Jadwiga Miszalska

How to Translate“the Great”? Polish Translators and the Masters of French Classicism: A Review of Michał Bajer’s Klasycyzm. Przekład. Prestiż (2020)

Michał Bajer’s book offers an interesting approach to older translations. The author discusses Polish renderings of Corneille’s and Racine’s tragedies in the broadly defined Enlightenment (1740–1830). He looks at the translations from three perspectives: analysing changes at the level of rhetoric, at the level of poetics, and examining the paratextual influences, i.e., the critics’ statements with regard to both original texts and translations. The discourse is set in a historical, literary, and social context, in which the French playwrights appear as models of the classicist perfection of style, an object of imitation, which, however, undergoes constant negotiation on the part of the translators. The book proposes an interesting combination of literary, philological, and sociological tools to create a multi-layered picture of the Polish reception of the two authors.

The translation of dialect as a diatopic variety is one of the most difficult problems which the translator has to solve. Dialect, more than the standard language, refers to culture-specific elements. Considering its semantic valence it is necessary to take it into account while translating. On the other hand, translation of theater texts is under special pressure of the cultural context of the target system and the target text has to establish a direct contact with the public. The paper presents different circumstances of using dialect in source texts and different translation strategies applicable in target texts. Then it provides examples of an Italian drama (La carnezzeria by Emma Dante) in which the use of Sicilian dialect has a very specific function. The Polish translator replaces dialect with a distorted version of language based on a colloquial variety, which is one of the possible solutions since there are no general nor precise rules of dialect translation. The case study proves that it is always important to consider the function of dialect in theater text in the contexts of translation.

Right from the beginning of their missionary activity, the Jesuits painstakingly drafted and collected various documents. These accounts were printed in Latin or Italian, and soon translated into other languages. In Poland, in the first three decades of the seventeenth century, more than a dozen reports from China, Japan, Vietnam, and Tibet were printed. They provide first eye-witness accounts from these territories, not only in Poland, but in Europe at large. Polish translations offer material for various kinds of analysis. This article discusses the work of two Polish translators, members of the Society of Jesus, who used different strategies depending on their intended target readership. Szymon Wysocki was interested mainly in religious aspects of the missions to the Far East, and he edited out most of the culture-specific items, as his writing was dedicated to young adepts of the Society. Fryderyk Szembek, on the other hand, paid attention also to cultural aspects of the accounts he translated. However, his attitude towards cultural otherness was less neutral than in the source texts. His translations constituted an important source of knowledge for the seventeenth-century Polish reader. Both translators had to cope with challenges such as proper names or culturally marked vocabulary and with the genre specificity of these texts, which were new to the Polish literary system. In my research, I use the methodological framework of polysystem theory, Lefevere’s theory of rewriting, and Pym’s concepts in the history of translation. I also refer to translation sociology, theory of reportage, history of culture, and history of languages.

Le traduzioni italiane in Polonia dal Cinquecento al Settecento
in prospettiva comparata
La problematica delle traduzioni letterarie implica il tema della migrazione dei generi
letterari tra diverse letterature. Il sonetto, genere nato in Sicilia a metà del XIII secolo
ebbe una larga fortuna in Europa. Le traduzioni dei poeti italiani, e prima di tutto del
Petrarca, contribuirono alla formazione delle numerose varianti del sonetto presso diverse letterature europee. L’articolo traccia una breve storia del sonetto in Polonia tra
il’500 e l’inizio dell’800 in confronto con la presenza dei vari sonetti italiani. Vengono
analizzate le strategie assunte da traduttori che spesso – soprattutto tra il’500 e il’600 –
erano anche grandi poeti e queste scelte sono messe a confronto con le poesie originali
degli stessi e di altri autori. Tutto ciò con l’obiettivo di indagare sulla coscienza genologica
di allora e di individuare certe costanti nell’approccio alla letteratura straniera
e in seguito anche di tracciare la posizione della letteratura tradotta sulla mappa del
polisistema letterario polacco dell’epoca.

Polish 17th-Century Translations of Jesuit Accounts from the Far East in the Context of Translation History

Right from the beginning of their missionary activity, the Jesuits painstakingly drafted and collected various documents. These accounts were printed in Latin or Italian, and soon translated into other languages. In Poland, in the first three decades of the 17th century, more than a dozen reports from China, Japan, Vietnam and Tibet were printed, constituting the first eye-witness accounts from these territories, not only in Poland, but in Europe at large. Polish translations offer material for various kinds of analysis. This article discusses the work of two Polish translators, members of Society of Jesus, who used different strategies depending on their intended target readership. Szymon Wysocki was interested mainly in religious aspects of the Far East missions and he got rid of most of culture-specific items as his writing was dedicated to young adepts of the Society. Fryderyk Szembek, on the other hand, paid attention also to cultural aspects of the accounts he translated. However, his attitude towards cultural otherness was less neutral than in the source texts. His translations constituted an important source of knowledge for the 17th century Polish reader. Both translators had to cope with difficulties such as proper names or culturally marked vocabulary and with the genre specifity of these texts, new to the Polish literary system. In my research I use the methodological framework of polysystem theory, Lefevere’s theory of rewriting and Pym’s concepts in the history of translation, referring also to translation sociology, theory of reportage, history of culture and history of languages.