Josh Glahn
on translating Nathan Alterman
Hebrew’s rigid grammatical structure and distinctive syntax lends itself to the creation of poetry. The relative dearth of definite articles and ease in compounding words allows authors to cut extraneous verbiage and contributes to the exact definition of subjects and agents. This exacting and gendered language proves difficult in translation, and ambiguity arises in literal translation. This rendition of “Moon” reformulates unclear syntax to preserve the original meaning while maintaining the line-breaks laid out by Alterman. Furthermore, in the original, each stanza contains a disrupted rhyme scheme, ABCAC, wherein the final syllable of each line is rhymed. Unfortunately, the sing-song quality of the original created by this rhyme scheme was lost in translation.
about the author
Nathan Alterman was born to Jewish parents in Warsaw, Poland, in August 1910. At the age of fifteen, he relocated to Tel Aviv, which was then under British mandate. Despite training to be an agronomist in France, he began a promising career as a poet, journalist, translator, and activist. Alterman became an active participant in the establishment of the State of Israel and the reclamation of Hebrew as its national language. His poetry narrates the Jewish people’s longing for a homeland and the sacrifices necessary to secure a brighter future. His voice was highly influential in the development of contemporary Israel consciousness, and his poem “The Silver Platter” (1967) is still traditionally performed on Israeli Independence Day. Alterman died in 1970.
about the translator
Josh Glahn is a senior at the University of Pennsylvania majoring in English with an individualized concentration in narrative bioethics. Josh grew up with a variety of languages spoken around the house, including Biblical and Modern Hebrew. After high school, Josh spent a year in Israel at Yeshivat Har Etzion where he pursued Talmud and advanced Judaic studies.
