This is fascinating. However, with regards to some of the major differences between artscrolls ideology/presuppositions particularly with regard to biblical interpretation and the artscroll history series and modern orthodox academics tendencies, do you think the merits outweigh the flaws and these texts are appropriate to be standard amongst MO communities?
I'm probably the wrong guy to ask, considering that I'm a yeshivishe young earth creationist who's spent his entire life within mainstream yeshivishe institutions, and hasn't gone orthoprax from the internet or even become modern (though I'm openminded enough to read Tradition and Hakirah...,) but my sense- and again, this could very well just be projection on my part- is that most MO educators would be happy if their students spent more time with Artscroll and less with netflix. Artscroll is certainly charedi leaning, but it's hardly likely to 'radicalize' anyone who hasn't already flipped out on their own.
It's also important to keep in mind that Artscroll produces a wide range of publications. Some of them are less overtly ideological than others. 99.9% of what you read in an Artscroll gemara doesn't advance any sort of ideology. It's a clinical presentation of back and forth discussion, just a lot more user friendly than soncino. (I haven't used Koren enough to really say much either way, but I've noticed that every time I open one, I start getting distracted by all of the various ornate architectural exhibits, Greek characters explaining what an achsadrah is or the symptoms of kordaykis, and all sorts of assorted curios, which make it extremely visually appealing, but very unwieldy for my taste.)
1000% agree, especially with regards to the Artscroll Talmud. It's also true that for the mainstream MO crowd artscroll can be a valuable resource which educators would gladly encourage. However, when assessing if some of artscrolls works (such as their history series and their nach in particular) are best suited to an MO audience, I think the ideological differences are strong enough to at least encourage consideration of other works or producing new ones better suited for an MO audience.
Artscroll is definitely very well researched and useful in many ways, but I still think the Judaica Press Nach is far superior in many ways. It's very clear that artscroll has a clear agenda as to which commentaries they add, and their refusal to translate shir hashirim literally is a big example of this.
Pace Carmy, the Chronicles translation is punkt a perfect example of how *bad* Artscroll's Bible is. They took a famous statement of chazal - לא ניתנו דברי הימים אלא להדרש - and used it to pack in drasha after drasha, no matter how tenuous or remote. In so doing they sacrificed yet another drasha, of אין מקרא יוצא מידי פשוטו (though doubtless they would cite alternative explanations in justification.)
"in so doing they sacrificed yet another drasha, of אין מקרא יוצא מידי פשוטו"
No idea what this is supposed to mean. Ein mikra isn't a drasha. (I didn't understand your comment at all. But that line was completely incomprehensible.)
The general thrust of my comment was that while RS Carmy said the Divrei Hayamim was a high point of biblical study, in my view it is davka one of the worst in the already-bad Artscroll Tanach series.
(I called אין מקרא יוצא מידי פשוטו a drasha in the sense of "a teaching", I should have said "a rule".)
That's true. But they do translate other texts (e.g. in mishlei) involving 'harlots' and the like. Shir Hashirim is uniquely complex to handle partly because of how chock-full of imagery it is.
Nah. They butchered it. They tried to rectify it in the one volume Tanach with the italicized "lit. translation" [= code for "not really"] but it was a fail.
Artscroll is just no good at the Bible, see comment above. Compare them with JPS 1985, which is outstanding. Every time I look at it I get new הבנה in things I'd never really understood properly before.
" Every time I look at it I get new הבנה in things I'd never really understood properly before."
Would you be so kind to give an example? (I'm assuming you are perfectly capable of using the classical meforshim without an English translation, so the translation must add something to even that)
I dont have my physical Tanach with me here in the office, where I am working, hard. :) But in any event its hard to pinpoint an example in isolation, because they are so numerous. The use of the right word - le mot juste - is everything.
Probably the best place to examine, if you want to see examples of what I mean, are poetical sections of the Torah, or oracles. Such as the ברכת יעקב, the poems of חקת בלק, and others. In some translations these sections are translated woodenly and rigidly. There is no awareness of the difference between narrative and lyrical.
