“Shakespeare, He was Quite a Gifted Fellow”. The Beginning of Stanisław Barańczak’s Career as a Translator

This biographical paper describes Stanisław Barańczak’s first attempts at translating poetry as a high school student in 1964. The aim of the paper is to present the birth of his philological passion, and to answer the question of how Barańczak becomes a translator. The presentation is basis on six unpublished translations of Russian and English language poems found in the correspondence of Barańczak and in the hitherto unknown memories his school friends.
The analysis focuses on the technique of Barańczak’s translatoion work, on reconstructing his motivations, selection of texts for translation, self-assessment of the results, opinions on the authors of the original and evaluation of pop-culture. In addition, the paper offers several facts from the private life of the teenage translator, among others the decision to study Polish philology, as well as his relations with his high school colleagues and teachers.

This biographical paper describes Stanisław Barańczak’s first attempts at translating poetry as a high school student in 1964. The aim of the paper is to present the birth of his philological passion, and to answer the question of how Barańczak becomes a translator. The presentation is basis on six unpublished translations of Russian and English language poems found in the correspondence of Barańczak and in the hitherto unknown memories his school friends.
The analysis focuses on the technique of Barańczak’s translatoion work, on reconstructing his motivations, selection of texts for translation, self-assessment of the results, opinions on the authors of the original and evaluation of pop-culture. In addition, the paper offers several facts from the private life of the teenage translator, among others the decision to study Polish philology, as well as his relations with his high school colleagues and teachers.