Translation Bureau Research Articles

The African Human Rights Perspectives Through the Lense of Oral Narratives

Human rights existed in African tradition for societal order and for community responsibility of success and failures. People enjoyed freedom and preserved freedom according to community beliefs and customs. Advocacy was expressed through singing, drama, storytelling and assignment of roles based on age gender and ability. This paper unfolds human rights advocacy oral narratives. Hausa dated as far as BC 14th or 15th Century Arabic writing with the first poets Ibn al- Sabbagh and Muhammadual- Barnawi, other writers of the time were Abdullahi Sikka and Shekh Jibril ibn Umar. The first novels written in Hausa were the result of a competition launched in 1933 by the Translation Bureau in northern Nigeria. One year later the bureau published Muhammadu Bello’s Gandoki, in which its hero, Gandoki, struggles against the British colonial regime. Bello does in Gandoki what many writers were doing in other parts of Africa during this period: he experiments with form and content. His novel blends the Hausa oral tradition and the novel, resulting in a story patterned on the heroic cycle; it also introduces a strong thread of Islamic history. Didactic elements, however, were awkwardly interposed and severely dilute Gandoki’s aesthetic content (as often happened in other similarly experimental African novels). But Bello’s efforts would eventually give rise to a more sophisticated tradition of novel writing in Hausa. His experimentation found its most successful expression in Amos Tutola’s English-language novel The Palm-Wine Drunkard (1952). The Oral narratives understudy Include: Falsehood is More Profitable than Truth (translated from Hausa) One cannot Help an Unlucky Man (translated from Hausa) Wacici and her Friends (translated from Kikuyu). The selected oral narratives experiences displayed injustice of belief in telling lies and trickery, jealousy against the natural beauty and the bad lack aspect due to ignorance and inability to make right judgment for personal benefit. The study was aimed at unfolding antisocial behaviour that existed in in Africa as portrayed in the selected oral narratives. The expression of reaction and action taken to bring social order were represented in the Hausa selected narratives. The study used qualitative method and textual analysis to arrive at the injustice and measures used to condemn injustice as a means to preserve social order

Яруу найрагч Б.Лхагвасүрэнгийн “Сонгомол шүлгийн түүвэр”-ийг хятад хэлнээ орчуулсан орчуулгын зарим онцлог

Khasan, a translator of the Chinese National Language Translation Bureau, selected 100 poems from Mongolian poet B. Lkhagwasüren’s collected works in Uyangyn Toirog [Lyric Circle] and Gashuun Öws [Bitter Herbs], and translated them into Chinese, publishing them in 2020 as Songomol shülgiin tüüwer [A Collection of Selected Poems by B. Lkhagwasüren]. In this article, first we examine the criteria the translator followed in selecting poems to be included. Then, based on an analysis of several examples, we examine how the translator translated the figurative usage of metaphor in the poems in selecting and translating the clear imagery of Mongol life and culture in B. Lkhagwasüren’s poems into Chinese. Finally, we reach the conclusion that Khasan has accurately and skillfully rendered metaphoric imagery relating to Mongol life and cultural characteristics in B. Lkhagwasüren’s poems.

Problems and Countermeasure Analysis of Sci-Tech Translation Course for the Master of Translation and Interpreting in Chinese Inland Universities

The education program for the Master of Translation and Interpreting has drawn much attention in recent years in China due to the increasing demand for translators and interpreters with the rapid development of global trade. The program has cultivated many talents, but problems that occurred also deserve attention. This paper explores the the common issues in the “Science and Technology Translation” course for the Master of Translation and Interpreting, including the lack of actual practice from the translation market, the shortage of professional knowledge for both teachers and students in many special fields, and the insufficiency of up-to-date materials in Chinese universities, especially those inland ones. Based on some Chinese scholars’ research and the mode of the Simulated Translation Bureau of some European universities, the study aims at proposing a countermeasure of the Simulated Translation Project from several aspects such as its particular purposes, features, application procedures, and advantages and disadvantages. This study is qualitative and the observation results collected are based on the performance of different Groups in the past three years from 2020 to 2022. After the practice in three spring semesters, the study concluded that the countermeasure is not only effective in solving the problems, improve students’ language service consciousness and translation competence, but also valuable in guiding students to choose suitable projects materials to construct an interdiscipliary vision, guarantee the ideological and political education function of the course for the contribution to the communication between China and other countries.