I mentioned elsewhere the use off indentation. I might also add the use of parentheses, or dashes. Just like our own everyday speech, speakers in the Bible often engage in asides and digressions, and sometimes the book itself will make an aside. JPS makes these often-abrupt changes clear by use of such grammatical tools.
So their translation is much more elegant. On the other hand, unlike the classical meforshim, they don't explain where they're coming from (unless the Sefaria version is missing footnotes that the printed version?) This criticism wouldn't apply to these two examples, where their translation is clearly the meaning of the words, and the contrast between אפם and רצונם is obviously angry and pleased rather than angry and willfull. But something like this https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.49.9?ven=english|Tanakh:_The_Holy_Scriptures,_published_by_JPS&lang=bi&with=Commentary&lang2=en they translate לביא as "the king of beasts", which is very nice, but where does that come from? (it seems like they just needed another words for "lion" so used "king of the beasts" because a lion is a king of the beasts.) They are probably taking a lot of liberties to acheive this elegance.
The use of idiom rather than literal is always a balance. But in poetry, where the Hebrew itself is idiomatic and metaphorical (Is Yehuda actually a lion?), the translation must adjust itself as well.
It's not easy, to translate poetry into poetry. You have to be a master of both languages, not merely competent. The great English writers of the 18th and 19th centuries did this, and nobody does English better than the English.
Artscroll's weakness has always been תורה שבכתב. But then again, Artscroll represents the yeshivah world POV, and the yeshivah world itself has never focused on Torah Shebiksav. מנאו בניכם מן הכיון וכו.
One might well say it is impossible to be equally good in both, as they are totally incompatible. Either the verse means X or it doesn't. The only way to do is to create a framework which allows you to completely abandon every single principle you know of from A, the moment you leave it to enter into B. Which has been done. But it doesnt look so good when reduced to a cold, unblinking text. And now you know WHY we find things like נמאו בניכם מן הגיון וכו' - וכו'.
"One might well say it is impossible to be equally good in both, as they are totally incompatible. Either the verse means X or it doesn't. The only way to do is to create a framework which allows you to completely abandon every single principle you know of from A, the moment you leave it to enter into B."
This isn't true at all. In most of their editions of indivduial sifrei tanach, the first few sentences provide pashut pshat. Usually translation with metzudos. Then comes all of the additional material. Similar outline to mishnayos.
Also, the green one volume edition works just fine for >95% of cases.
Translation of the Bible cannot be ordinary English. It must be majestic and soaring, not pedestrian and commonplace. That is why the King James became the standard Bible throughout the world. It is true that it must also be understood by contemporary readers. But it cannot come at the expense of style.
Artscroll English is passable, no more than that. It has no flair or feeling. It does not know when to use the idiom, and when the literal. It also doesn't know how to use formatting, such as marginal indents, to emphasize poetic flights so often found in Tanach. Yes, the one-volume is useful (I keep the small one on my desk and the bigger one, now falling apart, on the shelf) and the marginal side notes are instructive. But the actual translation - ehh.
If you've never done so, start using the JPS translation. Most frum guys have no exposure to it, bc shuls either use Artscroll or Kaplan, or older shuls Hertz/Soncino. But the 1985 JPS was a high water mark. For knowledgeable readers, who understand shades of difference, its the best.
I suspect Artscroll *prefers* that their translation be 'passable, no more than that.' I think they make clear that their aim is to allow people to learn the original text. They aren't looking to be majestic.
You're correct that I've never used JPS. I had to check Amazon to see what it even looked like. The cover was vaguely familiar, but I got Maxwell House Hagadda vibes just looking at it. Looks like the kind of thing which has illustrated images of David Hamelech wearing a loin cloth and sandals...
