Obrazy niepowagi: O tłumaczeniu poezji nonsensu na przykładzie wiersza The Akond of Swat Edwarda Leara

Images of Irreverence: Nonsense Poetry in Translation as Exemplified by Edward Lear’s Poem The Akond of Swat The paper deals with selected “rewritings” of Edward Lear’s nonsense poem The Akond of Swat, focusing specifically on the translators’, illustrators’, adapters’ and editors’ attitudes towards the allusive nature of the poem – the reference it makes to the historical figure of the Pashtun religious leader Abdul Ghaffūr, also known as the Akond (or Wali) of Swat or Saidū Bābā, which may be viewed as problematic from a postcolonial viewpoint. Recent translated and illustrated versions of the poem inscribe it with new aesthetic and ideological values. Two Polish translations considered in the paper, produced by Andrzej Nowicki and Stanisław Barańczak respectively, demonstrate changing approaches to the nonsense genre displayed in Polish literary circles (gradual transition from pure to parodistic nonsense). Graphic representations of the poem discussed in the paper testify to the artists’ interpretive powers in redefining the genre of Lear’s poem: rebranding it as an infantile fairy tale on the one hand and a disturbing reflection on tyranny and “the war on terrorism” on the other.

„Najpierw ręka lewa, potem ręka lewa”. Tłumacz norweskich powieści kryminalnych wobec błędów w tekście oryginalnym

“First the left hand, then the left hand.” A Translator of Norwegian Crime Novels Faced with Mistakes in the Source Text Norwegian crime fiction is a genre which has gained enormous popularity among readers around the world over the past several years, and this creates a greater demand for translation of this kind of literature. The purpose of this text is to take a closer look at mistakes in Norwegian source texts a translator has to face when working with this genre. The article gives a short summary of potential causes of these mistakes, attempts to categorize them and describes possible ways of correcting them. The main argument is that the translator’s role and identity change in this process, as the translator often has to perform the tasks of an additional editor or proofreader. The crime novels analyzed here are: Blod i dans [Dance with the Devil] by Gard Sveen, Møt meg i paradis [Meet me in Paradise] by Heine Bakkeid and Alt er mitt [Deep Fjord] by Ruth Lillegraven.

Napisy na ekranach kin II Rzeczypospolitej

Polish Subtitling in the 1930s This article presents the results of an archival study on Polish subtitling of pre-WWII films (until 1939). The main focus will be on the technical aspects of subtitling in Poland in the 1930s, such as the number of lines, number of characters per line, and subtitle display times. We will show the development of Polish film translation in its initial phase. In our article, we will present previously unpublished pictures of early film subtitles, which come from original archival research. Contrary to some previous claims, film translation did not start with the introduction of sound in films – which occurred in Poland in the 1929/30 cinema season. Prior to that, in the silent cinema period, intertitles were a tested way of delivering content to the viewer. And these silent movies’ intertitles were translated. Copies of various foreign films have even been preserved with Polish intertitle translation rather than the original intertitles. Imitating intertitles in silent films, subtitles began to appear in films with sound and dialogue. These were “inserted subtitles” – between scene edits. Only later were subtitles burnt into the image, which began modern film subtitling.

Tłumacz-polemista. Zderzenie paradygmatów w pierwszym polskim wydaniu Orientalizmu Edwarda Saida

