Translation Criticism as a Dialogue. The Hermeneutic Model

In this article, I reflect on the productivity of hermeneutic translation criticism, focusing on literary translation. I pose the question whether the hermeneutic mode of translation analysis and evaluation – largely based on the premises of the Romantic art critique – is capable of making a significant contribution to the contemporary discussion on the functional model of translation criticism. According to my argument, the source of the productivity (and functionality) of translation criticism is dialogicity –a feature that can be considered fundamental in the case of hermeneutics. Following the dialogical hermeneutics of F. Schlegel, F. Schleiermacher and H.-G. Gadamer, as well as H.R. Jauß’s aesthetics of reception, I formulate some major postulates of a hermeneutic critique of literary translations. This criticism is of an interrogative nature: it finds and poses questions that are answered by the examined statements. The critic’s questions include those about the original and to the original, about the translator and to the translator, as well as about the reader and to the reader. Finally, I show cases in which a critical dialogue around literary translations crystallizes. It is a dialogue that can be shaped and interpreted by the postulated hermeneutic translation criticism.

Exploring Quicksand. Translation Criticism and Literary Criticism in the Face of the Petrification of Contemporary World Literature

In contemporary discussions on the condition and further perspectives of World Literature, the mood of disappointment and disillusionment seems to dominate. Reservations concern World Literature in its complexity – its canon, potential multilingualism, existing hierarchies and often contradictory conceptualizations. The crisis of World Literature is not, however, the result of a scandal, but rather of many years of progressive petrification resulting in actual monolingualism, formulaic narrative patterns, consolidation of the center-periphery hierarchy and abandonment of the real pluralism of interpretation. One of the areas that seems to meet the challenge of World Literature is undoubtedly translation criticism. Therefore, the aim of the article is to reflect on how contemporary theories and conceptualizations of World Literature as well as its far-fetched utopia can benefit from translation criticism’s input. The article also argues that translation criticism may become a field that dynamizes contemporary World Literature and restores its reordering or even revolutionary potential.

Retranslation as Criticism, or the New Benito Cereno

The article focuses on my translation of Herman Melville’s novella Benito Cereno, published recently in a volume entitled Nowele i opowiadania (PIW, 2020), the work of eight translators into Polish. The volume contains new attempts at texts translated forty years earlier by Krystyna Korwin-Mikke; also featured is her own, newly revised translation of Melville’s classic – Bartleby, the Scrivener. Finding myself authoring a retranslation for the first time, I became intrigued by the affect accompanying such a ‘belated’ arrival at the text – not within a long, eminent ‘series’ (in Edward Balcerzan’s understanding of the term), but where only one previous, more or less canonical translation exists. Taking as my starting point Balcerzan’s terminology as well as Anna Legeżyńska’s notion of the ‘shared word’ (“słowo wspólne”), I employ the concept of the translators’ agon, developed from Harold Bloom’s ideas by Kaisa Koskinen and Outi Paloposki (2015). On the basis of several examples from the field of Polish translations, and concentrating on the rhetorics of paratextual material, I briefly examine the positions that a second translator – fated to participate in an agonistic relation – may take with regard to his precursor; my examples here are three renowned practitioners: MichałKłobukowski, Krystyna Rodowska and Maciej Świerkocki. Because my own experience is bound up with translation practice to a considerably larger degree than with its theoretical aspects, the heart of the article is an analysis of particular strategies in both of the Polish translations of Benito Cereno. I focus on issues such as nomenclature, narrative perspective, grammatical gender, as well as conventional and idiosyncratic metaphors. Exploring my own agonistic relation with Krystyna Korwin-Mikke, I attempt to determine the extent to which I have managed to avoid getting caught up in the affect produced by the uncomfortable yet inspiring consciousness of the first translator’s voice. The article is an extension of the critical gesture which I consider my retranslation, in itself, to be. Emphasizing the differences in our approach, I also try to embrace what is shared, and to acknowledge my indebtedness to the precursor.

Consolidating the Universe. Translation Criticism among Contexts of Translational Reception of H.P. Lovecraft’s Poetry in Poland

The article discusses the influence of translator’s criticism and other extra-textual factors on the translations of poetry by Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Since the very first renditions of his Fungi from Yuggoth sonnets by Jerzy Płudowski and Leszek Lachowiecki included in two anthologies of horror poetry, Polish versions of Lovecraft’s verses have always been modified in the process of interlinguistic transfer according to either sole preferences of the publishing houses and evaluations proposed by critics of the English originals or the translators’ reception of the previous Polish variants. In most cases these modifications resulted from more or less stereotypical visions of the American writer held by the translators and were aimed at establishing links to his other works already published in Poland (short stories, essays, letters). Thus effects of the semantic shifts, detectable also in the latest variants by Krzysztof Azarewicz and Mateusz Kopacz, can be referred to as consolidating the universe of the writer’s biographical legend and literary works which is more coherent in the Polish target texts than in the originals.

The Revenge of Triglav and Svarog? Fan-Generated Translation Criticism of the English Version of the Comic Book Kajko i Kokosz

The article discusses the role of fan communities as critics of translated texts. It shows how fans’ active involvement as prosumers in the production of translational (mock) critical content can affect the promotion and distribution of the official, commercial translation. The case in point is a fan-generated and fan-mediated reception of the English rendition of an album from a classic Polish Kajko i Kokosz comic series. First published in 1975, Szkoła latania (Flying School) is part of Poland’s shared popcultural idiom, since recently also part of the primary school reading canon. Its first English translation (2018) made available in a pre-release to the comic’s fans led to a number of controversies, ranging from humorous internet-mediated discussions of an editing mistake to an open petition to the publisher to preserve in translation the comic’s cultural specificity. The article sets off by discussing the profile of the translation critic emerging from leading models of translation criticism to move on to sketch new developments and the role of fandom and fan-generated criticism. Arguing that currently translations of speculative fiction into and out of English in the Polish context can be considered vulnerable translations, prone to fans’ critical scrutiny, it focuses on Flying School and its fan reception which lead to the prolonged postponement of the publication of the official translation. The article also provides an analysis of the pre-release commercial translation to provide background for the fan criticism. It shows the clash of the translator’s consistent domesticating strategy with fans’ expectations of an exoticizing translation, preserving the Slavic character of the series which raises the question of the translation brief and publisher-translator relationship.