No swords and sandals. It is just a straight up translation. They also have very informative footnotes on the bottom, for real ת"ח or scholars, which are kept to a minimum. I emphasize the 1985 translation, because the landmark 1917 edition is by now archaic, and in more recent years they became infected with foolishness like "gender inclusivity". The 1985 edition really hit the sweet spot of authenticity (מסורה) and scholarship.
Re Artscroll - Idk. It could be they prefer it to only be passable, or it could also be their translators just don't have the ability. One can be a very good writer, as RN Sherman undoubtedly is, but yet still not have the feel for poetry that, e.g., RJ Sacks did.
Me personally, I just think its an outgrowth of the yeshivah outlook of their founders, who were Telzers. They're yeshivish. Nothing wrong with that! But the Yeshivah world believes תורה שבכתב should essentially be subordinated to תורה שבעל פה, and consequently they don't really know how to handle it. If that is what you meant by their preference - לחיי.
"it could be they prefer it to only be passable, or it could also be their translators just don't have the ability. One can be a very good writer, as RN Sherman undoubtedly is, but yet still not have the feel for poetry that, e.g., RJ Sacks did."
I think that that's true.
But my point really was that R Sack's aim was to produce an English version of various texts. And he was magnificently good at doing so.
By contrast, Artscroll's aim is to allow people to learn from the original source. That's why they go so far as to produce an 'interlinear' word-for-word translation. The beauty of the poetry of the translation is really irrelevant to that goal.
The ArtScroll Introduction to the Talmud is a superb work especially in its inclusion of the Introductions of Rambam to Perush HaMishnah Mishnah Torah and the much neglected but very important Igerres R Sherris Gaon The Siddurim and Machzorim enable the Mispalel to daven properly including all changes for Chagim and Zmanim
Artscroll has been getting more broad-minded [along with the yeshivah community generally, a bigger topic.] Their Yerushalmi, which some volumes of which are by now more than 15 years old, cites Jastrow and the occasionally Maskil. Not much though, mind you.
"Both Soncino and Bomberg were motivated by commercial interests (in Bomberg’s case, that was obvious: he was a Gentile with no apparent interest in converting the Jews to Christianity)."
This is a false dichotomy. In fact, Bomberg was primarily motivated by inherent interest in Jewish texts, in the same way that Jewish publishers (like Artscroll) are. It's also worth noting that (famously and notoriously) many Jewish converts to Christianity worked on Bomberg's publications.
2)
It's worth noting the opposite phenomenon: charedi publications using academic sources. I note many of these here (they often intentionally obscure the names):
"I don’t see why such effort is being put into producing the new Koren Talmud. While it sometimes has points that do not appear in ArtScroll, I don’t know why anyone would prefer it over ArtScroll"
This is an odd assertion. There are lots of reasons to prefer it. Koren (Steinsaltz) is much closer to pshat. And it doesn't have the huge amount of post-Talmudic commentary added on by Artscroll, and that the translation/commentary is filtered through. (Also, tangentially worth nothing that Koren/Steinsaltz is available open access on Sefaria.)
The Koren Talmud is vastly inferior to Artscroll, it is only used by users to virtue signal that they are b'davka NOT using the black hat translation. The yeshivah world has plenty of such foibles, the mizrachi world should man up to their own. [Note, by way of useful contrast, the same is not true of the Koren Siddur. R. Sack's translation is better than R. Scherman's, but A has more features and less ideological clutter than K, so one can legitimately prefer one over the other. The same is not true with their Talmud.]
"The Koren Talmud is vastly inferior to Artscroll, it is only used by users to virtue signal that they are b'davka NOT using the black hat translation."
I'm sure there are some cases like that, just as there likely cases of the opposite (charedi Artscroll users who prefer Steinsaltz, but can't use it in public).
But I personally know lots of people who very much prefer Steinsaltz over Artscroll, for private study, and they have no one to "signal" to. So this is empirically false. The reason the prefer it is the reason I explained in my grandfather comment: Koren (Steinsaltz) is much closer to pshat, without the huge amount of post-Talmudic commentary added on by Artscroll.
