Małgorzata Tryuk

Le présent article tend à défi nir les particularités de la traduction audiovisuelle (TAV)
qui est perçue dans une perspective plus large de la traduction des multimédias. L’auteur
signale les problèmes majeurs qui se présentent dans ce type de transfert inter- ou intralinguistique,
a savoir la relation la langue de départ et la langue d’arrivée, la relation
entre le code écrit et le code oral ou un autre type de code non verbal, la relation entre
le message verbal et le son et l’image et fi nalement la relation entre le message verbal
et le support sur lequel il est enregistré. Ces quatre éléments se trouvent à la base de la
defi nition de la TAV.

Despite a massive amount of archival material on Nazi concentration camps, references to camp translators and interpreters are random, brief, and laconic. They usually consist of dry facts as related in ontological narratives of the Nazi regime victims. In the present paper, these records will be confronted with the portrayal of  Marta Weiss, a fictional camp interpreter presented in the 1948 docudrama Ostatni etap (The Last Stage) by the Polish film director Wanda Jakubowska, herself a former prisoner of the concentration camp in Birkenau.
To this day, The Last Stage remains a “definitive film about Auschwitz, a prototype for future Holocaust cinematic narratives”. The Last Stage is also called “the mother of all Holocaust films”, as it establishes several images easily discernible in later narratives on the Holocaust: realistic images of the camp; passionate moralistic  appeal; and clear divisions between the victims and the oppressors. At the same time, The Last Stage is considered to be an important work from the perspective of feminist studies, as it presents the life and death of female prisoners, femininity, labour and motherhood in the camp, women’s solidarity, and their resistance to the  oppressors. The Last Stage constitutes a unique quasi-documentary source for the analysis of the role of translators and interpreters working in extreme conditions. Moreover, the authenticity of the portrayal of Marta Weiss may not be contested, as it is based on the person of Mala Zimetbaum, a messenger and interpreter at  Auschwitz, killed in 1944 after a failed escape from the camp.
The paper presents the topic of interpreting and translating in a concentration camp from three different angles: film studies, feminist studies, and interpreting studies.

The Cinematic Figure of the Interpreter in a Nazi Concentration Camp. The Case of Marta Weiss in The Last Stage by Wanda Jakubowska

Despite a massive amount of archival material on Nazi concentration camps, references to camp translators and interpreters are random, brief and laconic. Usually they consist of dry facts as related in narratives of the Nazi regime victims. In the present paper, these records will be confronted with the picture of Marta Weiss, a fictional camp interpreter presented in the 1948 docudrama Ostatni etap (The Last Stage) by the Polish film director Wanda Jakubowska, herself a former prisoner of the concentration camp in Birkenau. To this day The Last Stage remains a “definitive film about Auschwitz, a prototype for future Holocaust cinematic narratives.”It is also called “the mother of all Holocaust films”, as it establishes several images easily discernible in later narratives on the Holocaust: realistic images of the camp; passionate moralistic appeal; and clear divisions between the victims and the oppressors. At the same time The Last Stage is considered to be an important work from the perspective of feminist studies, as it presents the fate of female prisoners, femininity, labour and motherhood in the camp, women solidarity and their resistance to the oppressors. The Last Stage constitutes a unique, quasi-documentary source for the analysis of the role of translators and interpreters working in extreme conditions. Moreover, the authenticity of the portrait of Marta Weiss may not be contested, as it is based on the person of Mala Zimetbaum, a translator and messenger in the Auschwitz camp, killed in 1944 after a failed escape from the camp. The present paper presents the topic of interpreting and translating in a concentration camp from three different angles: film studies, feminist studies and interpreting studies.