Yiddish translation in Canada has evolved in two directions: from world languages into Yiddish, and from Yiddish into other languages, specifically English and French. This dual function of Yiddish as a target language and a source language mirrors fundamental changes in twentieth century Jewish cultural literacy and, by extension, Canadian Jewish identity. These translations embody a shift in the status of Yiddish from the primary vehicle of expression for Canada’s Eastern European Jewish immigrant community to a heritage language that is increasingly endangered outside of the Ultra-Orthodox milieu. They thus serve as a litmus test for the continuity of Yiddish and its linguistic and cultural heritage in Canada.
The status of Yiddish has undergone profound changes during the twentieth century, a period that coincides with mass immigration of Yiddish-speaking Eastern European Jews to Canada. The most evident change is demographic: from 1939 to the present day, Yiddish has moved from the most widely spoken Jewish vernacular in the world, with eleven million speakers (75% of the world’s Jews), to an estimated 350,000 today (Shandler, 2006, p. 1). In the Canadian context, virtually the entire Jewish community of some 155,000 was Yiddish-speaking in 1931; the 2001 Census Profile lists fewer than 20,000 speakers of the language out of a total Jewish population of over 350,000. The shift of Yiddish–from a lingua franca, to the basis for popular as well as high culture, to a language of heritage–is reflected in translations into and out of Yiddish.