And as a general point, there's far less "signalling" of the sort you're referring to in the non-charedi world
I know the Charedi world very well, both in Israel and out, and there is not a single one - not one single one - who uses Steinsaltz. It simply never took off.
Artsctoll's Bavli translation ("elucidation" - another of their foibles, they refuse to acknowledge its a translation) is straight up Rashi. You cannot be more "pshat" based than that. You can argue they overload you with additional information in the footnotes, which is fair criticism. I believe one day they will publish a dumbed-down version, like they did with the mishnayos. But it doesn't detract form its overall superiority, and its not even close.
Koren's problem, among others, is that it focuses too much on the sideshows and on the glitter, rather than on the meat and potatoes in center stage. They focus too much on "realia", with pictures and bios etc, and forget about the actual point of the Gemara. All that stuff is great and important and fun and I love it too, but if you're going to write a translation of Shas, you can't let that become the focus. This failing is endemic to all forms of learnining with academic pretensions, which places such a high premium on textual variants that it loses sight of the actual sugya.
"Artsctoll's Bavli translation ("elucidation" - another of their foibles, they refuse to acknowledge its a translation) is straight up Rashi. You cannot be more "pshat" based than that."
That's exactly what Steinsaltz is as well.
"You can argue they overload you with additional information in the footnotes, which is fair criticism".
Listen to yourself. You agree that Artscroll overloads you with additional info in the footnotes. But when Steinsaltz gives additional info on realia in sidebars, "it becomes the focus".
In fact, again, Steinsaltz is overall far more pshat than Artscroll is. I'm not going to claim that it's perfect, but to claim that Artscroll is "obviously" better is just unreasonable
No one said Steinsaltz "isn't" pshat based. You said he was "much closer" to pshat than Artscroll, and that's not true.
Artscroll overloads you on rishonim and achronim, most of which are directly relevant to how one understands the page in front of you. Koren shows you ostraca, or a map of Cappodecia. Very big difference.
Anyway, my intent was not to evaluate Steinsaltz, much less to smear it, just to state the obvious, that Artscroll is better. There are always outlier views, but the public has spoken. Vox Dei.
Which public? You seem to take it for granted that Schottenstein is more popular than Steinsaltz. While this is obviously true in the ultra Orthodox and adjacent community (i.e. 'shtark' YU-style), I see no indication of that outside that community. In my experience, when someone outside that community is given a choice of what to study from, they very much prefer Steinsaltz over Schottenstein.
As to why Schottenstein is more popular in the ultra Orthodox community, you hit the nail on the head with the signalling aspect: no one in that community would be caught dead with a Steinsaltz.
And of course, worth noting that in the Ultra Orthodox community, there are now even 'frummer' editions available, competing with Schottenstein, with even more meforshim: Mesivta, etc.
This is fascinating. However, with regards to some of the major differences between artscrolls ideology/presuppositions particularly with regard to biblical interpretation and the artscroll history series and modern orthodox academics tendencies, do you think the merits outweigh the flaws and these texts are appropriate to be standard amongst MO communities?
I'm probably the wrong guy to ask, considering that I'm a yeshivishe young earth creationist who's spent his entire life within mainstream yeshivishe institutions, and hasn't gone orthoprax from the internet or even become modern (though I'm openminded enough to read Tradition and Hakirah...,) but my sense- and again, this could very well just be projection on my part- is that most MO educators would be happy if their students spent more time with Artscroll and less with netflix. Artscroll is certainly charedi leaning, but it's hardly likely to 'radicalize' anyone who hasn't already flipped out on their own.
It's also important to keep in mind that Artscroll produces a wide range of publications. Some of them are less overtly ideological than others. 99.9% of what you read in an Artscroll gemara doesn't advance any sort of ideology. It's a clinical presentation of back and forth discussion, just a lot more user friendly than soncino. (I haven't used Koren enough to really say much either way, but I've noticed that every time I open one, I start getting distracted by all of the various ornate architectural exhibits, Greek characters explaining what an achsadrah is or the symptoms of kordaykis, and all sorts of assorted curios, which make it extremely visually appealing, but very unwieldy for my taste.)
