Omri Asscher

Bar Ilan University | BIU · Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies

The influence of translational norms on the translation of humor manifested in prose fiction has not been a focus of much research. This paper will try to establish the existence of an institutionalized strategy of amplification , presumably born out of a wish to bridge the cultural gap reflected in two different national traditions of literary hum...

Despite the immense influence of machine translation (MT) on cross-cultural communication worldwide, little is known about end users’ predispositions toward MT. Our online experiment ( N = 284) compares people’s perceptions of MT and human translation in an ethically charged situation, in which the translation serves an immigrant worker in an inter...

This article establishes the existence of an American Jewish tradition of metalinguistic thought that stretches from the mid-twentieth century to our time. It demonstrates how American Jewish thinkers’ reflections on language implied a response to the claims made on their Jewish identity by their symbolic homeland, Israel. In particular, thinkers r...

Machine translation (MT) accounts for the largest, and increasingly growing, proportion of translated text produced today, yet the most influential theoretical frameworks developed in translation studies had preceded the contemporary MT era by decades. The question arises as to whether these theories are well-equipped to capture the makeup of today...

Attempts to define the concept of translation have historically both reflected and driven developments and demarcations in the field. In light of the ubiquitous rise of machine translation (MT), the current article considers how definitional approaches to translation that preceded the MT era, and were formulated with human translation in mind, corr...

Review of Reuven Gafni's Hebraizing Sherlock Holmes

Not all migrant communities endure to the same extent in the long term. Some assimilate and blend into the local environment within a generation or two, while others maintain a more-or-less distinct identity and persevere as diasporas for generations and even centuries. This chapter demonstrates the crucial role played by translation in these setti...

In this article, we use quantitative and qualitative methods to explore the gender-related experiences and perceptions of Eritrean asylum-seekers in their linguistic encounter with Israeli society. Focused on the Eritrean community in the city of Rehovot, our findings suggest that men and women experience different communicative situations due to t...

This article examines a representative case of Israeli publicist responses to the moral-political critique by American Jewish authors, focusing on the reception of Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint and Saul Bellow’s Mr. Sammler’s Planet. These novels were first published in Hebrew translation in the early 1970s, against the backdrop of a heightened...

The negation of the diaspora has historically been a staple of religious Zionist thought. The current article draws on theological exchange and export to argue that recent years reflect a notable shift in this once-preeminent ideological orientation. Against the backdrop of the increasing popularity of gap year programs for American students in Isr...

As Artificial Intelligence-Mediated Communication (AI-MC) technology is increasingly used to facilitate communication worldwide, its implications for interpersonal relationships in multinational working environments have become more significant. In particular, knowing that AI-MC tools are used by the communicator might reduce recipients' perception...

This article offers a discussion of Amos Oz’s early translation and reception history in the American literary scene. The article pays particular attention to Oz’s double capacity as novelist and political commentator, and how it contributed to the unique role quickly assigned to him in American public and intellectual discourse. Against the backdr...

The significance long assigned to the Ben-Gurion—Blaustein agreement as exemplifying the relationship between Israeli and American Jews makes the ‘understanding’ a useful historiographical yardstick. I shall demonstrate that the reticence of Ben-Gurion and Blaustein to discuss the cultural and religious exchange between the communities is generally...

This article suggests translation as a particularly useful object of inquiry for the study of ideological relations and mutual perceptions between homeland and diaspora cultures. To demonstrate the fruitfulness of translation for probing homeland-diaspora affinities and tensions, the article draws on the sociological notion of boundary work, and of...

The recent boost in English translations of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935), the undisputed father of religious Zionism, may be considered a revealing juncture between Israeli and American Modern Orthodox Jewish communities. Upon establishing the features of theological translation in this homeland-diaspora framework, my paper offers a discuss...

American and Israeli Jews have historically clashed over the contours of Jewish identity, and their experience of modern Jewish life has been radically different. As Philip Roth put it, they are the “heirs jointly of a drastically bifurcated legacy.” But what happens when the encounter between American and Israeli Jewishness takes place in literary...

This paper suggests that images and stances associated with the diaspora in the homeland culture offer a unique prism through which internal tensions in homeland collective identity may be dissected and understood. We believe it is worthwhile to broaden the spectrum of inquiry of recent research on quantifiable diaspora economic and political invol...

The translation and mediation of literature can play an important role in the ideologically charged transfer of ideas between cultures. This paper approaches the English translation of Hebrew literature as a subtle form of cultural appropriation, whereby agents such as literary critics, scholars, editors, and translators mediated Israeli notions an...

This paper analyzes the ideological ambivalence inherent in the critical reception of Jewish American literature in Israel from the late 1950s through the 1980s. On the one hand, there was a tendency in Israeli literary discourse to particularize and "Judaize" universal aspects of works by Jewish American authors and to take pride in their literary...

The last years have seen a rise in the study of translation as an ideologically-implicated activity within the context of power relations, as well as in translation research from a sociologically-oriented frame of reference. In this article, I will point to a methodological consideration which draws from both of these perspectives, and could be use...

In the past two decades, the field of translation studies has increasingly focused on the role of ideology in literary translation and cross-cultural transfer. This paper presents findings from the close textual comparison of original works of Hebrew literature and their English translations published in the United States during the 1970s and 1980s...

In this study of Hebrew literature written in America, Michael Weingrad outlines and discusses the major ideological, thematic, and stylistic trends underlying this previously scarcely known body of literature. His book serves as a lucid and engaging introduction to a group of immigrant Jewish writers, most active during the first decades of the tw...