Joanna Najwer
Przekładaniec, Numer 22-23 – Baśń w przekładzie, 2009, s. 159 - 171
From the American Plantation to the Interwar Poland: How Uncle Remus Became Bam-Bo the Negro
The article opens with the introduction of Joel Chandler Harris and his literary output,
since Harris is unfamiliar to Polish readers, despite his well-established position in
the American literary canon. As a so-called local colorist, Harris depicted American
plantation life in 19th-century Georgia: he included many cultural and folk elements in
his works. The analysis of his stories about Uncle Remus concentrates on (1) the levels
of narration; (2) the linguistic complexity of the text (the stories abound in slang and
dialectal expressions); (3) the form; and (4) the folklore value. The same four aspects
of the analysis guide the discussion of the Polish translation of Harris’s work. The only
Polish version of his stories comes from 1929 and was done by Władysława Wielińska.
As the target audience of the translation were children, the ultimate aim of this analysis
is to determine the profi le of the translation as a book for children, to consider it against
the skopos of the source text, and to establish the extent to which the peculiar character
of Uncle Remus stories was preserved.