The article compares some epigrams of Cassia, a nun and poetess living in the 9th century in Constantinople with the songs from the collection Carmina Burana (CB), which were created in the West of Europe between the 11th and 13th century. The author of the work presents her own translations of the poems and shares reflections on the way of their interpretation.

What unites Cassia with Latin chants is a miniature form, the accuracy of observations on man and society, satire. The environment of the creation of the both groups of the works is similar too – the Greek poetess was a nun, the authors of Latin songs were clerics and scholars. Yet the image of love is different: in the CB we will find songs of sensual, erotic subject, Cassia, even if she writes about love, it is the one of spiritual dimension. There is a completely different attitude to the clergy: Cassia writes beautiful praise of life of the monks, CB are full of cut satires on the friars.

CBare very rewarding material for the translator – full of simple rhymes and rhythms, with a regular structure, there are easy to translate into Polish. We are accustomed that mediaeval poetry is just that: rhythmic, rhymed, with a simple arrangement of sentences, therefore a translator using measures of mediaeval chants can introduce the reader not only to the content but also to the form of the Latin songs. Cassia’s poetry has a closer connection with the music, her songs of the saints are not rhythmic, rhyming nor isosylabic, but a melody gives a rhythm to the structure of the sentence. So, in thetranslations some equivalent of music must appear. In contrast, Cassia’s satirical poetry was not meant to be sung, and it was written with iambic verse, which can be translated with a suitable rhythm.

The author discusses the process of translation of Jonathan Edwards Reader into Polish. This anthology of sermons, letters, personal writings and philosophical texts by Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), early modern American theologian and preacher, posed a considerable challenge to the team of translators because of how strongly it is immersed in the colonial culture. Different lexical and stylistic problems that occurred in the translation process are presented, together with the strategies adopted by the translators to address them.

This article presents a pre-war translation series of the fantastic tale The strange child (Das fremde Kind) by E.T.A. Hoffmann, a work published in 1817 and soon translated into many European languages. Unluckily, Hoffmann’s story, one of the two internationally best known examples of fantasy tales (the other one is Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland) is practically inexistent in the Polish literature. The article is an attempt to discover why an internationally acknowledged children’s story remains unknown in Poland (in opposition to Hoffmann’s other children’s tale Nutcracker). One of the reasons is the specific ‘fantastic’ character of Hoffmann’s work, but other reasons must be sought in the qualities of both pre-war translations in Polish (1923 and 1926). The article concentrates on discovering translation strategies used in those renditions and their consequences for the Polish reception.

The problem of classifying Pan Tadeusz as a literary gentre has serious consequences for the translation of the work: what form should the text take in another language? Should one translate Pan Tadeusz in verse in the target language versification scheme (domestication), in the original versification scheme (foreignisation), or render it in prose? Seven translators have so far faced this challenge in English: M.A. Biggs (1885 – blank verse), G.R. Noyes (1917 – prose), W. Kirkconnell (1962 – heroic couplet with enjambments), K.R. MacKenzie (1964 – heroic couplet without enjambments), M. Weyland (2004 – 12-syllable line), L. Kress (2006 – rhymed pentameter), Ch.A. Zakrzewski (2010 – prose). Each of the selected strategies resulted in some gains and losses for the target reader; no translator managed to find the golden mean for the translation form of the Polish national epic. Edward Balcerzan may therefore be right as he suggests to analyse the translations of a given work as a series – only all the existing and potential translations of Pan Tadeusz together can produce the effect of the original work by Mickiewicz.

Yitzhok Katzenelson’s Dos lid funem oysgehargetn yidishn folk – in Polish

Katzenelson’s Song of the Murdered Jewish People is widely recognized as one of the most significant literary documents of the Shoah. Hence, its very limited reception after WW2 is at first glance baffling. We provide the necessary historical background to explain why Katzenelson’s “Lament” was for several decades unwanted and why it still remains difficult to appropriate in translation. To show this in one particular context, we focus on the Polish translation by Jerzy Ficowski. We analyse selected examples of Ficowski’s justly praised poetic achievement to point out the limitations of his declared goal: “My intention was to make the translation invisible, to allow the murdered poet say again the same – but this time, in Polish” (Ficowski 1982: 11).

