Experimental Translation: Techniques, Forms, Metalanguages

The aim of the article is to introduce a new series of studies on theoretical, methodological, analytical, and interpretive problems of “translation anomalies”. Functioning as a medium of artistic innovation and creative cognition, experimental literary translation has a laboratory meaning both for translators and translation, literary and cultural scholars. It allows to highlight the fundamental problems of artistic creation, the theory of literature, the theory of artistic translation and the theory of intercultural communication. On the one hand, translation experiments confirm the necessity of using interdisciplinary research instruments; on the other hand, they show translation as a fundamental metaphor that describes the innovative and dynamic nature of technology.

A (Non)Experimental Translation of Electronic Literature. On (Un)Repeatable Translation of Loss of Grasp

The article focuses on (Nie)panowanie, the Polish translation of Loss of Grasp by Serge Bouchardon and Vincent Volckaert. The main part of the study consists of a detailed report of translator’s work made in 2019 and her experience is compared with the experiences of translators of ten other language versions of the work. This study is accompanied by some more general reflection on problems of e-literature translation,

especially in the context of experimental translation theory. Two main questions the author deals with are: should e-lit translation always be seen as an experimental one, and what does it, in practice, mean to translate interactive and multimedia work? The last part of the article offers a broader perspective on the field: reflections on trans-platform translation as a kind of digital literature preservation and on the problems of platform liability or programming obsolescence.

Tekst powstał w ramach stypendium NAWA w programie im. Bekkera (numer umowy PPN/BEK/2019/1/00264/U/00001).

Texton Telling. Distributed Translation Based on Stephanie Strickland and Nick Montfort’s Sea and Spar Between Generator (2010)

The article presents challenges of translating poetry generators in multi-authorial, creative collaboration and within the context of understanding text as process. Stephanie Strickland and Nick Montfort’s Sea and Spar Between is in many respects a translational challenge that in some languages might seem an impossible task. Polish, our target language, imposes some serious constraints: one-syllable words become disyllabic or multisyllabic; kennings have different morphological, lexical, and grammatical arrangement, and most of the generative rhetoric of the original (like anaphors) must take into consideration the grammatical gender of Polish words. As a result, the JavaScript code, instructions that accompany the JavaScript file, and arrays of words that this poetry generator draws from, needed to be expanded and rewritten. Moreover, in several crucial points of this rule-driven work, natural language forced us to modify the code. In translating Sea and Spar Between, the process of negotiation between the source language and the target language involves more factors than in the case of traditional translation. Strickland and Montfort read Dickinson and Melville and parse their readings into a computer program (in itself a translation, or port, from Python to JavaScript) which combines them in almost countless ways. This collision of cultures, languages, and tools becomes amplified if one wants to transpose it into a different language. This transposition involves the original authors of Sea and Spar Between, the four original translators of Dickinson and Melville into Polish, and us, turning into a multilayered translational challenge, something we propose to call a distributed translation. While testing the language and the potential of poetry translation in the digital age, the experiment – we hope – has produced some fascinating and thought-provoking poetry.

taH pagh taHbe: Shakespearean Experiment in Translation

The article discusses experimental translation on the example of intralingual translation in Play On! Translation project accompanying the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and intersemotic/intermedial translation in OMGShakespeare series and Star Trek-related texts. These are approached as exercises in post-translation as defined by Edwin Gentzler in his volume on the subject.

Translating Parody as a Domain of Experiment

The author explores the possibilities of parody translation, based on a 1933 Polish literary example. Poet Julian Tuwim imitates with a vengeance the highly idiosyncratic diction of Bolesław Leśmian, including the latter’s signature trait, neologisms, while styling the piece as a supposed rewriting of a familiar children’s rhyme (folk song) about a kitten. This second hypotext is diagnosed as ancillary and it is argued that a translation of the ‘X as would have been written by Y’ parody should harness a replacement of X, functional for the target culture. As an experiment, possible substitutes are suggested for the Russian and Anglo-Saxon cultures, correspondent with the languages into which Leśmian, the parodied poet, has been quite extensively rendered. The author discusses factors conditioning the translatability of parody, including reception in the target context. The analysis closes with a call for translations. One such response to the challenge is appended.

