Joachim Neugroschel (13 January 1938—23 May 2011) was a

multilingual Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. More than half of all E ...

literary translator Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transl ...

of French,

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

, and

Yiddish Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ve ...

. He was also an art critic, editor, and

publisher Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, newsp ...

Early life and education

Joachim Neugroschel was born in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

. His father was the Yiddish Galician poet Mendel Naygreshl (Max Neugröschel) (1903–1965). The family emigrated to

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a ...

in 1939, and eventually arrived in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

in 1941. He grew up in New York City and graduated from Bronx Science (1954) and

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

(1958) with a degree in English and

Comparative Literature Comparative literature is an academic field dealing with the study of literature and cultural expression across linguistic, national, geographic, and disciplinary boundaries. Comparative literature "performs a role similar to that of the study ...

. After graduating from Columbia, he lived in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

and then in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...

. Neugroschel returned to New York six years later and became a literary translator. Although his father was a native Yiddish speaker, Neugroschel did not grow up speaking the language and learned it as an autodidact in the 1970s.

Work

Neugroschel translated more than 200 books by numerous authors, including

Sholem Aleichem ) , birth_date = , birth_place = Pereiaslav, Russian Empire , death_date = , death_place = New York City, U.S. , occupation = Writer , nationality = , period = , genre = Novels, sh ...

, Dovid Bergelson,

Chekhov Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (; 29 January 1860 Old Style date 17 January. – 15 July 1904 Old Style date 2 July.) was a Russian playwright and short-story writer who is considered to be one of the greatest writers of all time. His career ...

, Alexandre Dumas,

Hermann Hesse Hermann Karl Hesse (; 2 July 1877 – 9 August 1962) was a German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. His best-known works include ''Demian'', '' Steppenwolf'', '' Siddhartha'', and ''The Glass Bead Game'', each of which explores an individual's ...

Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It typi ...

Thomas Mann Paul Thomas Mann ( , ; ; 6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novell ...

, Moliere,

Maupassant Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant (, ; ; 5 August 1850 – 6 July 1893) was a 19th-century French author, remembered as a master of the short story form, as well as a representative of the Naturalist school, who depicted human lives, destin ...

Proust Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (; ; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist who wrote the monumental novel '' In Search of Lost Time'' (''À la recherche du temps perdu''; with the previous E ...

Joseph Roth Moses Joseph Roth (2 September 1894 – 27 May 1939) was an Austrian journalist and novelist, best known for his family saga '' Radetzky March'' (1932), about the decline and fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, his novel of Jewish life '' Job'' ...

Albert Schweitzer Ludwig Philipp Albert Schweitzer (; 14 January 1875 – 4 September 1965) was an Alsatian-German/French polymath. He was a theologian, organist, musicologist, writer, humanitarian, philosopher, and physician. A Lutheran minister, Schweit ...

Isaac Bashevis Singer Isaac Bashevis Singer ( yi, יצחק באַשעװיס זינגער; November 11, 1903 – July 24, 1991) was a Polish-born American Jewish writer who wrote and published first in Yiddish and later translated himself into English with the help ...

, and modern writers such as

Ernst Jünger Ernst Jünger (; 29 March 1895 – 17 February 1998) was a German author, highly decorated soldier, philosopher, and entomologist who became publicly known for his World War I memoir '' Storm of Steel''. The son of a successful businessman and ...

Elfriede Jelinek Elfriede Jelinek (; born 20 October 1946) is an Austrian playwright and novelist. She is one of the most decorated authors writing in German today and was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Literature for her "musical flow of voices and counter-vo ...

and

Tahar Ben Jelloun Tahar Ben Jelloun ( ar, الطاهر بن جلون; born in Fes, Morocco, 1 December 1944) is a Moroccan writer. All of his work is written in French although his first language is Darija. He became known for his 1985 novel ''L’Enfant de Sab ...

. His Yiddish translations of ''

The Dybbuk ''The Dybbuk'', or ''Between Two Worlds'' (russian: Меж двух миров �ибук}, trans. ''Mezh dvukh mirov ibuk'; yi, צווישן צוויי וועלטן - דער דִבּוּק, ''Tsvishn Tsvey Veltn – der Dibuk'') is a play by ...

'' by S. Ansky and ''God of Vengeance'' by

Sholem Asch Sholem Asch ( yi, שלום אַש, pl, Szalom Asz; 1 November 1880 – 10 July 1957), also written Shalom Ash, was a Polish-Jewish novelist, dramatist, and essayist in the Yiddish language who settled in the United States. Life and work Asch ...

were produced and reached wide audience. In an interview that touched on his translation process, Neugroschel said, "I never read a book before translating it. No reason to. I do not translate the words literally. Only a bad translator would translate literally." He followed up with, "You don't have to have a sense of the author's work to translate. I read a page and get the style. It is a question of music and rhythm."

Recognition

Neugroschel was the winner of three

PEN A pen is a common writing instrument that applies ink to a surface, usually paper, for writing or drawing. Early pens such as reed pens, quill pens, dip pens and ruling pens held a small amount of ink on a nib or in a small void or cavity wh ...