PROBLEMS OF TRANSLATION OF TERMINOLOGICAL COMBINATIONS (BASED ON THE MATERIALS OF KAZAKH TV JOURNALISM)

The purpose of the article is to identify ways of creating the most frequently used terminological combinations in Kazakh television journalism, the reasons for their non-compliance when translating them from Russian, alternative options, etc. At the same time, the analysis of linguistic problems arising in the process of translating suffixal term elements into Kazakh in the Russian language determines the relevance of the article. The article considers the following issues concerning the equivalents of Russian terminological combinations in the Kazakh language: the equivalent or translation of individual terms; suffix "-н + endings -ый/-ая/-ое", "-ск - suffix + endings -ий/-ая/-ое", "-о-в- suffix + endings - ый/-ая/-ое", "не - prefix + root + suffix -н-+ endings -ый/-ая/-ое", etc. When translating terminological combinations into the Kazakh language with different endings, each of them gets its own individual meaning, and the discrepancy between the terminological combinations used in Kazakh TV journalism with equivalents approved by the Republican Terminological Commission under the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan, registered in the electronic database, is revealed "Termincom.kz", with translations presented in industry terminology dictionaries. In the field of television journalism, when determining the equivalent of terminological combinations, along with generalizing methods such as synthesis, induction, deduction, grouping, systematization, separate methods and techniques such as morphological transformation in translation, lexical and morphological calculus, as well as one of the research approaches of sociolinguistics - the survey method were widely used. In the survey conducted during the research, terms often used in the activities of television specialists were selected, representatives of the national and international media, specialists of the National Translation Bureau, researchers of research institutes engaged in translation activities took part in the survey.

A Design Methodology for a Computer-Supported Collaborative Skills Lab in Technical Translation Teaching

Aim/Purpose: The aim of this study is to adopt more systematically the collaborative learning dimension in the technical translation teaching at Master Degree level. In order to do so, a computer-supported skills lab approach is targeted. This approach is aimed at enhancing traditional courses on Computer-Assisted Translation (CAT) so that student competences and soft skills are enhanced. Background: In traditional CAT courses, laboratory sessions complement theoretical lessons, thus providing students mainly with tool-oriented operational knowledge, while nowadays more intertwined competences are required by the labor market. Moreover, this sector lacks skills labs which engage students in collaborative activities mimicking professional workflows, thus not exploiting team-based learning potential effectiveness. Methodology: In this paper, therefore, a design methodology to deploy and operate an enhanced skills lab as a remote Computer-Supported Collaborative Simulated Translation Bureau (CS2TB) is proposed and validated. The proposed methodology is based on a set of intertwined methodological frameworks that address: 1) student competences and educational requirements, 2) collaborative aspects, 3) regulatory policies as well as functional and interactional guidelines for the simulated fieldwork. The overall effectiveness of the proposed methodology has been assessed by using pre-post questionnaires to ascertain student feedback. The improvement in technology skills has been evaluated by collecting and examining student help requests as well as system error logs. Contribution: The CS2TB provides a technology-enhanced simulation-based learning environment whose aim is twofold: first, enriching traditional approaches with a Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) experience and, second, incorporating widely adopted approaches for the translation-teaching domain as the required grounding knowledge. Findings: Results demonstrate the effectiveness of CS2TB in improving students’ competences (specifically in the IT area but also in the technical translation area), students’ willingness to operate in a fieldwork-like context and cooperative learning efficacy. Recommendations for Practitioners: The educational implications of the proposed approach concern the development of a full range of competences and soft skills for students in the technical translation teaching at the higher education level, ranging from language and translation proficiency to the usage of IT platforms as well as personal and interpersonal interactional soft skills. Recommendation for Researchers: This study offers a wide overview of all the aspects entailed by the design, implementation, management, and evaluation of a skills lab for technical translation teaching. Researchers may benefit from the rigorous modelling approach as well as from the adopted assessment techniques. Moreover, the study stresses the pivotal role of a tight collaboration between language/translation teaching and computer engineering. Impact on Society: Higher education institutions that already have courses on computer-assisted translation may benefit from the proposed CS2TB approach, which allows them to design new thematic activities leveraging team-based learning, collaborative learning, and fieldwork-situated simulation. Moreover, the presented broad range of assessment approaches can be used to measure the impact of CS2TB on learning outcomes of the involved students. Future Research: Future research activities will be dedicated to examining the impact of a different set of enabling IT platforms on the collaborative learning perspective, to evaluate alternative scaffolding approaches (e.g., chatbots or augmented reality), and to increase simulation fidelity further, so that even more student competences can be fostered.

