עברית
Faculty member

Prof. Omri Asscher

Telephone
03-5318227
Email
omri.asscher@biu.ac.il
Office
210
Reception Hours
By appointment
Personal Website
תחומי מחקר
CV

Omri Asscher is an Associate Professor at the Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies in Bar-Ilan University.

His work explores the practical and theoretical implications of machine translation for intercultural communication in our time. He also studies the cultural and ideological roles translation plays in homeland-diaspora frameworks - particularly in Jewish contexts - and, more broadly, the interplay between translation, cultural history, and collective memory. 

Prior to Bar-Ilan, he held postdoc positions at UCLA, Ben-Gurion University, and the University of Haifa. His book, Reading Israel, Reading America: The Politics of Translation between Jews, was published by Stanford University Press (2019). His translations into Hebrew include Samuel Beckett's Murphy and Guy Deutscher's The Unfolding of Language and Through the Language Glass.

CV

 

 

 

 

Research

Omri Asscher is interested in the role literary and theological translations play in homeland-diaspora frameworks (particularly in Jewish historical contexts); in the interplay between translation, historiography, and memory; and in the workings and implications of translation phenomena in our globalized, digital era (particularly how machine translation mediates intercultural communication).

More generally, he is interested in any exploration of the role played by translation in the formation and circulation of ideas in our time.
 

 

 

Publications

Book 

Asscher, Omri (2019). Reading Israel, Reading America: The Politics of Translation between Jews. Stanford University Press.

 

Refereed articles in peer-reviewed journals

  1. Asscher, Omri, and Michal Schuster (2024). “Language, Gender, and Refugee Migration: Tigrinya-speaking Asylum-seekers in Israel”. Israel Studies in Language and Society 18, 51-73.

  2. Asscher, Omri (2023). “The Position of Machine Translation in Translation Studies: A Definitional Approach.” Translation Spaces 12:2. https://doi.org/10.1075/ts.22035.ass

  3. Glikson, Ella, and Omri Asscher (2023). “AI-mediated Apology in a Multilingual Work Context: Implications for Perceived Authenticity and Willingness to Forgive,” Computers in Human Behavior 140, 107592. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2022.107592

  4. Asscher, Omri (2023). “Israeli Journalism in the Face of Moral-Political Critique in Works by Philip Roth and Saul Bellow,” Iyunim 38, 183-208 [in Hebrew]. http://dx.doi.org/10.51854/bguys-12A109

  5. Asscher, Omri (2022). “The Decline in the Religious Zionist Negation of the Diaspora: A Translation Perspective,” Contemporary Jewry. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12397-022-09471-w

  6. Asscher, Omri (2022). “The Explanatory Power of Descriptive Translation Studies in the Machine Translation Era,” Perspectives: Studies in Translation Theory and Practice. https://doi.org/10.1080/0907676X.2022.2136005

  7. Asscher, Omri (2022). “Language Ideology in American Jewish Thought,” Religion 52:3, 384-408. https://doi.org/10.1080/0048721X.2021.1994481

  8. Asscher, Omri and Ella Glikson (2021). "Human Evaluations of Machine Translation in an Ethically Charged Situation". New Media and Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448211018833

  9. Asscher, Omri (2021). “Translation as a Probe into Homeland-Diaspora Relations”. Translation Studies 14:1, 36-50. https://doi.org/10.1080/14781700.2020.1773307

  10. Asscher, Omri (2020). "The American Oz: Notes on Translation and Reception". Journal of Israeli History 38:2, 303-327. https://doi.org/10.1080/13531042.2020.1874674

  11. Asscher, Omri (2020). “Exporting Political Theology to the Diaspora: Translating Rabbi Kook for Modern Orthodox Consumption”. Meta 65:2, 292-311. https://doi.org/10.7202/1075837ar

  12. Asscher, Omri (2020). “The Ben-Gurion-Blaustein ‘Understanding’ as a Historiographical Yardstick”. Israel Studies 25:3, 33-48. https://doi.org/10.2979/israelstudies.25.3.05

