Translating feminism

Pointing to manifold and long-lasting connections between feminism and translation, the article first presents a selection of multilingual writers (Narcyza Żmichowska and Deborah Vogel), translators (Zofia Żeleńska and Kazimiera Iłłakowiczówna) and translation commentators (Joanna Lisek and Karolina Szymaniak) to ponder why the work of early Polish feminists is neglected. It seems that one of the reasons might be the current colonization of Polish feminist discourse by English. For ethical reasons it would be advisable to recommend a certain sensitivity to locality in feminist translation studies and a recognition of regionalism in culture studies. The theoretical considerations include two issues: the potential hermaphroditism of the Polish language when its users are women and the ‘scandal of „another’s speech”,’ a polyphony and a constitutive lack of autonomy (a feminist discussion of Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory). From this perspective it becomes visible that linguistic choices made by the translator are always individual one-time solutions which resist homogenization, paradigms or (theoretical) generalizations.

The Woman Translator in the Middle Ages. Selected Examples of Female Translation Activity

Translatory achievements of medieval women are rarely discussed. In antiquity Greek and Roman writings were practically all composed in two languages. Because Latin women’s writing did not reach sophistication, or at least we do not possess the evidence for it, Greek dominated. In the early Middle Ages the situation changed: Latin became dominant, and the writing in Greek was no longer well recognized. While the literary examination used to focus on high culture, the value of such high-brow products was assessed according to the criterion of originality. Low culture and its writings were largely disregarded. Translation, a low-brow representative, could not easily prove its originality. Comments about it are rather infrequent in early compendia of medieval literature. This absence may be partly explained by the fact that originality itself was not held in high regard in the Middle Ages. Only recently has the growing research into social and legal conditions of early women as well as into their varied cultural and literary expressions brought them a deserved recognition.

Marianna Maliszewska and Her Sejm walny cyterski after Francesco Algarotti

Comme traductrice dell’Amante militare de Carlo Goldoni et du Congrès de Cythère de Francesco Algarotti, deux œuvres de deux grands auteurs italiens de l’époque des lumières, publiées en polonais dans les années 1780, Marianna Maliszewska s’est révélée être une médiatrice culturelle pourvue d’une bonne connaissance de la langue et de la culture italiennes (malgré quelques défaillances). Dans sa traduction du roman d’Algarotti, elle a effectué des coupures et des adaptations ponctuelles en pensant aux nouveaux lecteurs, sans toutefois poloniser le texte et sans fournir, dans les paratextes, d’informations qui pourraient niveler la différence des compétences entre les lecteurs de l’original et ceux de la version polonaise, en ce qui concerne la connaissance de la littérature italienne. Par contre, elle y fait part de son expérience directe de l’Italie, de son opinion critique de l’Arcadie et de sa conviction que les femmes sont défavorisées sur le marché de la culture. Certaines modifications apportées dans le texte même de la traduction correspondent avec ce point de vue «féministe».

"Translator of Tylor and Morgan" – Aleksandra Bąkowska and her Social Activity

The article is about the friendship and social activity of two important female representatives of the Polish emancipation movement at the turn of the 19th century: Aleksandra Bąkowska, aristocrat and owner of the Gołotczyzna estate as well as translator of early American anthropological works, and Paulina Kuczalska- Reinschmit, an impoverished noblewoman, the leader of the suffragette movement in the Polish Kingdom. Both women were inspired by the ideas of Lewis Henry Morgan, the researcher of the Iroquois culture and the author of, among others, Ancient Society (1877), in which he described and compared different systems of kinship in pre- and non-Christian cultures. A. Bąkowska translated this book into Polish in 1887 which triggered the discussion among early Polish sociologists, anthropologists and cultural philosophers in which the most important was the issue of the historicity of the institution of a monogamous marriage and a patriarchal family. A. Bąkowska turned a part of the Gołotczyzna estate into a school for country girls based on the principles resembling the communist community of rights and obligations which community was described by L.H. Morgan based on the observation of Indian tribes. P. Kuczalska-Reinschmit, on the other hand, established the Polish Women Emancipation Association in Warsaw, whose seat – with a reading room, a lending library, a lecture hall – was also organized as a community, mainly for women. Both initiatives led to the dissemination of emancipation ideas in the Polish Kingdom before WWI and contributed to the principle of equality of rights for men and women being inscribed in the new Polish constitution of 1918.