Ситуативно-когнитивный подход в переводоведении: истоки и эвристический потенциал

The article analyzes the explanatory possibilities of the situated cognition approach to translation study on the basis of the theoretical apparatus developed in the Viennese translation school of Professor H. Risku. The relevance of the study is determined by the appeal to the analysis of the specialized translation process in the authentic context of the functioning of the main subject in the modern translation market, i.e. a translation bureau. Incorporating the research techniques from the early stages of cognitive science development (theory of information processing based on symbol manipulation and neural networks analysis within the framework of connectionism), the approach under consideration is based on the modern concept of extended situated embodied cognition, which, as applied to translation studies, provides new arguments in favor of transition from interpretation of the interaction "human – text" to the study of multimedia communication of a subjects group in the translation networks' composition, which have arisen as a result of outsourcing processes in the translation industry. The features of cooperative interaction between a team of translators and experts, as well as artifacts in the process of translation text generation using information technologies, are demonstrated. The practical application of the situated cognition approach to the analysis of the participants' activities in translation cooperative networks (customer company, technical editor, translation bureau, external translation bureau, translator) is especially relevant in the context of glocalization in the emerging Russian translation market.

LEXICAL INNOVATIONS CREATED BY TRANSLATION: SOME ISSUES OF THEIR RECOGNITION AND NORMALIZATION

One of the key theses of the programmatic article of the Leader of the Nation – N. Nazarbayev “Looking into the future: modernization of public consciousness” is “creating conditions for the full education of students in history, political science, sociology, philosophy, psychology, cultural studies, philology”, the purpose of which is to train able to conceptually analyze the achievements of world science and adapted to global competition in the field of knowledge. In this regard, a large-scale work has begun on the implementation of the project “New humanitarian knowledge. 100 new textbooks”. The “National Translation Bureau” has been created and in recent years, according to preliminary data, 54 titles have been translated from the world scientific classics in the humanities. New textbooks have been introduced into the learning process and are actively used by students. The rich material created by translation is important for the further development of a number of areas of Kazakh linguistics: firstly, translated texts, their style and language are a scientific and practical source for in-depth consideration of the methodology, methods, theoretical and practical problems of Kazakh linguistic translatology, in - secondly, thanks to the translation of the best examples of world science, the modern Kazakh language is enriched with lexical innovations. Textbooks intended for the secondary education system play an important role in replenishing the vocabulary of the Kazakh language with new words. The article analyzes lexical innovations in translated texts, created within the framework of the project “New humanitarian knowledge. 100 new textbooks”and materials of the didactic base of the secondary educational system. Theoretical and practical recommendations for their recognition and normalization are put forward. The selection of empirical materials was made from translated texts of textbooks for universities and secondary schools on sociology, jurisprudence, history, management, economics, psychology, and biology.

Clinimetric properties of a translated and culturally adapted Norwegian version of the Patient and Observer Scar Assessment Scale for use in clinical practice and research

