[lg policy] Making Old New York Talk in Dutch

Sun Dec 27 16:36:19 UTC 2009

His Specialty? Making Old New York Talk in Dutch
 Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times

Published: December 26, 2009

ALBANY — Henry Hudson bobblehead? Check. Some of the New Netherland
records were singed in a fire at the New York State Library in 1911,
and one set was lost completely.
One-legged Peter Stuyvesant statuette? Yes. A mirror emblazoned with
the logo of New Amsterdam beer? Absolutely. These are office
knickknacks that only a true connoisseur of Dutch Americana could
love. And there surely is no one who loves Dutch Americana more than
Charles T. Gehring.  How else to describe a man who has spent the past
35 years painstakingly translating 17th-century records that provide
groundbreaking insight and renewed appreciation for New Netherland,
the colony whose embrace of tolerance and passion for commerce sowed
the seeds for New York’s ascendance as one of the world’s great
cities.

Toiling from a cramped office in the New York State Library here, Mr.
Gehring, as much as anyone, has shed light on New York’s
long-neglected Dutch roots, which have been celebrated this year, the
400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s exploration of the river that
bears his name. Mr. Gehring, by the way, only has about 4,800 pages
left of the 12,000 pages of Dutch-era letters, deeds, court rulings,
journal entries and other items that have been housed at the State
Library for decades. They paint a rich picture of daily life in the
colony, which the Dutch surrendered for good in the 1670s.

“Most historians don’t think much of the Dutch; they minimalize the
Dutch influence and try to get out of that period as quickly as
possible to get into English stuff,” Mr. Gehring said, explaining why
he has spent half of his 70 years mining Dutch colonial history. “What
you find out is how deeply the Dutch cast roots here and how much of
their culture they transmitted to this country.”
Mr. Gehring, whose official title is director of the New Netherland
Project, looks as if he has not trimmed his sideburns since he started
translating the records in 1974, and he seems like the kind of
mirthful man who would make a good Sinterklaas — the Dutch forefather
of Santa Claus.

Mr. Gehring’s translations served as raw material for Russell Shorto’s
critically acclaimed 2005 book about Manhattan, “The Island at the
Center of the World.” The Netherlands of the 17th century, Mr. Shorto
said in an interview, was “the melting pot of Europe.”“It was a place
that people fled to in the great age of religious warfare; it was a
refuge,” he added. “At the same time, they were known for free trade;
they developed a stock market — and those things, free trade and
tolerance, are key ingredients of New York City.” Mr. Gehring’s
translation work, Mr. Shorto writes in his book, “changes the picture
of American beginnings.” Mr. Gehring, who was born in Fort Plain,
N.Y., about 55 miles northwest of Albany, did his doctoral work in
German linguistics at the Indiana University, where he specialized in
Netherlandic studies. He came to Albany in the late 1960s to teach
German at the State University of New York at Albany, but his real
interest was Dutch history.

Mr. Gehring’s work is the most ambitious translation project in nearly
two centuries. In 1974, shortly after Nelson A. Rockefeller became
vice president and Malcolm Wilson replaced him as governor, a series
of phone calls helped make it possible. It started with an idea at the
Holland Society, a group dedicated to preserving the history of New
York’s Dutch history. “This guy in the Holland Society knew
Rockefeller, and so he called Rockefeller and said, ‘Could you see if
Malcolm Wilson could put money in the budget to start the translations
up again?’ ” Mr. Gehring recalled. The governor, he said, “put $20,000
in his discretionary budget — his slush fund that they had — and in
the early ’70s that was a decent amount of money.”

And Mr. Gehring found himself uniquely qualified for the State Library
job that came open as a result. As he put it, “I was the only one
around who could read 17th-century Dutch.” Although Mr. Gehring is a
state employee, the translation project has survived largely on grants
from the National Endowment for the Humanities and donations. This
year, however, the Dutch government decided to invest 200,000 euros —
nearly $290,000 at current exchange rates — to help finance the
project for the next three years. The documents have held up through
what Mr. Gehring called “a harrowing history,” including a 1911 fire
in the State Library that singed many of the pages. The first set,
records from 1638 to 1642, was lost completely.

“The translator at that time, Van Laer, has them out on his desk,” Mr.
Gehring said, referring to the archivist and librarian A.F. Van Laer.
“He’d just finished a new translation, and he’s checking his
translation against the original, so his translation burns up and the
originals burn up, but we still have an older translation to go by.”
In the mid-1980s, Mr. Gehring was joined in his work by Janny Venema,
a Dutch-born translator and writer who, in Mr. Gehring’s estimate, has
helped him translate about 7,200 pages. The project has brought to
life the characters of New Netherland and its capital, New Amsterdam —
which became New York City. Some of those characters are well known,
like Peter Stuyvesant, the domineering director general of New
Netherland.

Mr. Gehring’s translation of the journal of Harmen Meyndertsz van den
Bogaert, a barber-surgeon and a likely ancestor of Humphrey Bogart,
was turned into the graphic novel “Journey Into Mohawk Country,” by
the artist George O’Connor. The journal chronicles van den Bogaert’s
journey through the Mohawk Valley to Oneida, a pathbreaking trip in
the winter of 1634. Years later, van den Bogaert was made commander of
Fort Orange, site of present-day Albany, but fled back into Indian
country after his fellow colonists discovered he was gay. Van den
Bogaert was pursued by the Dutch, captured and brought back, but he
escaped when a sheet of floating ice damaged the fort. He drowned in
the Hudson before he got very far.

These days, Mr. Gehring is translating records from the period of the
Flushing Remonstrance, a 1657 document that helped lay the groundwork
for religious freedom in America. This chapter begins when a ship
filled with Quakers, headed for Rhode Island, ended up in Manhattan
instead. “They started quaking in the streets,” Mr. Gehring explained.
“Stuyvesant had them packed up and sent off right away.” When
Stuyvesant continued the crackdown on the Quakers, 30 people living in
what is now Flushing, Queens, wrote a formal letter of objection. The
Dutch West India Company, which operated the colony, ordered
Stuyvesant to end the persecution.

Some figures in history present particular challenges to a translator,
like Johannes Dijckman, a commander at Fort Orange whose scrawled
script is difficult to decipher because, well, “he was a drunkard.”
After so many years, Stuyvesant, Dijckman and many other figures have
become “not necessarily old friends,” Mr. Gehring said, “but they’re
acquaintances,” and he has no plans to say goodbye. “People keep
asking me when I’m going to retire, or they assume I have retired,” he
said. “Eventually I’ll fade out like the Cheshire cat, with nothing
left but my smile.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/27/nyregion/27dutch.html?_r=1&hp

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