The author reflects on the phenomena of the vast popularity of Ernest Hemingway in Poland after 1956 in contrast to his unpopularity in the 21^st century. In the analysis of translations by Bronisław Zieliński, it turns out that the Polish version of Hemingway’s writing differs from the English one. Polish translations of Hemingway were published due to several political reasons and they were adapted to fit into Polish readers’ expectations. The article contains an analysis of short excerpts from The Sun Also Rises. The author concludes that new Polish translations of Hemingway’s prose are very much needed.

The paper presents a unique and unprecedented translatorial enterprise in which Matthew Kneale’s novel English Passengers was rendered into Polish by a group of twenty-one translators. The book is discussed within the framework of the genre of polyphonic novel and compared to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The whole process of translating the novel is described in detail, and numerous problematic issues concerning translatorial problems are addressed.

The paper discusses Polish publishers referred to as “Lilliputians”, i.e. a group of small independent publishing houses set up after 2000 that publish artistically refined books of high literary quality for children and young adults.

Drawing on Itamar Even-Zohar’s theory of culture repertoire, we posit that in the 1990s, the cultural repertoire of Polish children’s literature was distinctly limited, while the development of the Lilliputian publishers at the onset of the third millennium was a reaction against that limitation. We believe that the role played by the Lilliputian publishers in Polish children’s literature is best captured by the notion of idea-makers, i.e. people who are a driving force of change in culture repertoire.

The aim of this descriptive exploratory paper is to identify and analyse Polish and foreign books released by those publishers and to define distinctive features of those publications with a special focus on literary imports from France and Italy. Our findings imply that the choices made by the Lilliputian publishers have modified the repertoire available to Polish readers of children’s literature at the turn of the millennia.

The paper contains problematic analysis of selected literary texts from the period 2004–2012, typical of a larger corpus of works created by Polish migrants. Narratives, plots and lyrical monologues are regarded from the perspective of symbolic communication (Blumer), representing the dynamics of biographical trajectories (Schütze). The theses are formulated here in the initial conceptualization of critical situations in which Polish migrants operate. These situations are determined by such processes as: 1) forced falsification of social roles in the new professional environment and, consequently, the need for a redefinition of self- and community identity; 2) communication barriers related to the lack of sufficient language competence; 3) lack or loss of means of subsistence and strategies for acquiring material goods; 4) separation from the beloved ones, loss of emotional support, and therefore a strong focus on reconstruction of emotional ties; 5) the need to respect and understand cultural differences in a multi-ethnic space. Critical situations portrayed in the narratives, leading to allocation in the world, are presented by Polish authors in both aspects: the positive one (discovery of new opportunities, departure, change of language) and the negative one (loss of the sense of security, livelihood, family, friends). In the narratives, the choice between various modes of action is interpreted in the pragmatic context, reduced to the effectiveness of the fight for survival, but with the observance of the limits shaped as a defence of axiological individual identity, especially of pride, honour and dignity. The primary function of the self-narration used by Polish migrants is to reconstruct personal identity in the figure of the speaking subject. Self-narration is analysed in the paper as a form of organization of experience, a symbolic recreation of the order of existence when faced with a stream of chaotic, destructive events. Underlined are the action schemes characteristic of the texts of Polish migrants that represent the transition from transactional, investment concepts of biography to formulation of the project of transformational, creative and subjectified biography.

The aim of the paper is to discussTheo Hermans’ approach to translation as a quotation, presented in his book The Conference of the Tongues (2007) in the context of Mikhail Bachtin’s polyphony theory.
Both concepts base on distinction between the voice of the reporter and the voice of the Other, and argue that the relationship between them is significant.

Hermans understands translation as a “picture” of the original work, which consists of framing and embedded utterance. Framing means all kinds of paratexts, all forms of translator’s or publishers’ comments attached to the particular translation and the embedded utterance is a translated text itself. This construction enables the author to draw a parallel between the translation and the reported speech. Hermans presents the model of eight types of reported speech, merging gradually from paraleptic omission into free direct discourse. He argues that the way the reporter presents words of the Other matters and shows his attitude towards reported ideas and values.

