This case study of Québécois scholar Pierre Anctil reveals the unusual intellectual trajectory of a social anthropologist who has translated an assortment of material from Yiddish into French: poetry, memoirs, literary history, and archival material. He has drawn on these sources, previously unavailable to scholars unfamiliar with the language in which they were written, and has made use of them to construct a fresh historical narrative. The article examines his motives for translating, along with the wide-ranging impact of his work in literary and scholarly circles, as well as in the public sphere.
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