PurposeTo translate and culturally adapt the Patient and Observer Scar Assessment Scale, POSAS, to Norwegian and explore its test-retest, intra- and inter-tester reliability. MethodsPOSAS was translated into Norwegian following international guidelines in collaboration with an international translation bureau. Twenty-six adults and 24 children were recruited from a burns outpatient clinic. Three observer-categories: doctor, nurse and physiotherapist, assessed the patients’ scars and scored the Observer scale for estimating inter-tester reliability. Photos of the scars were taken and used to score the Observer scale a second time for examining intra-tester reliability. The patients or parents/next of kin rated their scar on the Patient scale at the clinic and after two days at home for examining test-retest reliability. Intraclass correlation (ICC) and Kappa were used for statistical analysis. ResultsA Norwegian version of POSAS (POSAS-NV) was developed. Inter-tester ICC of the Observer parameters varied between 0.203 and 0.728, and for the total sum score, ICC=0.528 (0.280–0.708). Intra-tester ICC of the Observer scale ranged between 0.575 and 0.858. The Patient scale demonstrated high test–retest reliability. ConclusionsIntra-tester reliability of the Observer scale and test–retest reliability of the Patient scale of POSAS-NV were found satisfactory, but not inter-tester reliability of the Observer scale.

Empowering Translators through Entrepreneurship in Simulated Translation Bureaus

This paper reviews entrepreneurial activities that take place within the simulated translation bureaus of member institutions of the INSTB network and establishes a link between entrepreneurism, self-efficacy and perceived competence. Reusing pre-test and post-test data of a student survey, a first attempt is made to design and test a survey instrument for gauging the impact of a simulated translation bureau on perceived entrepreneurial competence and self-efficacy for planning, setting up, and managing a translating organisation in pedagogical translation company simulations. Tentative results suggest a positive effect of participation in translation company simulation modules on students’ entrepreneurial self-efficacy and perceived competence. Because of the anonymity of the data, pre-test and post-test responses could not be paired. As a consequence, the statistical significance of the results could not be confirmed.

Politiche di traduzione e pseudotraduzioni nella Turchia repubblicana. “Memorie del corvo zoppo”: una pseudotraduzione di Pitigrilli/Avni İnsel

This article is an outline of the cultural and literary atmosphere of the 1940s, invoving a consideration of Turkish translation policy in the country after Ataturk’s death focusing on two apparently disconnected topics i.e. cultural planning policies and pseudotranslation. Thus, I will offer a brief overview of the Kemalist reforms, which deeply affected the cultural sphere of the country, such as the founding of the Translation Bureau (1940) considering the importance of the quest for a “Turkish Renaissance” behind its activities. Then, my analysis will turn to the practice of pseudotranslation, focusing on a specific case i.e. Topal Karganin Hatiralari (Memories of the Crippled Crow) which was published and presented as the Italian writer Pitigrilli’s last work in 1946.

THE USE OF ACTIVE AND INTERACTIVE TEACHING METHODS IN THE STUDY OF SCIENTIFIC STYLE OF THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE BY STUDENTS OF TECHNICAL SPECIALTIES AND TRAINING AREAS

The article is devoted to the problems of teaching humanitarian disciplines to students studying in technical specialties and training areas. It gives recommendations on how to use the active and interactive teaching methods to make the process of mastering the scientific style of the Russian language more effective, as well as relevant and interesting for students. The value of this work is due to a number of factors. First, the use of active forms of training in classes in subjects with conservative content presents a certain difficulty. Secondly, students of technical specialties and training areas, mastering the scientific style in the first year, do not always realize the value of the acquired knowledge in solving compulsory teaching problems and their conjugation with self-development and professional growth. Third, the severity of book styles is psychologically alien to them. The purpose of this work is to overcome the typical for the traditional teaching system of stylistics of reproductive forms of education, in which the student is assigned a passive role.According to the author of the article, the study of the designated section of the discipline «The Russian Language and the Culture of Speech» should be based on such principles as practical orientation of teaching, encouragement of equal interaction between all participants in the educational process, and increased emotional involvement of students.The paper considers the possibilities of using the following methods of active and interactive learning: solving problem problems, mutual learning, discussion, competition, role play, training; specific examples of their use are given. These methods are presented in accordance with the stages of mastering the educational material. So, the expediency of addressing to methods of problem training during initial acquaintance with the material is grounded. At the second stage – the stage of comprehension – it is important to introduce the elements of the game. At the stage of consolidation of the received knowledge, the methods of mutual learning are effective, the organization of competition in the performance of standard exercises, games. The article reflects the scenarios of games «Translation Bureau» and «Linguistic crocodile», which contribute to replenishment of the vocabulary of students with general scientific and terminological vocabulary and the derivation of this lexical layer from the passive vocabulary. At the stage of mastering the material for the application of the skills of a full critical analysis of the scientific text, it is recommended to organize role games, discussions, trainings (themes, ideas and scenarios are presented).According to the author of the article, the described approach to the study of this section of stylistics is broader than the traditional one and corresponds to the current demands of the society for literate and promising young scientists.