Translation Awards, the 1994 French-American Translation Prize, and the Guggenheim Fellowship in German Literature (1998). In 1996 he was also made a Chevalier in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Joachim Neugröschel became also known in Germany through an interview that the writer

Hubert Fichte Hubert Fichte (; 21 March 1935, Perleberg, Province of Brandenburg – 8 March 1986) was a German novelist. Life Hubert Fichte was born on 21 March 1935 in Perleberg Hospital. A few weeks after his birth his family moved to Hamburg-Lokstedt. ...

conducted with him in New York in September 1978. However, it was only published in 2006 as part of , a nineteen-volume cycle of narrations by Hubert Fichte as the third volume entitled ''The Second Guilt''.Hubert Fichte: Die zweite Schuld. Glossen. Herausgegeben von Ronald Kay. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer 2006, S. 11-49.

Death

Neugroschel died in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

at the age of 73. He is survived by his legal guardian and former

partner Partner, Partners, The Partner, or, The Partners may refer to: Books * ''The Partner'' (Grisham novel), by John Grisham, 1997 * ''The Partner'' (Jenaro Prieto novel), 1928 * ''The Partners'' (book), a 1983 book by James B. Stewart * ''Partner'' (m ...

, Aaron Mack Schloff.

Selected translations

* Georges Bataille, ''Story of the Eye'' (Urizen Books, 1977) *

Elias Canetti Elias Canetti (; bg, Елиас Канети; 25 July 1905 – 14 August 1994) was a German-language writer, born in Ruse, Bulgaria to a Sephardic family. They moved to Manchester, England, but his father died in 1912, and his mother took her ...

, ''The Tongue Set Free'' (Seabury Press, 1979) *

Gregor von Rezzori Gregor von Rezzori (; May 13, 1914 – April 23, 1998), born Gregor Arnulph Herbert Hilarius von Rezzori d’Arezzo, was an Austrian-born, Romanian, German-language novelist, memoirist, screenwriter and author of radio plays, as well as an actor, ...

, ''Memoirs of an Anti-Semite'' (Viking, 1981) *Elias Canetti, ''The Torch in My Ear'' (Farrar Straus Giroux, 1982) *

Manès Sperber Manès Sperber (12 December 1905 – 5 February 1984) was an Austrian- French novelist, essayist and psychologist. He also wrote under the pseudonyms ''Jan Heger'' and ''N.A. Menlos''. Early life Sperber was born on 12 December 1905 in Zabłot� ...

, ''God's Water Carriers'' (Holmes & Meier, 1987) *

, ''The Piano Teacher'' (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988) *

, ''Aladdin's Problem'' (Marsilio Publishers, 1992) *

Franz Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It ...

, ''The Metamorphosis and Other Stories'' (Scribner, 1993) *

, ''With Downcast Eyes'' (Little, Brown and Company, 1993) *

, ''The Radetzky March'' (Overlook Press, 1995) *

, ''Death in Venice and Other Tales'' (Viking, 1998) *

, ''Siddhartha: An Indian Tale'' (Penguin, 1999) *''The Dybbuk and the Yiddish Imagination: A Haunted Reader'' d. and trans.(Syracuse University Press, 2000) *

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch (; 27 January 1836 – 9 March 1895) was an Austrian nobleman, writer and journalist, who gained renown for his romantic stories of Galician life. The term ''masochism'' is derived from his name, invented by h ...

, ''Venus in Furs'' (Penguin, 2000) * Marcel Proust, ''The Complete Short Stories of Marcel Proust'' (Cooper Square Press, 2001) *

Guy de Maupassant Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant (, ; ; 5 August 1850 – 6 July 1893) was a 19th-century French author, remembered as a master of the short story form, as well as a representative of the Naturalist school, who depicted human lives, destin ...

, ''The Necklace and Other Tales'' (Modern Library, 2003) * Alexandre Dumas, ''The Man in the Iron Mask'' (Penguin, 2003) *''No Star Too Beautiful: Yiddish Stories from 1382 to the Present'' d. and trans.(W.W. Norton, 2002) * Dovid Bergelson, ''The Shadows of Berlin: The Berlin Stories of Dovid Bergelson'' (City Lights Books, 2005) * Marquis de Sade, ''Philosophy in the Boudoir; or, The Immoral Mentors'' (Penguin, 2006) *''The Golem: A New Translation of the Classic Play and Selected Short Stories'' d. and trans.(W.W. Norton, 2006) * E.T.A. Hoffmann, ''The Nutcracker and the Mouse King'' / Alexandre Dumas, ''The Tale of the Nutcracker'' (Penguin, 2007)

References

External links

* Lawrence A. Rosenwald
Review of No Star Too Beautiful, an anthology of Yiddish literature, ed. Joachim Neugroschel
31 August 2004.
Photograph of Joachim Neugroschel (1987)
by

Timothy Greenfield-Sanders Timothy Greenfield-Sanders (born February 16, 1952) is an American documentary filmmaker and portrait photographer based in New York City. The majority of his work is shot in large format. Early life Greenfield-Sanders was born on February 16, ...

, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston {{DEFAULTSORT:Neugroschel, Joachim French–English translators German–English translators Russian–English translators Yiddish–English translators Translators of Thomas Mann 20th-century American poets Austrian emigrants to the United States Austrian Jews American people of Austrian-Jewish descent Columbia College (New York) alumni 1938 births 2011 deaths Yiddish-language literature Jewish American writers Translators of Franz Kafka American LGBT poets 20th-century translators Literary translators