ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Sholem Aleichem was an ironic humorist, and 'Der gliklekhster in Kodne'. It explores the intersections of irony and translation. The chapter identifies the ideological loyalties that Soviet and Western translations needed to maintain, as facilitated by the irony of the original. It provides a close reading of three English translations, focusing on the ironic conceptualization of 'human' and 'happiness'. Humour is often talked about as being untranslatable. Rendering the humour of the source language in the target language presents a significant challenge to translating Sholem Aleichem from Yiddish. While Sholem Aleichem's writing in Yiddish was directed at a Jewish readership, the expectation of translation into Russian must have guided the editing of the Yiddish original. In Sholem Aleichem's words, Yiddish is 'a popular, incredibly simple, and, at the same time, an image-filled language'. He often creates verbal twitches for his characters, and his device of a 'story-within-a story' emphasizes ironic repetition.