Translator as Polemicist: The Clash of Paradigms in the First Polish Edition of Said’s Orientalism The article analyzes the paratextual activity of Witold Kalinowski, the author of the first Polish translation of Edward Said’s Orientalism (1991), paying special attention to his polemical remarks and their relation to the vision of scientific, theoretical discourse. The translator does not strive for invisibility. On the contrary, he uses footnotes and brackets inserted in the main text to comment on different aspects of Said’s work. He signals problems ensuing from the differences between languages and cultures, explains the nature of linguistic difficulties and justifies his own solutions. He also takes on the role of editor and commentator, explaining Said’s allusions, supplementing the discussion with additional information, anticipating readers’ doubts about certain facts that might sound suspicious, and even inserting bracketed additions and clarifications which suggest that the original is unclear or imprecise. Finally, Kalinowski overtly expresses his polemical attitude: he provides certain parts of Said’s discussion with sic! annotation (thus suggesting that the author is wrong) and adds footnotes where he argues with what he sees as the author’s dubious and far-fetched interpretations. The Translator’s Note gives certain insight into the nature of the disagreement between the author and the translator. Explaining why Orientalism is a difficult book to translate, Kalinowski enumerates its troubling features: the combination of different types of discourse and the large number of polemical accents, due to which the book is not fully scientific. The moment of the book’s publication might suggest that such a qualification could have been a result of the then scarce presence of poststructuralist thought and cultural studies in the Polish humanities. However, the analysis of Witold Kalinowski’s articles as well as his doctoral thesis from the 1980s shows both his awareness of the theoretical currents that influenced Orientalism and his critical attitude towards Marxist thought. It is the aversion to the Marxist-inspired interpretations – both Kalinowski’s personal methodological conviction and a widespread attitude in the early post-communist Poland – that seems to be the reason of the clash in the first Polish translation of Said’s work.

Problemy przekładu terminologii z zakresu prawa na podstawie wybranych polskich tłumaczeń sztuk Williama Szekspira

Problems of Translating Legal Language Based on William Shakespeare’s Selected Plays The paper discusses major problems and issues of translating law and legal language into Polish as illustrated by selected examples from William Shakespeare’s three plays: King Lear, The Merchant of Venice and Measure for Measure. The common feature of the plays is the context of the court and the trial. In King Lear, Shakespeare depicts a mock-trial of the main character’s two daughters, Regan and Goneril. The crux of The Merchant of Venice is the proceedings instigated by Shylock against his debtor, Antonio. Measure for Measure features a summary trial of two local rogues, Froth and Pompey, who are brought to justice by the constable Elbow. A comparison of the English original law-embedded scenes with their Polish counterparts shows that Polish translators approached Shakespeare’s legal lexicon differently. They frequently neutralised legal language or offered the equivalents that do not overlap with the source text. The different treatment of legal language by the translators results in various readings and interpretations of the original. The paper also provides a commentary on the basic concepts and institutions of English law in Shakespeare’s analysed plays.

Trudności związane z przekładem elementów kulturospecyficznych w literaturze kryminalnej: przykład Chorwacji

Challenges of translating cultural embeddedness in crime fiction: a picture from Croatia The aim of the present study is to examine the specific features of translating crime fiction genre in Croatia in the 2000s. Frederic Jameson (qtd. in Rolls, Vuaille-Barcan & West-Sooby 2016) foregrounded the notion of crime fiction’s role as the new Realism due to the importance it places on historical and geographical specificity, and the social fabric of our daily lives. In line with this, an assumption could be made that the overvaluation of place in crime fiction may present a particular challenge in translation, not only in terms of translation strategies chosen by translators, but also in terms of preferable marketing strategies pursued by publishers and editors and the correspondence between them. The focus of this study is on the patterns of handling source-culture embeddedness, typical of this genre, in translation. The study examines how diverse agents (editors, translators and language revisers) involved in the production of translations of this genre interact and how their interaction influences the decisions on handling the genre’s embeddedness in a particular, source-culture, reality. As crime fiction novels are a highly popular translated genre in Croatia, crime fiction novels make a substantial portion of the production of the publishing sector. For the purposes of this study we have selected a number of crime fiction novels by several frequently translated authors (P. D. James, Ruth Rendell, Michael Connelly) that have been published by Croatian publishers of diverse profiles, ranging from well-established publishers with long presence on the market to start-ups with a relatively short market life. The data analyzed include interviews with the agents involved (translators, editors and language revisers), peritext of these editions and analysis of selected textual segments.

