Between the Verses: Translation of Salman Rushdie’s Prose in the Context of Post-colonial Translation Theories

Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses is perceived by many critics as the writer’s masterpiece, one of the most representative texts of post-colonial literature which narrates the hybridity of languages, identities and cultures. This article analyses the fi rst Polish translation of the novel (an anonymous edition from 1992) with the help of post-colonial translation theories. It focuses on the uniqueness and relative untranslatability of the oriental and post-colonial Other, either simply reproduced by the use of borrowing (on the lexical level) or – which is more often the case in the analysed translation – blurred and neutralized by the use of hypernymic techniques. A critical commentary to the novel by Paul Brians helps to identify its cultural elements which have been lost. The analysis suggests that the elements easily lost are intertextual references to literary texts, songs, metaphors or fi lms, subject to syntagmatic rendering. In view of post-colonial theories, which emphasise the specifi city and uniqueness of the Other, the article concludes that only the introduction of the paratext in the form of a literary commentary could help to preserve the essential intellectual and artistic value of the novel.

Between the Verses: Translation of Salman Rushdie’s Prose in the Context of Post-colonial Translation Theories

Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses is perceived by many critics as the writer’s masterpiece, one of the most representative texts of post-colonial literature which narrates the hybridity of languages, identities and cultures. This article analyses the fi rst Polish translation of the novel (an anonymous edition from 1992) with the help of post-colonial translation theories. It focuses on the uniqueness and relative untranslatability of the oriental and post-colonial Other, either simply reproduced by the use of borrowing (on the lexical level) or – which is more often the case in the analysed translation – blurred and neutralized by the use of hypernymic techniques. A critical commentary to the novel by Paul Brians helps to identify its cultural elements which have been lost. The analysis suggests that the elements easily lost are intertextual references to literary texts, songs, metaphors or fi lms, subject to syntagmatic rendering. In view of post-colonial theories, which emphasise the specifi city and uniqueness of the Other, the article concludes that only the introduction of the paratext in the form of a literary commentary could help to preserve the essential intellectual and artistic value of the novel.