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Olaf Terpitz teaches Jewish literatures at the Center for Jewish Studies, University of Graz (Austria), where he serves as deputy director and co-editor of the center’s book series.

The contributions of this special issue showcase the performative dimension of translation: Musicians and poets (when reading their texts) draw attention to the interactions between languages, phonetic experiences, rhythm, rhyme, and the productive use of misunderstandings. Critical reflections on their own translations, and the role performed by agents such as editors (e.g. of selection and design), engender the question of what it meant historically and what it means today to be a writer or reader in multilingual settings.

Augusta Costiuc Radosav is an assistant professor of Yiddish Language and Literature at the Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca.

Radosav discusses her experiences as a translator of Yiddish poetry into Romanian and her evaluation of certain translations from other languages into Romanian or from Romanian into Yiddish. The essay outlines a strategy of “translation-recreation,” in which the translator balances a sense of fidelity to the source text with the attempt to creatively reproduce its internal mechanism.