Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese

przełożyła Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese

Rendering into Polish the Welsh verse form called englynion, which had been already
„translated” into English, creates particular formal challenges. This essay demonstrates
how they have been faced; it also investigates the emotional context of both the
original, which reflects on a controversial event from recent Welsh history, and of the
translation. The personal experience as well as the archival material concerning the
flooded Tryweryn Valley create a kind of hypertext which sends its readers in search
of references. Translation testifies to this search.

Alpha and Omega
Bringing together Paul Ricoeur’s On Translation and Peeter Torop’s Total Translation
seems a risky intellectual enterprise, even if its rationale and incongruities are
informatively pointed out by Edward Balcerzan, when he introduces this joint
publication in his foreward entitled Total Translation, or on the Power of Hyperbole.
The French philosopher’s phenomenological search for the true nature of translation is
accompanied by his awareness that fi nding an/the answer is not realistic. His refl ection
on translation does not clarify – it complicates instead. Ricoeur, inspired by Antoine
Berman and George Steiner, urges us to forsake the distinction into the translatable
and the untranslatable; he chooses to consider translation as “linguistic hospitality,”
which allows us to understand our identity in relation to “the other.” Ricoeur’s probing
of the mystery of translation stands in opposition to the systematizing and classifying
work of the Estonian semiotician. Torop’s attempt suffers from the enormity of the
discussed material and lack of precision. Unfortunately, the Polish version is fl awed,
so the presentation of Torop’s argument will profi t from careful re-edition or even
retranslation. Importantly, however, the two thinkers on translation should be presented
separately.