From this point of view translation is presented as an impure, polyphonic text, where translator’s voice is constantly confronting the values expressed in the original work and, therefore, forced to negotiate them. Theo Hermans’ concept reminds Bachtin’s idea of “dialogical word” where two voices meet and confront within one utterance. This proves that Bachtin’s polyphonic theory of a novel is functional in research in Translation Studies.

The paper has a theoretical character. An attempt is made to grasp and define translation in its essence in accordance with Roman Ingarder’s phenomenological theory of the literary work of art. Even in ancient times it was believed that translation was imitation. In some contemporary translation theories translation is compared to an image (cf. Paepcke, Tabakowska). This prompts the author to ask how that metaphorical term relates to the translation, what common characteristics can be established and what is the difference between them. Their most important common feature is that they are representations. Their qualities also include simultaneous similarity and similarity disorder, transitivity, the connection with the original (the transcendental aspect) and the self-directedness, liberation from the original (the immanent aspect).

In the second part of the paper, the concept of translation as an object representing the original is proposed in accordance with Ingarden’s concept of the represented object. For example, the following aspects are discussed: the concealment of heterogeneity to the original by the translation, its presumption to be what it is not, the pretense of authenticity and the aspect of the illusory. With regard to the translation series, the question is asked in which the divergence of the representations is founded and which of the representations can claim to be like the original. Particular attention is paid to spots of indeterminacy and opalization. The difference between translation versions is inter alia due to different make-up of spots of indeterminacy wherein the important role is played by the translators’ reflection (their intelligence, erudition, intuition), their imagination (the ability to construct images) and their experiences (their memory). Finally, an ontological definition of translation is formulated, which clearly distinguishes translation from other operations on texts, such as adaptation and summary.

Nabokov’s definition of art is based on a paradox. The eternization of evanescent beauty annihilates this beauty; by annihilating beauty, art annihilates itself. Even though there may exist a transcendent order, we can only access it in an indirect way, limited by time and ego. This paradox is strongly inscribed in the structure of That in Aleppo Once…, whose narrator is entangled in this circular dynamics between eternity and evanescence, creation and autodestruction. Only on the level of the author and the reader, that is on the level transcendent in relation to the fictional world, is there the possibility of passing from egocentric narratorial perspective to intersubjective space of language. In translation, this space has to be organized according to different rules. This is visible in two different Polish translations. One is by Teresa Truszkowska, who slightly reduces the narrator’s obsession as a result of a more rationalizing interpretation; the other is by Leszek Engelking, who sometimes even emphasizes this obsession.

Bolesław Leśmian is an impossible writer – according to Edward Balcerzan, “a poet with no masters, a master with no followers.” Additionally, he is usually considered as an untranslatable poet: the creator of his own idiomatic language, fraught with neologisms, archaisms, and dialectisms and subjected to the rigours of rhythm and rhyme, permeated with philosophical thought and vivid colours of the Slavic world – in short, an evident proof of the existence of the phenomenon known as untranslatability. But is it quite so? The main objective of the article is to present some difficulties connected with translating Leśmian’s poety into English at the example of the translations of Leśmian’s ballade “Dusiołek” (by Rochelle Stone, Marian Polak-Chlabicz, and Krzysztof Bartnicki) and to compare the translation strategies adopted by their authors.

Itamar Even-Zohar’s theory of polysystems is based on connecting diverse semiotic phenomena (especially texts of culture of specific type) with a network of mutual relationships. By affecting each other, the individual systems created in this process constitute a polysystem – a heterogeneous model of culture, constructed accordingly to its components, with its center and periphery, repertoire and canon. Using this theory, the analysis of various elements of culture allows to build up broad socio-cultural perspectives, which in turn enable precise interpretation of particular texts. The methods offered by Even-Zohar find their use chiefly in describing and explaining cultural phenomena of large scale – the fundamental transformations of polysystems, canonic shifts etc. However, the author of this theory notes the possibility of dividing the systems into smaller, isomorphic particles, within which similar processes may occur. My attempt at the analysis of the influence of William Carlos Williams’ poetry on Julia Hartwig’s works is a result of this possibility; in this essay I try to demonstrate the functionality of the use of the polysystem theory and its concepts in case of a relationship specified in such a way. Through my research I was able to prove that William Carlos Williams’ position in the literary polysystem of Julia Hartwig was dynamic and to distinguish three different turning points, which constitute the overall trajectory of this movement, which I support by using multiple examples from different fields of Hartwig’s literary activity.