Translation Criticism in Cyberspace – New Opportunities and Challenges (on Polish Translations of Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita)

The ongoing digitization of the literary heritage together with the growing competition between publishing houses have led to a situation where translation series of works considered as canonical changed their form of extending from diachronic, linear development in time to synchronic “explosion” of parallel texts, which task is to win readers-consumers with advantages of novelty, distinctness, “inventiveness.” Such translations gain a new function – they become a marketing tool for publishing houses. In my opinion the newest retranslations of Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita is one of the most interesting examples of the process described above. In recent years, new Polish versions of this novel have been published at a dizzying pace (five new translations between 2015 and 2018) and in overwhelming welth (five editions were published in four different translations in 2018 alone). The new translations of Bulgakov’s novel evoke a lively response from the audience. All sorts of analysis, comparisons and opinions have been published not only in scientific journals, but also in daily newspapers, internet forums and in comments in online bookstores. In the Internet, professional translation criticism coexists with private opinions of Internet users (often based on non-literary factors) and with marketing content, advertisements, and blurbs deliberately formed as reviews. In this paper I would like to discuss new roles of professional translation criticism in circumstances described above, analyse its presence in the Internet and try to define its new objects. On the one hand, its voice should be loud and clear enough to be heard in the virtual chaos of texts, on the other hand – persuasive and lucid enough to help readers to become aware of decisions they make by choosing a particular translation and perceive the literary value of texts hidden behind attractive covers of new editions.

Backwoods of Language. The Modernist Prose of Djuna Barnes in Polish Translation

No sooner than after eighty years since the moment of the original publication of Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood was Polish literary market enriched by a translation of one of the most peculiar novels of the Euro-American modernism. Marcin Szuster’s translation under Polish title Ostępy nocy has already managed to earn much praise and also some prizes and open a first Polish discussion about the work of the eccentric American writer. The paper’s focus is to analyze the Polish translation of Nightwood with a special interest in Barnes’s style as it becomes a central character in the novel which connects, according to feminist critics (K. Kaivola, S. Benstock), to its emancipatory potential. In my paper I follow a claim that the complex style of this prose writing is a (conscious) manifestation of a woman’s voice (as an affect), behind which one can discover a body – one that experiences and is experienced (J. Taylor). The body, both a structural and a rhetorical category in feminist criticism, in Barnes’s prose can be seen as an element organizing time and space – therefore, ambiguity of her terms and complexity of style are forming a true translation challenge. Marcin Szuster as a translator needs to follow Barnes’s “distinctive point of view,” which is a “feminine” one and distanced by the length of gender, experience and time.

Jerzy Święch, 2021. Z historii i poetyki przekładu, Lublin: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej.

The article reviews the recent book of Jerzy Święch (Z historii i poetyki przekładu, 2021) as an excellent document of the history of Polish structuralist translation studies. Contrary to what the author modestly suggests, Święch’s theoretical statements and historical readings of artistic translations are of much more than solely archival or museal interest. The book contributes to ongoing debates about the ways of studying and writing the history of literary translation in necessary conjunction with, and at the same time independently of, the history of national literatures. Święch’s studies invariably serve as guidelines for analyses of artistic translations in the light of historical poetics and the sociology of literature. Many of the biographical and sociological issues raised by the Lublin scholar resonate with recent research tendencies in Translator Studies.

On the Polish Translation of Dire quasi la stessa cosa. Esperienze di traduzione by Umberto Eco

The article contains a review of the translation of Dire quasi la stessa cosa. Esperienze di traduzione by Umberto Eco (Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, Kraków 2021) into Polish, authored by Jadwiga Miszalska and Monika Surma-Gawłowska. Notwithstanding the significant popularity of Eco’s literary and scholarly work in Poland, his influential volume of essays on translation was published in Polish almost twenty years after the original edition. In the first place, the review focuses on the translators’ approach to multilingualism and Italocentrism of Eco’s source text. It also addresses the issues of validity and actuality of Eco’s semiotic contribution to translation studies, by confronting it with recent trends in translation scholarship, especially with Kobus Marais’s bio-semiotic theory of translation.

Sherry Simon 2020. Miasta w przekładzie. Skrzyżowania języka i pamięci, przeł. Justyna Arabska, Magdalena Brodacka, Melania Chotyńska, Magda Heydel, Ewelina Jurczenia, Karolina Koprowska, Agata Skrzypek, Martyna Szczepaniak i Sylwia Więcek, pod redakcją naukową Magdy Heydel, Kraków: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego.

City Communication Network: Sherry Simon’s Cities in Translation: Intersections of Language and Memory

The article reviews Sherry Simon’s seminal book Cities in Translation: Intersections of Language and Memory (Routledge, 2012) recently rendered into Polish. The Canadian scholar combines urban studies with comparative literature, translation, translator and memory studies to provide insight into linguistic and cultural interactions in the “dual cities” of Calcutta, Trieste, Barcelona and Montreal. An attempt has been made to present Simon’s research against the backdrop of Translational Turn in the study of culture and the Cultural Turn in the study of translation.