A comparative study of translation or interpreting as a profession in Russia, China and Spain

Abstract In this article, three different cultural and socio-political systems, those of China, Spain, and Russia, are compared in terms of how translation and interpreting are viewed. The principal aim is to propose a tentative model for conducting a synchronic comparative translation and interpreting research study across several regions. Two types of organization have been studied – embassies/consulates and translation bureaus. First, these types of organization routinely commission, use, and assess translations. Second, such organizations are likely to be found in the majority of countries in today’s world (hence, the number of countries to be compared could be increased). The first type, embassies/consulates, provides an ‘external’ view of translation, that is, the view of consumers of translation. The second type, translation agencies, on the other hand, furnishes examples of the ‘internal’ view of translation producers. First, the official requirements for the submission of documents in foreign languages as described on the sites of embassies and consulates are examined. The research questions include: What are the requirements for translating documents in foreign languages? Whose translations are recognized as legitimate? What are the quality assurance mechanisms for the translations? Then the requirements applicants for a job in a translation agency have to fulfill in the three countries are examined. The analysis focused on how translation is perceived and assessed. What is required from translators/interpreters helps us to gauge the status of translation and its level of professionalization in a particular society, while comparing three different societies allows us to compare the degree of professionalization of translation in different countries.

Is ‘NBA’ Chinese or English?

In recent years, the use of foreign loanwords in Chinese has increased significantly. It has been estimated that there are currently about 3,000 foreign words in Chinese, most of which are related to English (Zhang, 2006). Of these, more than 500 words are frequently used, together with their abbreviations and translations. In response to this situation, the Chinese government established the Inter-ministerial Joint Meeting on Chinese Language Translation and Writing Specifications (IJM-CLTWS) in 2012, consisting of ten state-level ministries and institutions such as the State Language Commission, the Central Compilation & Translation Bureau, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Education. Thus far, the expert committee of the IJM-CLTWS has identified four groups of foreign words and their standard Chinese translations.

An Introduction to the Ambiguity Tolerance: As a Source of Variation in English-Persian Translation

Different individuals provide different translations of different qualities of the same text. This may be due to one’s dominant cognitive style and individuals’ particular personal characteristics (Khoshsima & Hashemi Toroujeni, 2017) in general or ambiguity tolerance in particular. A certain degree of ambiguity tolerance (henceforth AI) has been found to facilitate language learning (Chapelle, 1983; Ehrman, 1999; Ely, 1995). However, this influential factor has been largely overlooked in translation studies. The purpose of this study was to find the relationship between AT and translation quality by identifying the expected positive correlation between the level of AT and the numbers of translation errors. Out of the 56 undergraduates of English-Persian Translation at Chabahar Maritime University (CMU), a sample of 34 top students was selected based on their scores on the reading comprehension which enjoys a special focus in many contexts (Khoshsima & Rezaeian Tiyar, 2014) and structure subtests of the TOEFL. The participants responded to the SLTAS questionnaire for AT developed by Ely (1995). The questionnaire had a high alpha internal consistency reliability of .84 and standardized item alpha of .84. In the next stage of the research, the participants translated a short passage of contemporary English into Persian, which was assessed using the SICAL III scale for TQA developed and used by Canadian Government’s Translation Bureau as its official TQA model (Williams, 1989). Then, to find the relationship between the level of ambiguity tolerance in undergraduates of English-Persian translation at Chabahar Maritime University and their translation quality, analysis of the collected data revealed a significant positive correlation (r=440, p<.05) between the participants’ degree of AT and the numbers of errors in their translations. Controlling for SL proficiency, the correlation was still significantly positive (r=.397, p<.05). Accordingly, it was concluded that the more intolerant of ambiguity a person is, the more errors s/he is likely to make while translating; conversely, the more tolerant of ambiguity a person is, the higher the quality of his/her translation will be. Therefore as expected, analysis of the data revealed a positive correlation throughout the sample between ambiguity intolerance and translation quality.