Traces of the Translator’s Wife. Alma Cardell Curtin and Jeremiah Curtin

Jeremiah Curtin translated most works by Poland’s first literary Nobel Prize winner, Henryk Sienkiewicz. He was helped in this life-long task by his wife Alma Cardell Curtin. It was also Alma, who, after her husband’s death, produced the lengthy Memoirs she steadfastly ascribed to her husband for his, rather than hers, greater glory. This article investigates the possible textual influences Alma might have had on other works by her husband, including his travelogues, ethnographic and mythological studies, and the translations themselves. Lacking traditional authorial evidence, this study relies on stylometric methods comparing most frequent word usage by means of cluster analysis of z-scores. There is much in this statistics-based authorial attribution to show how Alma Cardell Curtin’s significantly affected at least two other original works of her husband and, possibly, at least two of his translations.

On Maria Konopnicka’s Translation of Ada Negri’s Fatalità and Tempeste

Maria Konopnicka’s translation of Ada Negri’s two early poetry volumes, Fatalità and Tempeste, was published in Warsaw in 1901. The article examines Konopnicka’s translation in its historical and comparative context and presents her principal translation strategies. Since her début in 1890s, Negri’s originals and Konopnicka’s writings have been considered similar because of their social engagement and sensibility. Konopnicka’s decision to translate Fatalità and Tempeste is usually seen as a result of her social interests. On the basis of Konopnicka’s and Negri’s letters and metaliterary enunciations, it can be assumed that Negri’s vision of creative act as a sudden and unstoppable inspiration of the inner spirit was also highly appreciated by the Polish poet. In her translation Konopnicka tends to naturalize the Italian originals on all the levels of expression, deploying her own favourite rhythmic patterns and figures of speech.

Slavica non leguntur: On a Feminist Project of Interwar Yugoslavia

The article outlines the challenges for literatures created in ‘small’ languages. The only chance for such cultures to emerge from literary obscurity is to be translated into a ‘big’ language, a lingua franca of an international influence. This phenomenon is well illustrated by the spectacular Bibliography of Books by Female Authors in Yugoslavia, published by the Federation of Women with University Education in 1936 in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The book, a unique and remarkable feminist project of interwar Yugoslavia, was conceived to defy the Slavica non leguntur statement (the Slavic lanquages are not read world-wide). It features the intellectual achievement of women from South-Eastern Europe. This fi rst discussion of the Bibliography, which was composed in four languages: Serbian, Slovene, Croatian and French, presents its structure, aims and premises in a wider feminist context of interwar Yugoslavia.

Polish Women Translators Outside the Canon. On a Forgotten Translation of Dostoyevsky’s The Devils

Despite the growing interest in women’s writing, women translators and their achievements are rarely discussed. The article focuses on mechanisms behind the exclusion of women’s writing from literary history and examines the social status of three women translators as contributing to their invisibility. Dora Gabe, Slava Shtiplieva and Anastasia Gancheva were co-workers at Polish-Bulgarian Review. Each developed a different strategy to cope with the unfavorable intellectual climate of interwar Bulgaria. Their biographies show the connections between marital and social status of a woman writer and the esteem of her works. They also confirm the claim that translating, instead of writing, was thought to be more appropriate for women because of the low position translation occupied in the hierarchy of artistic occupations.

Found in Translation. Dora Gabe, Sława Sztiplijewa and Anastasija Ganczewa as Editors od "Polish-Bulgarian Review"

Despite the growing interest in women’s writing, women translators and their achievements are rarely discussed. The article focuses on mechanisms behind the exclusion of women’s writing from literary history and examines the social status of three women translators as contributing to their invisibility. Dora Gabe, Slava Shtiplieva and Anastasia Gancheva were co-workers at Polish-Bulgarian Review. Each developed a different strategy to cope with the unfavorable intellectual climate of interwar Bulgaria. Their biographies show the connections between marital and social status of a woman writer and the esteem of her works. They also confirm the claim that translating, instead of writing, was thought to be more appropriate for women because of the low position translation occupied in the hierarchy of artistic occupations.