„Nie-miejsce”, ślad i pamięć. Opowiadanie Olgi Tokarczuk Numery w przekładzie Kseni Starosielskiej

“Non-lieu, Trace, and Memory: Olga Tokarczuk’s Short Story “Numery” in Ksenia Starosielska’s Translation The article offers an analysis of the Russian translation of Olga Tokarczuk’s 1989 short story “Numery” [Numbers]. Published in 2000 in the journal Innostrannaya Literatura, Ksenia Starosielska’s translation presented the future Nobel prize winner to Russian readers for the first time. The translation analysis is based on the categories of “non-lieu”, trace, and memory, which, within the interpretive paradigm adopted in the article, constitute a crucial meaning-making element of Tokarczuk’s short story.

O kontekstach pewnego przekładu (Ilja Erenburg i Bruno Jasieński)

On the Contexts of One Translation (Ilya Erenburg and Bruno Jasieński) Bruno Jasieński wrote his novel I Burn Paris after translating Ilya Erenburg’s Life and Death of Nikolay Kurbov. The paper analyses relationships between these two novels – their ideological and artistic parallels and polemics.

Tłumacz jako problem poezji konkretnej

Translator as the Problem of Concrete Poetry Among various forms of concrete poetry, I have identified two main types. The first one, which was born as an attempt to transgress national languages and create a universal code, by its very definition questions the sense of translation. Yet it does not nullify it, concrete poetry of this type still needs translators as “conveyers”, who select poems and anchor them into new cultural contexts. Since the shape of the poem remains mostly intact, translation is no longer an interlingual activity, but an intercultural one. In the case of the second type of concrete poetry, which I call paronomatic and which due to its metalinguistic complexity renders the poems untranslatable, translators can be redefined as “exegetes”, offering descriptions and interpretations of the poems. The article discusses in detail selected examples of the two types of concrete poetry in translation, demonstrating the variety of the translator’s tasks.

Wielowymiarowy obraz rosyjskiej konstytucji – refleksje językowe, kulturowe i poznawcze

A Multidimensional Image of the Russian Constitution – Linguistic, Cultural and Cognitive Reflections This article deals with the transposition of concepts in the process of translating legal texts. The material basis was the original text of the constitution of the Russian Federation and the constitution of Russia, which was translated into Polish. The primary assumption of the analyzes made is the thesis that the constitution is the foundation of the system, norms and principles. The Constitution also sets out the main directions of community development. As the superior document of a social and political nature, it confirms the most important national values and social beliefs. The awareness of the highest rank of this normative act should also be considered as an important factor in the process of translating the constitution into other languages. Depending on the context and depending on the structural and conceptual flexibility of the original text, the transposition of a generalized vision of the community world can be a complex task or a process that does not require a lot of work. The subject of the article is the relation between the Constitution of the Russian Federation and its Polish language version. The analysis includes the linguistic and non-linguistic reality in which the constitution of Russia is present. The research covered: the current constitution of Russia of December 12, 1993 in the Russian and Polish language versions. The legal act in Polish was made available on the official website of the Biblioteka Sejmowa (biblioteka.sejm.gov.pl). The aim of the review was to identify the possibility of reconceptualizing the Russian legal reality and determining the efficiency of transposing the concepts to the target text. The author wanted to answer the questionwhether the translation text can be treated as a source of knowledge and understanding of cultural and civilizational norms and values, building the state and Russian society. The first part of the study was devoted to general concepts that created the state system. Attention is paid to their functionality in the source and target area. The essence of the image of the world was taken into account. Using the concepts of Родина and Отечествo, has been explained the lexical context of translated lexemes. The second part of the review concerned the reconstruction of the collective memory of the Russian nation. This level focuses on the text of the preamble as a component containing generalized ideas of the political system. The third part was a substantive summary of all findings. This part of the article was based on a comparative study, covering the relation between the text of the constitution and the content and context.