A Report on International Conference Series in China

This report covers a series of international conferences in 2016, held in Fudan University, Renmin University, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and the Central Compilation and Translation Bureau. The events brought together 13 international scholars from 8 different countries and more than 40 Chinese scholars from 13 Chinese academic institutions. Although a small portion of the 66 papers that were presented at these conferences are discussed here due to space limitation, the report has organized the presentations thematically and created virtual dialogues between the papers to assist the reader to get a sense of the key intellectual debates that this international exchange brought forth.

Nunavut Libraries Online Establish Inuit Language Bibliographic Cataloging Standards: Promoting Indigenous Language Using a Commercial ILS

This article examines shared cataloging practices in Nunavut, Canada, where Inuit form 85% of the general population and three official languages, including Inuit language (Inuktitut/Inuinnaqtun), English and French, are used in government and daily discourse. The partners in the Nunavut Libraries Online consortium, together with the Nunavut Government translation bureau, have developed a common vocabulary for creating bibliographic records in Inuktitut, including syllabic script, and used this to create bibliographic cataloging standards, under the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, Second Edition, for creating multilingual and multiscript MARC-compliant, Integrated Library System-compatible records that accurately reflect the multilingual content of material published in and about Nunavut and Inuit.

Evaluation of Houses Model of Quality Assessment

There are number of methods, approaches and techniques in evaluating translated texts, but none is as systematic as House (1977, 1997, 2004b, 2007, 2009, 2013, 2015) model of translation quality assessment. The present study was carried out to explore House (1997) model of translation quality assessment (TQA). To pursue this purpose, the model was applied to a psychology textbook. The model is based on functional equivalence and is set to give a thorough analysis of the source language, target language and their comparison. Researchers, however, came to realize some shortcomings in the model; there are basically couple of difficulties with the model. First, House (1997, 2015) does not provide any guide to how much translated text should be assessed i.e. what sample size is needed for the model to operate and be reliable. Another even more serious problem is the fact that one cannot spell out exactly to which degree quality of target text is equal to its source? The researchers proposed two main components to be added to the model, one to the beginning and the other to the end of the model. In order to modify this model in terms of sample size and rating scales, researchers decided to adopt Sical system, which stands for the Canadian Government Translation Bureaus Quality Measurement System in order to have a scale for final quality statement. According to Sical measurement system, a passage of 400 words has been randomly chosen from a psychology textbook and tested against the modified model of quality assessment. Researchers found that the translation could be ranked B fully acceptable. The result shows that the modified model is more systematic and accessible.

Kilka słów o kanadyjskim „przemyśle tłumaczeniowym”

Canada is one of the few countries in the world, whose constitution includes a provision relating to two official languages. This results in the fact that – since the Official Languages Act (Le loi sur les langues officielles) came into force in 1969 – simultaneous interpretation for both languages must be provided during all the debates in the federal parliament. The same applies to the translation of all official federal documents. It is worth recalling that translators as professionals were first mentioned in Canada only in 1867, while the organised activities of professional translators began in 1934 with the creation of the Translation Bureau (Bureau de la traduction). As a bilingual country Canada can be proud of a well-thought-over and consistent model of translators’ formation which has been used for many years. In the Canadian context, the role of translators on the market is worth mentioning: they are associated in professional organisations, their activities are widely appreciated and clearly visible, which is reflected in the name of „the translation industry”, used in relation to translation activities in this country. The aim of the present study is to outline the Canadian model of translation and to consider how the Canadian achievements, especially in the field of teaching translation, could be used in Poland.

