Which Schwartz interpretation is acurate ?

[Dr. John Watson]

Schwartz's statement appears in the October 1, 1888, issue of The Star and although his name is not mentioned in the article, it is abundantly clear Schwartz is the witness interviewed. The story reports that important information concerning Stride's murder had been presented to police at the Leman Street station by "a well-dressed Hungarian . . . who could not speak a word of English but came to the station accompanied by a friend who acted as interpreter." Police would not divulge the witness' name or address, but the reporter "ran him to earth in Backchurch Lane." The writer notes that "his Hungarian was quite as imperfect as the foreigner's English, but an interpreter was at hand and the man's story was retold just as he had given it to police."

In the Star's version of Schwartz's account, after describing the attack on Stride, Schwartz tells of a second man who exited a public house, shouted out "some kind of warning" to the man attacking Stride and then "rushed forward as if to attack the intruder (witness)." Note what follows next: "The Hungarian states positively that he saw a knife in the second man's hand, but he waited to see no more." The writer's use of the word "positively" is significant, I think. It suggests that the reporter, recognizing the implications of a man with a knife near the scene of Stride's murder, questioned Schwartz closely about what the second man was holding in his hand, to insure that he understood exactly what the witness/interpreter was saying.

This doesn't necessarily end the pipe vs. knife debate. First, it is apparent that neither police or press made use of a professional interpreter, instead relying on whoever was at hand. Second, since we have only a summary of Schwartz's statement to police, we can't tell how closely he was questioned concerning the object the second man was holding. Using subjective analysis, however, it becomes apparent is that Schwartz thought it important enough to mention in both statements. For police, holding a pipe in his hand might be of value in locating the second man ("look for a pipe smoker"), but would Schwartz have recognized the importance of that? On the other hand, facing a man with a knife in his hand would certainly register fairly high on the scale of importance, I would think. To put it another way, would Schwartz have been as frightened of a man chasing him with a freshly-lit pipe in his hand, or a knife? Logic dictates the answer.

Logical John.

[RivkahChaya]

Yiddish in and of itself is a problem because it's not a complete language as we think of it.

Not to mention that, because it's the language of a people, but not a nation, there is no standard version, and then regional variations. If the translator was not also Hungarian, then the word Schwartz used for knife/pipe may have been unfamiliar to the translator, if he was Polish, or Russian.

The word I use for a kitchen knife is "masir," but the word for a kosher butcher's knife is "chalaf." Neither of those sound vaguely like the word "tobacco pipe," although "masir" could, I suppose, sound slightly like a pipe that one might use as a blunt instrument.

I am not a true native speaker, though.

[Errata]

Hello Rivkah. Thanks.

I tend to think it was Yiddish myself. How many Hungarian speakers worked for "The Star"?

Cheers.
LC

Yiddish in and of itself is a problem because it's not a complete language as we think of it. There are any number of words that simply don't translate easily into English, or don't translate at all. Or vice versa. Yiddish is closer to jargon than it is to a language like French, or Russian, etc. It's specialized. And it's a lot of information packed into single words.

For example, the word schlep. It doesn't have a word to word translation. If I have to schlep something to my dads house, it means I have an journey I don't want to take with an annoying burden and the whole thing is a pain in the ass. That's a lot of information in one word. If a translator says I have to take something to my dad's house, that's not the same thing. And if there's a body at my dad's house, the investigators really want to know I used the word schlep, because there's an attitude to that word that may be pertinent. I don't use that word unless I'm annoyed. Cops might want to know that. A simple translation doesn't give them any information about my state of mind, and because it seems like a simple enough statement, it likely wouldn't occur to them to ask about my state of mind about doing such a simple thing.

My cousin speaks only Yiddish in the home. Which is a drama in and of itself, but that's neither her nor there. But every fifth word or so is either straight English or straight German. I suppose technically they could be considered part of the Yiddish language, but really it's just filling in holes. And a lot because it's based on Hebrew, which was solely a liturgical language until about 100 years ago. The Hebrew word for blue jeans was "blue jeans" until about ten years ago. Hebrew words have to be made up all the time because the language had no new additions for about 2000 years.

So how accurate a translation of Yiddish is depends on the translator. First of all, it depends on his translation process. My sister is a native English speaker, who learned Spanish and then Italian. She translate Italian into Spanish and then the Spanish into English. That translation process can distort meaning quite a lot. I mean, she knows what she means, but she has a tough time explaining something in Italian to others. It also depends on which language the translator learned first. Also how many times the translator has heard the story. And whether or not the translator has some understanding of what the cops were looking for. All of these things can skew a translation.

I would bet the nouns and verbs are correct, but I think the adjectives might be a little off. And I don't think any subtext made it through the translation process, which is important.

[lynn cates]

Yiddish

Hello Rivkah. Thanks.

I tend to think it was Yiddish myself. How many Hungarian speakers worked for "The Star"?

Cheers.
LC

[RivkahChaya]

Hello Rivkah.

"Do we know for certain he was speaking Hungarian? I assumed he would be speaking Yiddish."

This is much debated. Jury still out.

Cheers.
LC

It's not impossible for a Jew from Hungary to speak Hungarian (Magyar, that is-- the dominant language, and what most people think of as "Hungarian"), but it's virtually impossible that he didn't speak Yiddish. It would require some kind of fairy tale circumstances, like having been raised in a Christian orphanage, and only discovering as an adult that he was Jewish, or his father being the atheist personal physician of some highly placed official who kept him away from Yiddishkeit, for him not to speak Yiddish.

It's also possible there was an elite class of assimilated Jews in Budapest-- I'm not an expert, as I don't have any family from Hungary-- but it's unlikely those Jews would immigrate to England to live in London's East End. If he fit into the Jewish community in the East End, he surely spoke Yiddish.

I think it's pretty likely that he gave the interview in Yiddish, dagger/pipe aside. You can't work back from a word similarity to say that well, then it must have been Hungarian. Everything else favors Yiddish. One of the interpreters blundered, or one of the transcribers did.

Suppose Schwartz said "The glint of a knife" under some kind of light, and the interpreter couldn't imagine what the heck that was, so he changed it to the only kind of glint of light he could think of that made sense?