Words Like Painting Brushes. Colours in Virginia Woolf’s The Waves and Its Translation by Lech Czyżewski

Colours are an indispensable part of Virginia Woolf’s novels. In The Waves her dynamic brushstrokes, like those of impressionists, make colours come to life and surrender to the movement of the sun. One of the colours on Woolf’s palette is purple. Its ambiguity and specificity has influenced the lexemic variation introduced by Lech Czyżewski in his translation of the novel. The article seeks to establish the status of English purple as well as its Polish counterparts: szkarłatny and purpurowy. The starting point for the analysis is the evident semantic and cognitive ambiguity of purple. The observations concentrate on the use of purple in the novel’s interludes. The modifications of the colour term as well as the distribution of the two colours give intriguing testimony to Woolf’s idea that writers – in this case, translators – are great colourists

To Liberate Charybdis, to Fall in Love with Scylla. On the Monstrosity of Translation

The essay outlines a “critical genealogy” of the notion of resemblance which structures the hierarchical relationship between the impeccable Original (Man, the source text) and its ultimately imperfect, failed copy (woman, translation). I examine the analogy between translation and the female that has prevailed in modern scholarship, and reveal its other, subversive side. The displacement of meanings in this repetitive analogy clarifies the relationship between the source and the target text in the light of the Butlerian notion of “critical mimesis”: a subversive play of meanings that takes place in the performative continuum of cultural translation.

Feminist Thought in Bible Translation

The Bible, seen by many as a normativeand patriarchal text, poses a serious challenge to feminism. Feminist theologians strive to restore to it female dignity and equality. The article presents selected examples of the feminist interpretation of the Bible. It also analyses the English and German translations. Instances of inclusive language, evident in the feminist translation of the Bible, are examined. Moreover, non-feminist inclusive translations of the Bible into English and Polish are investigated.

"Womanist": Neologism and Existential Experience of the African American Woman

The article attempts to explain and justify why the Polish translators Bożena Umińska and Jarosław Mikos introduced the neologism kobietystka as a Polish counterpart of the word “womanist,” coined by Alice Walker, in their 2002 translation of Rosemarie Putnam Tong’s Feminist Thought: A More Comprehensive Introduction. Alice Walker’s choice of the term “womanist” for colored feminists is rooted in both the African American praxis of mimicry and the African American literary tradition defined as the “talking book” metaphor. On the one hand, Walker’s term, coined in the early 1980s, serves to both emphasize her ethnic identity of an African American woman and to point out her political situation in a white-dominated American society. On the other hand, the introduction of the new word in order to define a feminist who is a colored woman is seen as a separatist gesture expressing critique of second wave feminist politics and discourse, which were totally dominated by middle-class white women. As Walker and other womanists quoted in the text explain, since feminism was linked solely with white Western culture, it excludes colored women because its agendas do not relate to their tradition and everyday struggle against American racism and class discrimination. Considering Walker’s 1974 essay In Search of Our Mothers’ Garden, in which she quotes Virginia Woolf’s passages related to African American women’s historical experience, Walker’s strategy can be viewed as paradigmatic, and the writer’s coining of the new word “womanist” should be understood as analogical. The article also explains how the introduction of the neologism kobietystka by the Polish translators aims to indicate a specific ethnic identity of colored women’s movement. The translators’ choice proves their sensitivity to the cultural context which gave birth to the term “womanist”.

Derridian différance. Is a Spelling Mistake Translatable?