From Translation House to Think Tank: the changing role of the Chinese Communist Party's Central Compilation and Translation Bureau

The Central Compilation and Translation Bureau (CCTB), a key research organ of the Chinese Communist Party, has received little attention from scholars inside or outside of China. Originally an authoritative translation house for classical Marxist works, in recent years CCTB has gained more prominence as a policy think tank. Among its leaders are well-known advocates for political reforms and democracy. This article examines the institutional evolution of CCTB. It will discuss what factors are involved in how CCTB has evolved, including the role of its leadership and the changing political context in China; and it will examine how CCTB reconciles its seemingly contradictory roles of being a Marxist translation house and a pro-reform think tank.

Meneket Rivkah: A Manual of Wisdom and Piety for Jewish Women by Rivkah bat Meir (review)

Reviewed by: Meneket Rivkah: A Manual of Wisdom and Piety for Jewish Women by Rivkah bat Meir Jerold C. Frakes Meneket Rivkah: A Manual of Wisdom and Piety for Jewish Women by Rivkah bat Meir, by Frauke von Rohden. Translation of Meneket Rivkah by Samuel Spinner. Translation of Introduction and Commentary by Maurice Tszorf. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2009. 360 pp. $45.00. Little is known of Rivke bas Meir Tiktiner, who most probably lived in Prague in the late sixteenth century, probably the daughter of a learned father who was herself better educated than most Ashkenazic girls and women of the period. Two texts are attributed to her, the Meynekes Rivko (1609) and the Simkhes Touro Lid (1650), both published in Prague and both edited in this volume. While the former text (the primary focus of the volume) is by no means the earliest extant text written by a Jewish woman, nor the earliest example of the genre of a musar book (ethico-moral conduct guide) for women, or even the first book by a Jewish woman that demonstrates advanced knowledge of the Jewish textual tradition, it is nonetheless one of the most fascinating and culturally significant Jewish texts of the early seventeenth century, of signal importance for the fields of Jewish, Yiddish, gender, and religious studies. This volume began as a dissertation at the Universität Duisburg and still bears some marks of that genre. While that dissertation was originally written in German about the Middle Yiddish text, this English volume has been [End Page 171] prepared by two translators: Germanist/Yiddishist Samuel Spinner's translation of the Middle Yiddish text forms the essential kernel of the volume and is exemplary, hewing close to the original in style and tone, while remaining insistently idiomatic in English; it is a model of scholarly translation in its clarity, precision, and cultural transparency. The translation of von Rohden's dissertation per se (i.e., introduction and notes), on the other hand, was produced by a non-native speaker of English from a commercial translation bureau (Maurice Tszorf ) and is consistently unidiomatic and frequently ungrammatical, which several times per page quite effectively obscures the sense. In the "review of scholarship" mandated by the dissertation format, von Rohden surveys what little has been published over the centuries about the author, making a strong case for a lack of appropriate scholarly attention to both the author and the genre in which she wrote, unfortunately also exaggerating that case, which leads her to castigate even scholars active during the period when the text was, as she acknowledges, considered lost (p. xiii); likewise she ignores the edition (with apparatus) of a sizable excerpt of Meynekes Rivko and the whole Simkhes Touro Lid in Early Yiddish Texts (Oxford, 2004). The volume includes an introduction (pp. 1–71), the Middle Yiddish text (pp. 211–280) and its English translation (with extensive explanatory notes, pp. 79–204), a bibliography (pp. 287–295), citation notes (here called "scriptural index," although it also includes Talmud, "Medieval Literature" and "Early Modern Literature," pp. 297–302), a Hebrew-alphabet Yiddish subject index (pp. 303–307), a general subject index (pp. 309–315), textual notes (pp. 205–207), two facsimile pages (pp. 72, 208), and a photograph of Rivke bas Meir's gravestone (p. 282). Von Rohden's Middle Yiddish text is relatively accurate: I find only four errors in her transcription of the two facsimile pages included; for some reason, however, she omits all vowel pointing in the text (of which there is much). As the page numbers indicate, readers who expect that the edited text and translation will be on facing pages, with explanatory notes, textual notes, and citation notes distributed on the page beneath the texts, so that the reader has a section of the text and its full apparatus in view at any given opening of the volume, as has long been standard and has recently even become technologically simple and convenient to produce, will be sorely disappointed with this volume, which fragments the whole, separating the translation from the Yiddish text, and printing the explanatory notes beneath and keyed to the translation, although they are most relevant to the...