Rumanian

 

If This is a Man / Mai este acesta un om was translated into Rumanian by the Italianist Doina Condrea Derer and published by the state publisher Univers in1974. At present, only two books of Levi’s are available in Rumanian - the 2004 re-edition of Mai este acesta un om and The Truce / Armistiţiul, also translated by Derer and published by Polirom the same year. Derer is the most active promoter of Levi works in Rumania. She collaborated regularly with Levi while she was translating If This is a Man. Their correspondence began in1971 when, as Derer tells it, "a teacher from Turin, a relative of Primo Levi’s, wrote me in Bucharest to suggest that I translate the book that had already gone around the all the continents." She got in touch with Levi, who asked her, as was his practice, to send him a copy of the translation along with an Italian-Rumanian dictionary and a grammar. She says that, even though she had sent him what he wanted, he was having a hard time of it. He then wrote her that, nevertheless, he should have had a dictionary written by her in order to check the translation. After The Drowned and the Saved was published in 1986, Derer translated a few passages for the journal, Secolul XX, but the journal decided not to publish them.