The article examines Polish translations of the Derridian term différance. Polish philosophical discourse uses the following renditions of différance: róż(ni(c)oś)ć by Bogdan Banasiak, różNICa by Tadeusz Sławek, gra-na-zwłokę-o-różnicę by Stanisław Cichowicz and the most popular: różnia by Joanna Skoczylas. Should a mistake be deliberately committed in Polish, as it was done in the original? Or should it be corrected, and if so – how to explain the correction? The suggestion to translate the controversial concept by means of a Polish neologism, the neographism rórznica, may be productive and such a solution may be open to a number of interpretations. Thank to its ambivalence, rórznica introduces a majority of Derridian motifs and may generate new ideas and concepts. Moreover, it allows a successful critique of logocentrism and phonocentrism of Western philosophy and a subversion of binary oppositions, hard subject and desire of self-presence. Finally, the misspelled différance may be viewed as an example of grammatical Otherness.

Medieval Manuscripts and False Go-Betweens. On Editions and Translations of Old-English Paraphrases of Pater Noster

The Lord’s Prayer played an important role in the formation of early Anglo-Saxon Church. The significance of Oratio Dominica was raised in ecclesiastical correspondence and reflected in state charts and laws issued at the time. Prose translations and poetical paraphrases formed part of contemporary literature. Their authors continued the long- standing Cædmonian tradition and used the ancient Germanic poetic diction to express Christian values. These texts, therefore, indirectly open the way to our understanding of the intricate relations existing in the Latin-Germanic world. Conveying these peculiar artefacts of the Anglo-Saxon Christian culture in another language imposes special duties on a translator. Above all, the extant manuscripts must be studied with meticulous care and compared with reliable editions. The selection of a dependable critical edition is the prerequisite to the esthetically satisfying and adequate translation. This prior condition is especially important when liturgical poetry is introduced into a distant culture to which the subtle beauty of the Anglo-Saxon literary world is virtually unknown.

Mark Twain’s Bestselling Travelogue Innocents Abroad in Polish Translation. A Strategic Analysis

Mark Twain’s travelogue Innocents Abroad (1869) was the author’s first sustained narrative form; it became a great literary and financial success during his lifetime. Considered a canonical text of travel writing in English, it was translated into Polish as late as 1992. The article discusses the Polish translation, focusing on the relevant features of the source text: the paratexts and the ‘translational dominant(s)’ that contribute to the original’s popularity. As Innocents Abroad belongs to popular literature, its humor is one of the essential dominants. The analysis demonstrates that the translator made a considerable effort to render the humor of the novel: the differences and compensation strategies result not so much from the differences between the languages and cultures but from the translator’s consistent decisions.

Polish Literature in English Translation 1999–2009

In the period under consideration 265 Polish titles (poetry, drama, prose fiction, reportage and memoirs) were published in English. Their publishers were mostly academic presses and small independent publishers, often subsidised by the EU or the Polish Book Institute. The analysis of the titles leads to several conclusions. First, the image of Polish literature construed on the basis of the available translations did not reflect the Polish book market. The percentage of translated poetry volumes and memoirs devoted to the Holocaust and World War II was much higher than the percentage of such titles published in Poland. Second, the beginning of the decade concentrated on classics and memoirs, whereas the end on contemporary Polish prose writes. Third, the increased interest in Polish prose among the British publishers was not reflected among their American counterparts. The article is accompanied by a bibliography of English translations of Polish literature published in the years 1999–2009.

Fragment

Kto się godzi pisać recenzję czy omówienie książki, która jest pracą zbiorową, stawia się w trudnej sytuacji, bo tak czy owak wyjdzie na niesprawiedliwego. Nie ma jak uprawiać sprawiedliwość, mając do czynienia z dwudziestoma tekstami; nie ma jak napisać o dwudziestu tekstach, a powtarzanie spisu treści z komentarzami: ach, świetne, lub: uu, takie sobie – nie jest twórcze. Więc z góry godząc się z pewną klęską, stwierdzę jednak dobitnie, że uważam książkę Nieme dusze? Kobiety w kulturze jidysz za świetną pracę, za rzecz wybitną pod względem różnorodności tematów, panoramy, jaką one tworzą – oraz pod względem edytorskim.

RECENZJA: Eliana Franco, Anna Matamala, Pilar Orero, (2010), Voice-over Translation. An Overview, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Oxford, Wien: Peter Lang, 2010 248 pp. ISBN 978-3-0343-0393-4 pb.