1000% agree, especially with regards to the Artscroll Talmud. It's also true that for the mainstream MO crowd artscroll can be a valuable resource which educators would gladly encourage. However, when assessing if some of artscrolls works (such as their history series and their nach in particular) are best suited to an MO audience, I think the ideological differences are strong enough to at least encourage consideration of other works or producing new ones better suited for an MO audience.
Artscroll is definitely very well researched and useful in many ways, but I still think the Judaica Press Nach is far superior in many ways. It's very clear that artscroll has a clear agenda as to which commentaries they add, and their refusal to translate shir hashirim literally is a big example of this.
Something about your comment jogged my memory. This is from R Shalom Carmy:
https://traditiononline.org/a-room-with-a-view-but-a-room-of-our-own/
"In working towards our own derekh ha-Iimmud, there is little profit in
lamenting the manifestations of this phenomenon in popular Orthodox culture. It is more enlightening to examine critically a justly admire:d example
of contemporary Orthodox exegesis. The direct encounter with Tanakh, we
shall discover, can take an interesting analysis based on later authorities,
and endow it with even more significant implications.
R. Moshe Eisemann's thorough, painstaking commentary on Chronicles, that most neglected of Biblical books, is one of the high points of
Orthodox Bible study in America."
Pace Carmy, the Chronicles translation is punkt a perfect example of how *bad* Artscroll's Bible is. They took a famous statement of chazal - לא ניתנו דברי הימים אלא להדרש - and used it to pack in drasha after drasha, no matter how tenuous or remote. In so doing they sacrificed yet another drasha, of אין מקרא יוצא מידי פשוטו (though doubtless they would cite alternative explanations in justification.)
"in so doing they sacrificed yet another drasha, of אין מקרא יוצא מידי פשוטו"
No idea what this is supposed to mean. Ein mikra isn't a drasha. (I didn't understand your comment at all. But that line was completely incomprehensible.)
The general thrust of my comment was that while RS Carmy said the Divrei Hayamim was a high point of biblical study, in my view it is davka one of the worst in the already-bad Artscroll Tanach series.
(I called אין מקרא יוצא מידי פשוטו a drasha in the sense of "a teaching", I should have said "a rule".)
That's true. But they do translate other texts (e.g. in mishlei) involving 'harlots' and the like. Shir Hashirim is uniquely complex to handle partly because of how chock-full of imagery it is.
Nah. They butchered it. They tried to rectify it in the one volume Tanach with the italicized "lit. translation" [= code for "not really"] but it was a fail.
Artscroll is just no good at the Bible, see comment above. Compare them with JPS 1985, which is outstanding. Every time I look at it I get new הבנה in things I'd never really understood properly before.
" Every time I look at it I get new הבנה in things I'd never really understood properly before."
Would you be so kind to give an example? (I'm assuming you are perfectly capable of using the classical meforshim without an English translation, so the translation must add something to even that)
I dont have my physical Tanach with me here in the office, where I am working, hard. :) But in any event its hard to pinpoint an example in isolation, because they are so numerous. The use of the right word - le mot juste - is everything.
Probably the best place to examine, if you want to see examples of what I mean, are poetical sections of the Torah, or oracles. Such as the ברכת יעקב, the poems of חקת בלק, and others. In some translations these sections are translated woodenly and rigidly. There is no awareness of the difference between narrative and lyrical.
I mentioned elsewhere the use off indentation. I might also add the use of parentheses, or dashes. Just like our own everyday speech, speakers in the Bible often engage in asides and digressions, and sometimes the book itself will make an aside. JPS makes these often-abrupt changes clear by use of such grammatical tools.
