Jewish Translation in the Era of Epistemicide and Linguicide

At the peak of the most scientific of all eras, when new knowledge is produced every day in broad areas of research, vast inherited savoirs are simultaneously being lost forever. Fruits of ancient cultures and languages succumb under political persecution, human disasters and genocides. The chasm of the Human culture is represented in the Shoah (1938-1945) where 6 million of Jews were systematically murdered under the Nazi hypercolonialism. Together with the massacre of a people, both epistemicide and linguicide were performed and Jewish languages like Yiddish and Judeo-Spanish lost 90% of their speakers. Today, 80 years after the genocide, these languages are in danger; the last one is in the process of agony. Nevertheless, speakers of Jewish languages are fighting linguicide through different cultural practices; among them, translation takes a particular stand in the project of repairing the status of broken languages.

Speaker

Dr Cynthia Gabbay

LE STUDIUM Guest Research Fellow 

FROM: University of Humboldt, Centre Marc Bloch - DE
IN RESIDENCE AT: RÉceptions et MÉdiations de LIttératures et de Cultures Étrangères et comparées (RÉMÉLICE) / University of Orléans - FR