Translator’s and Publisher’s Voices in the Contemporary Translations into Judeo-Spanish

Judeo-Spanish is the heritage language of Sephardic Jews and nowadays it is regarded as endangered. In recent years the interest in this language in places where the Sephardic live has been growing and this phenomenon has features of a postvernacular culture. As part of it, the number of literary translations into Judeo-Spanish has increased, which might seem surprising given the fact that the audience of this literature is scant. The aim of this paper is to trace the voices of the translators and the publishers of the contemporary translations into Judeo-Spanish by (1) making an overview of their profiles against the background of the current situation of the language as well as (2) by reconstructing their motivations included in the paratexts of the books. Our analysis reveals that translation becomes their means of honouring their ancestors and/or the victims of the Holocaust, reclaiming and highlighting their complex identity as well as reviving and developing a language to which they are emotionally attached. Although translators are generally perceived as invisible agents, in the case of the postvernacular Judeo-Spanish their agency is much more significant than in other languages. This is due to the fact that the translation itself has a different role in a postvernacular culture as it considerably contributes to the maintenance of the language and its literature.