Some 23 years after the first book in the Harry Potter series was publish and subsequently translated into over 80 languages, the series will soon be published in Yiddish, and the use of the ancient Jewish language is sure to cast its spell on a vast new readership.
Yiddish is the historical language of the Ashkenazi Jews and dates back to the 9th century in Central Europe. Modern Yiddish has several dialects and it is widely used by ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities worldwide, where it is the first language of the home, school, and in many social settings among many Haredi Jews.
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The idea to have Harry Potter published in Yiddish first came about in 2018, when author J.K. Rowling's agent, Neil Blair, was approached by American Yiddish teacher Arun Schaechter Viswanath.
"I grew up with Yiddish as my first language and I always wanted to experience the magical world of sorcery in my favorite language," he told Blair.
"Modern, fascinating children's literature [in Yiddish] was almost nonexistent and my brothers and I, together with our Yiddish-speaking peers, had to settle for antiquated works that were often written before World War II."
Viswanath got the idea to translate the series into Yiddish when one day, as they were reading one of the books, his wife wondered, "How are we going to raise our children in a language that doesn't have Harry Potter?"
Blair was intrigued by the appeal but soon discovered that the rights to the Yiddish translation had already been granted to a Swedish publisher.
As it turns out, since 1999, Yiddish has become an official minority language in Sweden, and therefore, by law, every book that receives government funding must also be translated into Yiddish. So a translation, it seems, was already in the works.
The literary agent contacts the publishing house, Oliansky Tekst Farlag, which eventually decided to have the translations reviewed by the Swedish Institute for Language and Folklore's Yiddish expert, Jean Hessel, and by Israeli Yiddish postmodern novelist Mikhoel Felsenbaum, to decide which translation was better.
They unanimously chose Viswanath's work.
The translation required Viswanath to invent words, for the simple reason the Rowling herself invented terms when crafting the series' unique language.
Finding solutions to some of the characters' names, as well as for the magical terms and other colloquial phrases used in the book proved challenging, but after about a year's work, the first book in the series Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone has been released for pre-order.
The current edition, Harry Potter un der filosofisher shteyn, is slated to include 1,000 books, and the translation of the second book, Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets is well underway.
Swedish publisher Nikolai Oliansky said he hopes the new translation will make people consider learning Yiddish.
"I hope we reach new readership and people who never gave Yiddish language a thought before," he said.