Its available on Sefaria and I see what you're talking about:
Compare how they translate וברצונם עקרו שור to the Metzudah, the JPS is obviously better.
https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.49.6?ven=english|Tanakh:_The_Holy_Scriptures,_published_by_JPS&lang=bi&with=Commentary&lang2=en
https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.49.6?ven=english|Metsudah_Chumash,_Metsudah_Publications,_2009&lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en
And יִשָּׂשכָ֖ר חֲמֹ֣ר גָּ֑רֶם, the Metzudah sounds ridiculous in comparison
https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.49.14?ven=english|Tanakh:_The_Holy_Scriptures,_published_by_JPS&lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en
https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.49.14?ven=english|Metsudah_Chumash,_Metsudah_Publications,_2009&lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en
So their translation is much more elegant. On the other hand, unlike the classical meforshim, they don't explain where they're coming from (unless the Sefaria version is missing footnotes that the printed version?) This criticism wouldn't apply to these two examples, where their translation is clearly the meaning of the words, and the contrast between אפם and רצונם is obviously angry and pleased rather than angry and willfull. But something like this https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.49.9?ven=english|Tanakh:_The_Holy_Scriptures,_published_by_JPS&lang=bi&with=Commentary&lang2=en they translate לביא as "the king of beasts", which is very nice, but where does that come from? (it seems like they just needed another words for "lion" so used "king of the beasts" because a lion is a king of the beasts.) They are probably taking a lot of liberties to acheive this elegance.
The use of idiom rather than literal is always a balance. But in poetry, where the Hebrew itself is idiomatic and metaphorical (Is Yehuda actually a lion?), the translation must adjust itself as well.
It's not easy, to translate poetry into poetry. You have to be a master of both languages, not merely competent. The great English writers of the 18th and 19th centuries did this, and nobody does English better than the English.
Artscroll's weakness has always been תורה שבכתב. But then again, Artscroll represents the yeshivah world POV, and the yeshivah world itself has never focused on Torah Shebiksav. מנאו בניכם מן הכיון וכו.
One might well say it is impossible to be equally good in both, as they are totally incompatible. Either the verse means X or it doesn't. The only way to do is to create a framework which allows you to completely abandon every single principle you know of from A, the moment you leave it to enter into B. Which has been done. But it doesnt look so good when reduced to a cold, unblinking text. And now you know WHY we find things like נמאו בניכם מן הגיון וכו' - וכו'.
"One might well say it is impossible to be equally good in both, as they are totally incompatible. Either the verse means X or it doesn't. The only way to do is to create a framework which allows you to completely abandon every single principle you know of from A, the moment you leave it to enter into B."
This isn't true at all. In most of their editions of indivduial sifrei tanach, the first few sentences provide pashut pshat. Usually translation with metzudos. Then comes all of the additional material. Similar outline to mishnayos.
Also, the green one volume edition works just fine for >95% of cases.
Translation of the Bible cannot be ordinary English. It must be majestic and soaring, not pedestrian and commonplace. That is why the King James became the standard Bible throughout the world. It is true that it must also be understood by contemporary readers. But it cannot come at the expense of style.
Artscroll English is passable, no more than that. It has no flair or feeling. It does not know when to use the idiom, and when the literal. It also doesn't know how to use formatting, such as marginal indents, to emphasize poetic flights so often found in Tanach. Yes, the one-volume is useful (I keep the small one on my desk and the bigger one, now falling apart, on the shelf) and the marginal side notes are instructive. But the actual translation - ehh.
If you've never done so, start using the JPS translation. Most frum guys have no exposure to it, bc shuls either use Artscroll or Kaplan, or older shuls Hertz/Soncino. But the 1985 JPS was a high water mark. For knowledgeable readers, who understand shades of difference, its the best.
I suspect Artscroll *prefers* that their translation be 'passable, no more than that.' I think they make clear that their aim is to allow people to learn the original text. They aren't looking to be majestic.
You're correct that I've never used JPS. I had to check Amazon to see what it even looked like. The cover was vaguely familiar, but I got Maxwell House Hagadda vibes just looking at it. Looks like the kind of thing which has illustrated images of David Hamelech wearing a loin cloth and sandals...
