It is a commonly acknowledged fact that sharing knowledge is a fundamental prerequisite for cooperation between individual researchers, as well as between academic written cultures, whose research traditions may be divergent. Even in the case of academic circles enjoying geographical proximity like Polish and German ones, mutual contact may be hindered by a language barrier.
The aim of this article is to demonstrate that the translation of Bożena Witosz’s work Linguistic Genology constituted a rich source of academic cognition. The authors highlight challenges and problems they had encounter in translating this monograph, in which, like in most Polish genological works, numerous references to Bachtin’s ideas may be found. In this context, questions about optimal solutions in conveying academic Polish-German terminological differences arise. Another challenge represented the issue of adjusting the message for the final reader, whose point of reference are functional and academic texts in German philological research.
