Translators face high stakes in translating Yiddish after the Holocaust. Addressing a new audience, English translations tend to be more reverential about the European past, less willing to explore alternative identities and politics. Focusing on some famous works by Isaac Bashevis Singer (and also a story by I.L. Peretz and a poem by Anna Margolin) we consider not what is lost or gained in translation, but rather what is transformed and why.