No swords and sandals. It is just a straight up translation. They also have very informative footnotes on the bottom, for real ת"ח or scholars, which are kept to a minimum. I emphasize the 1985 translation, because the landmark 1917 edition is by now archaic, and in more recent years they became infected with foolishness like "gender inclusivity". The 1985 edition really hit the sweet spot of authenticity (מסורה) and scholarship.
Re Artscroll - Idk. It could be they prefer it to only be passable, or it could also be their translators just don't have the ability. One can be a very good writer, as RN Sherman undoubtedly is, but yet still not have the feel for poetry that, e.g., RJ Sacks did.
Me personally, I just think its an outgrowth of the yeshivah outlook of their founders, who were Telzers. They're yeshivish. Nothing wrong with that! But the Yeshivah world believes תורה שבכתב should essentially be subordinated to תורה שבעל פה, and consequently they don't really know how to handle it. If that is what you meant by their preference - לחיי.
"it could be they prefer it to only be passable, or it could also be their translators just don't have the ability. One can be a very good writer, as RN Sherman undoubtedly is, but yet still not have the feel for poetry that, e.g., RJ Sacks did."
I think that that's true.
But my point really was that R Sack's aim was to produce an English version of various texts. And he was magnificently good at doing so.
By contrast, Artscroll's aim is to allow people to learn from the original source. That's why they go so far as to produce an 'interlinear' word-for-word translation. The beauty of the poetry of the translation is really irrelevant to that goal.
The ArtScroll Introduction to the Talmud is a superb work especially in its inclusion of the Introductions of Rambam to Perush HaMishnah Mishnah Torah and the much neglected but very important Igerres R Sherris Gaon The Siddurim and Machzorim enable the Mispalel to daven properly including all changes for Chagim and Zmanim
Artscroll has been getting more broad-minded [along with the yeshivah community generally, a bigger topic.] Their Yerushalmi, which some volumes of which are by now more than 15 years old, cites Jastrow and the occasionally Maskil. Not much though, mind you.
Interesting sources, shkoyach.
Some notes:
1)
You quote Kellner as stating:
"Both Soncino and Bomberg were motivated by commercial interests (in Bomberg’s case, that was obvious: he was a Gentile with no apparent interest in converting the Jews to Christianity)."
This is a false dichotomy. In fact, Bomberg was primarily motivated by inherent interest in Jewish texts, in the same way that Jewish publishers (like Artscroll) are. It's also worth noting that (famously and notoriously) many Jewish converts to Christianity worked on Bomberg's publications.
2)
It's worth noting the opposite phenomenon: charedi publications using academic sources. I note many of these here (they often intentionally obscure the names):
על היחס בין החרדים למחקר ולמדעי היהדות
https://www.academia.edu/8387067/%D7%A2%D7%9C_%D7%94%D7%99%D7%97%D7%A1_%D7%91%D7%99%D7%9F_%D7%94%D7%97%D7%A8%D7%93%D7%99%D7%9D_%D7%9C%D7%9E%D7%97%D7%A7%D7%A8_%D7%95%D7%9C%D7%9E%D7%93%D7%A2%D7%99_%D7%94%D7%99%D7%94%D7%93%D7%95%D7%AA
3)
You quote Shapiro as stating:
"I don’t see why such effort is being put into producing the new Koren Talmud. While it sometimes has points that do not appear in ArtScroll, I don’t know why anyone would prefer it over ArtScroll"
This is an odd assertion. There are lots of reasons to prefer it. Koren (Steinsaltz) is much closer to pshat. And it doesn't have the huge amount of post-Talmudic commentary added on by Artscroll, and that the translation/commentary is filtered through. (Also, tangentially worth nothing that Koren/Steinsaltz is available open access on Sefaria.)