The aim of this article is to analyse the poem entitled Widok z ziarnkiem piasku by Wisława Szymborska and its translation into English by Stanisław Barańczak and Clare Cavanagh (View with a Grain of Sand), paying special attention to the key poetics of negation. The article focuses on the problem of “possible worlds.” Looked at from the point of view of linguistics, literary studies, and translation studies, the poem is demonstrative of the variety of forms of negation and their semantic functions used in Szymborska’s entire oeuvre. The conclusion is that Szymborska uses not only negations on the formal, i.e. grammatical level, but also on the semantic and pragmatic levels, and through these conveys the main senses of her poems. The analysis of the English translation shows that the role of negations is similar: the translators use numerous and various forms of formal and semantic negation, but they lack pragmatic negation. The translation thus lacks one of the most central messages of the poem: Szymborska values the richness human existence much more than the empty existence of other beings.

The paper addresses the translation into Polish of famousThe Secrets ofthe Reverend Maister Alexis of Piedmont (Venice, 1555), by Marcin Siennik, which seems to be rather far removed both from the Italian original, and the other translations into major European languages. In the Author’s view this gives sufficient grounds to place it very much on a par with a number of other manipulations perpetrated against this book, especially those attempted in the late 16th c. by its successive Italian publishers, which consequently proved instrumental in having its original character greatly distorted.

In her new book, Claire Davison, a professor of Modernist Literature at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3 and Chair of the French Virginia Woolf Society, analyses the role which the process of translating Russian literature played in the development of Virginia Woolf’s and Katherine Mansfield’s individual literary styles. Both writers were invited to collaborate on the translations by S.S. Koteliansky, a Ukranian Jew, who started the project in order to show the English readers a more complex picture of Russian literature; the invitation came at the time when each of the writers was experimenting with new writing strategies. The collaboration with Koteliansky became a “laboratory” in which the translators explored the questions of consciousness, polyphony, gender or identity, so the problems which both were preoccupied with as writers just then. Davison underlines the writers’ perception of translation as a “liminal” experience of “being between languages and cultures”, contrasted with  Koteliansky’s more literal approach; their collaboration based on negotiation of the meaning and sound of almost every word produced the results which managed to overcome the dichotomy of domestication and foreignization of the translated text, placing their achievement in the avant-garde of the modernist translation project. Davison’s study of Woolf’s and Mansfield’s collaboration with Koteliansky is  shaped by the thought of Mikhail Bakhtin and Heinz Wismann, both of whom perceive translation as an activity performed between languages and cultures. The book based on extensive archival research is amply illustrated with various translations of the same fragment of the Russian text, which allows the readers to see and judge the effects of the translators’ work themselves.

The article discusses the book Myśl językoznawcza z myślą o przekładzie [Linguistic Thought with a Thought on Translation](2015)by Elżbieta Tabakowska – a selection of articles and essays written by the Polish doyenne of cognitive translation studies. Arranged by Piotr de Bończa Bukowski and Magda Heydel, the selection of her 18 texts (including 5 translations from English by Agnieszka Pokojska), published from 1991 to 2014, presents an evolution of the author’s translatological thought and interests. In her summa Elżbieta Tabakowska, the translator and popularizer of works by Ronald W. Langacker, combines scholarly disquisition with brilliant analyses of diverse texts: excerpts from Tadeusz Konwicki’s novel Kompleks polski and its translation The Polish Complex by Richard Lourie; poems by Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, Seamus Heaney, Elizabeth Bishop, Wisława Szymborska and Ewa Lipska; prose by James Joyce, Norman Davies and Lewis Carroll as well as software training course materials and Polish religious texts exemplifying the Marian cult. Issues discussed in the book are among others: imagery, contouring, profiling, point of view, iconicity, equivalence, ethnogrammar, intersemiotic translation, Idealized Cognitive Models and typicality effects. Fascinating frangipanery.