Joachim Neugroschel (13 January 1938—23 May 2011) was a

multilingual Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. When the languages are just two, it is usually called bilingualism. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolin ...

literary translator of French, German,

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, a Romance ethnic group related to or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance languag ...

, Russian, and

Yiddish Yiddish, historically Judeo-German, is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated in 9th-century Central Europe, and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with ...

. He was also an

art critic An art critic is a person who is specialized in analyzing, interpreting, and evaluating art. Their written critiques or reviews contribute to art criticism and they are published in newspapers, magazines, books, exhibition brochures, and catalogue ...

editor Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, or cinematic material used by a person or an entity to convey a message or information. The editing process can involve correction, condensation, organization, a ...

, and

publisher Publishing is the activities of making information, literature, music, software, and other content, physical or digital, available to the public for sale or free of charge. Traditionally, the term publishing refers to the creation and distribu ...

Early life and education

Joachim Neugroschel was born in

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

. His father was the Yiddish Galician poet Mendel Naygreshl (Max Neugröschel) (1903–1965). The family emigrated to

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro, or simply Rio, is the capital of the Rio de Janeiro (state), state of Rio de Janeiro. It is the List of cities in Brazil by population, second-most-populous city in Brazil (after São Paulo) and the Largest cities in the America ...

in 1939, and eventually arrived in

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

in 1941. He grew up in New York City and graduated from Bronx Science (1954) and

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

(1958) with a degree in English and

Comparative Literature Comparative literature studies is an academic field dealing with the study of literature and cultural expression across language, linguistic, national, geographic, and discipline, disciplinary boundaries. Comparative literature "performs a role ...

. After graduating from Columbia, he lived in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

and then in

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

. Neugroschel returned to New York six years later and became a literary translator. Although his father was a native Yiddish speaker, Neugroschel did not grow up speaking the language and learned it as an

autodidact Autodidacticism (also autodidactism) or self-education (also self-learning, self-study and self-teaching) is the practice of education without the guidance of schoolmasters (i.e., teachers, professors, institutions). Overview Autodi ...

in the 1970s.

Work

Neugroschel translated more than 200 books by numerous authors, including

Sholem Aleichem Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich (; May 13, 1916), better known under his pen name Sholem Aleichem (Yiddish language, Yiddish and , also spelled in Yiddish orthography#Reform and standardization, Soviet Yiddish, ; Russian language, Russian and ), ...

, Dovid Bergelson,

Chekhov Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (; ; 29 January 1860 – 15 July 1904) was a Russian playwright and short-story writer, widely considered to be one of the greatest writers of all time. His career as a playwright produced four classics, and his b ...

Alexandre Dumas Alexandre Dumas (born Alexandre Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie, 24 July 1802 – 5 December 1870), also known as Alexandre Dumas , was a French novelist and playwright. His works have been translated into many languages and he is one of the mos ...

Hermann Hesse Hermann Karl Hesse (; 2 July 1877 – 9 August 1962) was a Germans, German-Swiss people, Swiss poet and novelist, and the 1946 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His interest in Eastern philosophy, Eastern religious, spiritual, and philosophic ...

, Kafka,

Thomas Mann Paul Thomas Mann ( , ; ; 6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novell ...

, Moliere, Maupassant,

Proust Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust ( ; ; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, literary critic, and essayist who wrote the novel (in French language, French – translated in English as ''Remembrance of Things Pas ...

, Joseph Roth,

Albert Schweitzer Ludwig Philipp Albert Schweitzer (; 14 January 1875 – 4 September 1965) was a German and French polymath from Alsace. He was a theologian, organist, musicologist, writer, humanitarian, philosopher, and physician. As a Lutheran minister, ...

Isaac Bashevis Singer Isaac Bashevis Singer (; 1903 – July 24, 1991) was a Poland, Polish-born Jews, Jewish novelist, short-story writer, memoirist, essayist, and translator in the United States. Some of his works were adapted for the theater. He wrote and publish ...

, and modern writers such as

Ernst Jünger Ernst Jünger (; 29 March 1895 – 17 February 1998) was a German author, highly decorated soldier, philosopher, and entomology, entomologist who became publicly known for his World War I memoir ''Storm of Steel''. The son of a successful busin ...

, Elfriede Jelinek and Tahar Ben Jelloun. His Yiddish translations of '' The Dybbuk'' by S. Ansky and ''God of Vengeance'' by

Sholem Asch Sholem Asch (, ; 1 November 1880 – 10 July 1957), also written Shalom Ash, was a Polish Jews, Polish-Jewish novelist, dramatist, and essayist in the Yiddish language who settled in the United States. Life and work Asch was born Szalom Asz in ...

were produced and reached wide audience. In an interview that touched on his translation process, Neugroschel said, "I never read a book before translating it. No reason to. I do not translate the words literally. Only a bad translator would translate literally." He followed up with, "You don't have to have a sense of the author's work to translate. I read a page and get the style. It is a question of music and rhythm."

Recognition

Neugroschel was the winner of three

PEN PEN may refer to: * (National Ecological Party), former name of the Brazilian political party Patriota (PATRI) * PEN International, a worldwide association of writers ** English PEN, the founding centre of PEN International ** PEN America, located ...

Translation Awards, the 1994 French-American Translation Prize, and the

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...

