Sunday, 24 June 2018

A. ERLIKH


A. ERLIKH
            According to all conjectures, this was a pseudonym used by a Yiddish writer.  He signed his name in this manner on a number of Yiddish books, translated from world literature.  Apparently, the translations were not done from the original works (English and French), but from translations others did for him into Polish, Russian, and German.  Upton Sinclair’s novel Petroleum (original: Oil!) appears to have been translated not from English but from German.  Not only are Germanisms spread throughout the lexicon of the translation, but the syntax is not infrequently Germanic as well.  The translations in book form include: Romain Rolland, Tolstoy (original: La Vie de Tolstoï) (Warsaw: Sh. Goldfarb, 1926), 256 pp.; Sinclair, Petroleum (Warsaw: Sh. Goldfarb, 1928), 523 pp., a highly abridged version; and Émile Zola, Zherminal (original: Germinal), 2 vols.

Source: Y. Rapaport, “Bikher-velt” (Book world), Literarishe bleter (Warsaw) (October 12, 1928).


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