Vernacular Voices. Kirsten A. Fudeman

      NOTES ON TRANSLATIONS AND TRANSCRIPTION AND TYPOGRAPHICAL CONVENTIONS

      Translations from French and Hebrew, both medieval and modern, are mine, unless otherwise noted. A general exception is Bible verses, for which I generally chose the NRSV (New Revised Standard Version) or NJPS (Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures. The New JPS Translation According to the Traditional Hebrew Text) translation, duly identified, after comparing them to the Hebrew.

      Different types of texts seemed to require different presentations. For Hebrew texts containing only one or two isolated French glosses, I chose to present the Hebrew text along with an English translation, inserting the French word or words in the translation between square brackets. For texts containing significant portions in both Hebrew and French, I present the Hebrew-letter transcription, a transliteration of the Hebrew integrated with romanization of the Old French, and finally an English translation. Where a Hebrew text is readily available, I present only the English translation. Particularly in block quotes, I use small capitals to identify transliterations and translations of Hebrew portions and differentiate them from romanization and translations of French. In Hebrew texts, [!] indicates sic, and a rafe (horizontal line above a letter) does double duty for rafe and a scribal mark resembling an inverted circumflex. Square brackets enclose editorial emendations or explanations, and parentheses letters or words to be subtracted.

      Strict transliteration, when provided, has been carried out according to the table of equivalences reproduced here. Although two transliteration symbols are used twice (s for samekh and sin, t for tet and taw), medieval Jews’ general avoidance of samekh and taw for writing French words leads to a one-to-one correspondence of transliteration symbols and Hebrew letters in the strict transliteration of French. Final and non-final forms of Hebrew letters are not differentiated in strict transliteration because their distribution is regular.