The Koren Talmud is vastly inferior to Artscroll, it is only used by users to virtue signal that they are b'davka NOT using the black hat translation. The yeshivah world has plenty of such foibles, the mizrachi world should man up to their own. [Note, by way of useful contrast, the same is not true of the Koren Siddur. R. Sack's translation is better than R. Scherman's, but A has more features and less ideological clutter than K, so one can legitimately prefer one over the other. The same is not true with their Talmud.]
"The Koren Talmud is vastly inferior to Artscroll, it is only used by users to virtue signal that they are b'davka NOT using the black hat translation."
I'm sure there are some cases like that, just as there likely cases of the opposite (charedi Artscroll users who prefer Steinsaltz, but can't use it in public).
But I personally know lots of people who very much prefer Steinsaltz over Artscroll, for private study, and they have no one to "signal" to. So this is empirically false. The reason the prefer it is the reason I explained in my grandfather comment: Koren (Steinsaltz) is much closer to pshat, without the huge amount of post-Talmudic commentary added on by Artscroll.
And as a general point, there's far less "signalling" of the sort you're referring to in the non-charedi world
I know the Charedi world very well, both in Israel and out, and there is not a single one - not one single one - who uses Steinsaltz. It simply never took off.
Artsctoll's Bavli translation ("elucidation" - another of their foibles, they refuse to acknowledge its a translation) is straight up Rashi. You cannot be more "pshat" based than that. You can argue they overload you with additional information in the footnotes, which is fair criticism. I believe one day they will publish a dumbed-down version, like they did with the mishnayos. But it doesn't detract form its overall superiority, and its not even close.
Koren's problem, among others, is that it focuses too much on the sideshows and on the glitter, rather than on the meat and potatoes in center stage. They focus too much on "realia", with pictures and bios etc, and forget about the actual point of the Gemara. All that stuff is great and important and fun and I love it too, but if you're going to write a translation of Shas, you can't let that become the focus. This failing is endemic to all forms of learnining with academic pretensions, which places such a high premium on textual variants that it loses sight of the actual sugya.
"Artsctoll's Bavli translation ("elucidation" - another of their foibles, they refuse to acknowledge its a translation) is straight up Rashi. You cannot be more "pshat" based than that."
That's exactly what Steinsaltz is as well.
"You can argue they overload you with additional information in the footnotes, which is fair criticism".
Listen to yourself. You agree that Artscroll overloads you with additional info in the footnotes. But when Steinsaltz gives additional info on realia in sidebars, "it becomes the focus".
In fact, again, Steinsaltz is overall far more pshat than Artscroll is. I'm not going to claim that it's perfect, but to claim that Artscroll is "obviously" better is just unreasonable
No one said Steinsaltz "isn't" pshat based. You said he was "much closer" to pshat than Artscroll, and that's not true.
Artscroll overloads you on rishonim and achronim, most of which are directly relevant to how one understands the page in front of you. Koren shows you ostraca, or a map of Cappodecia. Very big difference.
Anyway, my intent was not to evaluate Steinsaltz, much less to smear it, just to state the obvious, that Artscroll is better. There are always outlier views, but the public has spoken. Vox Dei.
"the public has spoken."
Which public? You seem to take it for granted that Schottenstein is more popular than Steinsaltz. While this is obviously true in the ultra Orthodox and adjacent community (i.e. 'shtark' YU-style), I see no indication of that outside that community. In my experience, when someone outside that community is given a choice of what to study from, they very much prefer Steinsaltz over Schottenstein.
As to why Schottenstein is more popular in the ultra Orthodox community, you hit the nail on the head with the signalling aspect: no one in that community would be caught dead with a Steinsaltz.
And of course, worth noting that in the Ultra Orthodox community, there are now even 'frummer' editions available, competing with Schottenstein, with even more meforshim: Mesivta, etc.
Obviously, Artscroll gemoros are better than Koren, but they do seem to be on a mission of late to destroy their reputation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=GiZVkKPTgE4
I love reading, studying Rabbit Samson Raphael Hirsch’s work. I depend on it. When my books by him were lost to me I bought more. Thank you!