Online translators can be useful for a printed sentence in modern Yiddish. They cannot read handwriting, they do not know the old spellings, and they stumble over Hebrew words, idioms and the English that American immigrants mixed into their Yiddish. For a family letter, that is most of the text.
What I translate from Yiddish
- Family letters and postcards, from Europe, America and the Land of Israel
- Memoirs, diaries and notebooks
- Landsmanshaft, burial society and synagogue records
- Yizkor book chapters about your family’s town
- Poetry, stories and other literary texts
- Business papers, contracts and official documents
A translation that sounds like your family
A good translation keeps the voice of the writer. When a father opens with blessings for his children’s health, or a mother signs with a traditional phrase, I keep that warmth and explain anything an English reader might not know. Notes are added for Hebrew dates, abbreviations and customs.
English to Yiddish
I also translate from English and Hebrew into Yiddish for today’s Yiddish-speaking communities: articles, notices, forms, questionnaires and tables, adapted so they read naturally to the audience. For larger projects I work with the memoQ translation tool to keep terminology consistent.
Want to see the result? Look at the Brooklyn 1936 sample.