  13. Asscher, Omri and Ofer Shiff (2020). “Diasporic Stances, Homeland Prisms: Representing Diaspora in the Homeland as Internal Negotiation of National Identity,” Diaspora Studies 13:1, 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1080/09739572.2019.1685815

  14. Asscher, Omri (2018). “Jewish-American Literature Makes Aliyah? Jewish/non-Jewish Boundary Maintenance, and the Israeli Approach to the Diaspora,” Jewish Social Studies 23:3, 128-159. https://doi.org/10.2979/jewisocistud.23.3.05

  15. Asscher, Omri (2018). “Israel for American Eyes: Literature on the Move, and the Mediated Repertoire of Jewish-American Identity,” AJS Review 42:1, 21-38. https://doi.org/10.1353/ajs.2021.0040

  16. Asscher, Omri (2018). “’Judaism in Translation’: American Jewish Literature and Culture in Israeli Thought,” Israel 25, 109-137. [in Hebrew]

  17. Asscher, Omri (2017). “A Case for an Integrated Approach to the Mediation of National Literature,” Translation and Interpreting Studies 12:1, 24-48. https://doi.org/10.1075/tis.12.1.02ass

  18. Asscher, Omri (2016). “The Ideological Manipulation of Hebrew Literature in English Translation in the 1970s and 1980s,” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 15:3, 384-401. https://doi.org/10.1080/14725886.2016.1151196

  19. Asscher, Omri (2014). “The Integration of Translated Hebrew Literature in America: The Pre-Zionist Phase,” Studies in Israeli and Modern Jewish Society (Iyunim Bitkumat Israel) 24, 94-129. [in Hebrew] https://in.bgu.ac.il/bgi/iyunim/24/Omri-Asscher.pdf

  20. Asscher, Omri (2014). “An Anthology Editor as Israeli Ambassador to the U.S.: Ehud Ben-Ezer and Representing the Arab in Hebrew Literature to the American Reader,” Dappim: Research in Literature 19, 172-186. [in Hebrew] https://www.jstor.org/stable/23986517

  21. Asscher, Omri (2010). “A Model for Hebrew Translation of British Humor: Amplification and Overstatement,” Target: International Journal of Translation Studies 22:2, 237-263. https://doi.org/10.1075/target.22.2.04ass

 

Refereed book chapter

Asscher, Omri (2013). “The Augmentation Model in the Hebrew Translation of British Humor,” in Rina Ben-Shachar and Nitsa Ben-Ari (eds.), Ha-Ivrit Safa Xaya, Volume VI, 43-61. [in Hebrew]

 

Other publications     

Asscher, Omri (forthcoming). “A Translation Hypothesis for the Development of Migrant Communities into Enduring Diasporas.” In Routledge Handbook of Translation and Migration, edited by Brigid Maher, Loredana Polezzi and Rita Wilson. London and New York: Routledge.

Asscher, Omri (2021). "On two inherent ambiguities in Samuel Beckett's Murphy." [in Hebrew] https://www.newlibrary.co.il/page_18548

Asscher, Omri (2013). Review of Michael Weingrad’s “American Hebrew Literature: Writing Jewish National Identity in the United-States”. Studies in American Jewish Literature 32:2, 218-221.

 

Selected translations

Books - translation

Watt by Samuel Beckett (forthcoming).

Murphy by Samuel Beckett, Tel Aviv: The New Library (2020, with my annotation).

Thinking in Tongues by Guy Deutscher, Tel Aviv: Xargol-Am Oved, 2011.

The Unfolding of Language by Guy Deutscher, Tel Aviv: Xargol-Am Oved, 2007.

Game Theory: A Very Short Introduction by Ken Binmore, Tel Aviv: Aliyat Hagag-Yediot Sefarim.

 

Articles and essays - translation

“My Israel Story: An Interim Report on a Winding Journey” by David N. Myers, in Kavim Li-dmutenu, Ben-Gurion Publishing Institute, 2020.

“Getting Up on Cold Mornings” by James Henry Leigh Hunt, in Dehak, 6, February 2016.

“Dissecting the Qumran-Essene Hypothesis,” by Edna Ullmann-Margalit, in Odyssey 4, June 2009.

publications

 

Last Updated Date : 02/07/2024