German Literature German literature () comprises those literature, literary texts written in the German language. This includes literature written in Germany, Austria, the German parts of Switzerland and Belgium, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, South Tyrol in Italy ...

(1998). In 1996 he was also made a Chevalier in the

Ordre des Arts et des Lettres The Order of Arts and Letters () is an order of France established on 2 May 1957 by the Minister of Culture. Its supplementary status to the was confirmed by President Charles de Gaulle in 1963. Its purpose is the recognition of significant ...

. Joachim Neugröschel became also known in Germany through an interview that the writer Hubert Fichte conducted with him in New York in September 1978. However, it was only published in 2006 as part of , a nineteen-volume cycle of narrations by Hubert Fichte as the third volume entitled ''The Second Guilt''.

Death

Neugroschel died in

Brooklyn Brooklyn is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City located at the westernmost end of Long Island in the New York (state), State of New York. Formerly an independent city, the borough is coextensive with Kings County, one of twelv ...

at the age of 73. He is survived by his

legal guardian A legal guardian is a person who has been appointed by a court or otherwise has the legal authority (and the corresponding duty) to make decisions relevant to the personal and property interests of another person who is deemed incompetent, ca ...

and former partner, Aaron Mack Schloff.

Selected translations

Georges Bataille Georges Albert Maurice Victor Bataille (; ; 10 September 1897 – 8 July 1962) was a French philosopher and intellectual working in philosophy, literature, sociology, anthropology, and history of art. His writing, which included essays, novels, ...

, ''Story of the Eye'' (Urizen Books, 1977) *

Elias Canetti Elias Canetti (; 25 July 1905 – 14 August 1994; ; ) was a German-language writer, known as a Literary modernism, modernist novelist, playwright, memoirist, and nonfiction writer. Born in Ruse, Bulgaria, to a Sephardi Jews, Sephardic Jewish fam ...

, ''The Tongue Set Free'' (Seabury Press, 1979) * Gregor von Rezzori, ''Memoirs of an Anti-Semite'' (Viking, 1981) *Elias Canetti, ''The Torch in My Ear'' (Farrar Straus Giroux, 1982) * Manès Sperber, ''God's Water Carriers'' (Holmes & Meier, 1987) * Elfriede Jelinek, ''The Piano Teacher'' (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988) *

, ''Aladdin's Problem'' (Marsilio Publishers, 1992) *

, ''Eumeswil'' (Marsilio Publishers, 1993) *

Franz Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a novelist and writer from Prague who was Jewish, Austrian, and Czech and wrote in German. He is widely regarded as a major figure of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of Litera ...

, ''The Metamorphosis and Other Stories'' (Scribner, 1993) * Tahar Ben Jelloun, ''With Downcast Eyes'' (Little, Brown and Company, 1993) * Joseph Roth, ''The Radetzky March'' (Overlook Press, 1995) *

, ''Death in Venice and Other Tales'' (Viking, 1998) *

, ''Siddhartha: An Indian Tale'' (Penguin, 1999) *''The Dybbuk and the Yiddish Imagination: A Haunted Reader'' d. and trans.(Syracuse University Press, 2000) * Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, ''Venus in Furs'' (Penguin, 2000) *

Marcel Proust Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust ( ; ; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, literary critic, and essayist who wrote the novel (in French – translated in English as ''Remembrance of Things Past'' and more r ...

, ''The Complete Short Stories of Marcel Proust'' (Cooper Square Press, 2001) * Guy de Maupassant, ''The Necklace and Other Tales'' (Modern Library, 2003) *

, ''The Man in the Iron Mask'' (Penguin, 2003) *''No Star Too Beautiful: Yiddish Stories from 1382 to the Present'' d. and trans.(W.W. Norton, 2002) * Dovid Bergelson, ''The Shadows of Berlin: The Berlin Stories of Dovid Bergelson'' (City Lights Books, 2005) *

Marquis de Sade Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade ( ; ; 2 June 1740 – 2 December 1814) was a French writer, libertine, political activist and nobleman best known for his libertine novels and imprisonment for sex crimes, blasphemy and pornography ...

, ''Philosophy in the Boudoir; or, The Immoral Mentors'' (Penguin, 2006) *''The Golem: A New Translation of the Classic Play and Selected Short Stories'' d. and trans.(W.W. Norton, 2006) * E.T.A. Hoffmann, ''The Nutcracker and the Mouse King'' / Alexandre Dumas, ''The Tale of the Nutcracker'' (Penguin, 2007)

References

External links

* Lawrence A. Rosenwald
Review of No Star Too Beautiful, an anthology of Yiddish literature, ed. Joachim Neugroschel
31 August 2004.
Photograph of Joachim Neugroschel (1987)
by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders,

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), is an art museum located in the Houston Museum District of Houston, Texas. The permanent collection of the museum spans more than 5,000 years of history with nearly 80,000 works from six continents. Follo ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Neugroschel, Joachim French–English translators German–English translators Russian–English translators Yiddish–English translators Translators of Thomas Mann 20th-century American poets Austrian emigrants to the United States Jewish Austrian writers American people of Austrian-Jewish descent Columbia College (New York) alumni 1938 births 2011 deaths Jewish American poets Translators of Franz Kafka American LGBTQ poets American male poets 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American translators Literary translators