deal with ambiguity, describe such a foreign world?
His conclusion was to think of the original Yiddish and the English translation as two separate bodies of work with different audiences and intended impact. The English translation was vital in its own right. He sat for hours with his translators, discussing every word because, as he put it, 'no much how much I love them, all translators must be closely watched.' He demanded control over such an important process but the closeness with his translators came also from need. His English was not perfect and he needed help to understand his new audience, the new culture he was so determined to conquer.
Singer used a lot of different translators but he was, in his own way, careful how he chose them. Most did not have fluent Yiddish because he was not looking for a 'literal' translation which he characteristically compared to a woman, 'true and faithful but still miserable'. Rather, he wanted smart, young American Jews, each one providing new insights into how his stories could speak to people like themselves. He called them his 'best critics', the editors who revealed the 'nakedness' of his stories. He had to convince them before he could convince the large non-Yiddish readership he so wanted.
So Singer did not choose his translators just because they were 'hot'. But our film certainly is about the way that Singer's ideas about translation were intertwined with his ideas about sex (and what we might call his sexism). He remarked that when he was young he dreamed of a harem full of women. When he was older, he dreamed of a harem full of translators. But what he most wanted, and what he achieved, was 'heaven on earth', a harem full of female translators.
For Singer, creativity and sexuality were bound together. Indeed, Singer's relationships with his translators mirrored a pattern you find in his stories. Many Singer stories revolve around sex and secrets, around a male protagonist who moves obsessively between three women (or three 'types' of women): a woman of loyalty; a sensuous, unruly lover; and 'muses' he talks to, collaborates with in intellectual matters. The same was true about Singer and his translators. His wife, Alma translated a Singer story, as did his long-term lover, as in turn did many talented young women. He worked closely with these young women, he talked with them about literature and sex, and he often tried to seduce them. Both in his life and his translations, Singer alternated between this triangle of women. The result was a lot of turmoil but also some terrific writing.
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