Translating Linguistic Poetry: Mario Martín Gijón’s Rendicción in Polish, English, and French

The lyrical work of Spanish poet Mario Martín Gijón is linguistic in the extreme. Not only does he juxtapose similar-sounding words, but he fuses them graphically into one, with parentheses containing a word fragment [me(re)ce, entreg(u)arme] or two fragments separated by a slash [conju(r/nt)os, in(v/f)ierno]; he also uses enjambment within words (cor / reo, tarde / seosa). These techniques result in a multiplication of readings, which constitutes a major challenge for translators.

Terence Dooley, Miguel Ángel Real and the author of this essay (here in the dual role of translator and researcher) translated Martín Gijón’s poetry into English, French and Polish, respectively. Each translator had at their disposal language matter of very distinct properties. The translator into French was able to take advantage of the largely convergent Romance roots, which made it possible to recreate many word games on a one-to-one scale or with only minimal changes. English offered such a possibility much less frequently; Polish – only once. Therefore, the English and Polish translations are re-creations to a much larger extent than the French one. However, the significant differences between each of the versions stem not only from the properties of the target languages, but also from the different approaches of the translators.

From Jądro ciemności via Serce mroku towards Serce ciemności or on Jacek Dukaj’s Translatory Experiments

The article examines two works by Jacek Dukaj Serce mroku and Serce ciemności. The former is Dukaj’s short story inspired by Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness while the latter is an experimental translation of it. The author argues that in both cases Dukaj uses similar methods for experiential transference. The techniques comprise amplification, explication and condensation, among others. Dukaj called his form of translation „transfiguration or transfusion” whereas the author proposes for this the term transcreation. Transcreation is an aesthetic reinterpretation of the original work suited to a new target language audience. In other words, it is an authorial version of Heart of Darkness which leaves no space for interpretative indeterminacy.

Putting Action into Words: Intersemiotic Surtitles in Modernised Opera Productions

Since their debut over operatic stages in the early 1980s, surtitles have become an important part of the audiovisual translation field. It is also, among others, thanks to them that opera is currently regaining its popularity – they make opera productions more accessible and audience-friendly. Surtitles can also considerably shape an opera production, especially when it is modernised. Modernising operatic productions is nowadays one of the most popular trends in major opera houses, though it is not free of many challenges. Libretti are always sung in original, but bringing the action a few centuries ahead may mean that the original text does not correspond to what the viewers can see on the stage. In such cases surtitles may serve as a bridge between the original and stage design. Recently, some opera houses have started treating surtitles as an integral part of their productions and sometimes the whole translation follows the modernised production both semantically and stylistically. The original for such translations is then not just the libretto, but the whole production and surtitles become intersemiotic. This clash between different messages is the source of innovations, and surtitles, which closely follow modernised productions may be considered to be a translational experiment.

Many Voices in Retranslation. A Review of Retranslating Joyce for the 21st Century

This article is a review of Jolanta Wawrzycka and Erika Mihálycsa’s edited volume Retranslating Joyce for the 21st Century (European Joyce Studies 30, Brill/ Rodopi, 2021). It discusses a number of core issues raised in the book, starting from the observation that 21st century translations of Joyce’s work are by necessity retranslations, and that this necessarily makes them qualitatively different from first translations. The chapters discuss many features of retranslation in the context of Ulysses in particular, ranging from the notion of retranslation hypothesis and comparisons between versions to issues of dealing with many voices and the creativity this requires; the necessity of contextualising the different versions; and the roles of the retranslator, reviser and editor. The review also makes some suggestions for future research on retranslating Joyce.

Article translated by: Zofia Ziemann

All Colours of Translation

The article discusses the collective book Prismatic Translation edited by Matthew Reynolds (Cambridge: Legenda, 2019) in the light of the history of optical metaphors for translation and recent modernism studies. Tracing the conceptual genealogy of the term and the subtleties of its theoretical usage, the reviewer argues that “prismatic translation” remains an impressive though still excessively ambiguous translation studies metaphor that has not yet solidified into a precise and operative theoretical tool. Notwithstanding these objections, Prismatic Translation can be considered an excellent reference for professionals and students engaged in literary and cultural translation studies as well as comparative modernism studies.

The Culture of Translation and Criticism. Friedrich Schleiermacher’s Translation Models in the Piotr de Bończa Bukowski’s Studies

Friedrich Schleiermacher’s philosophic-philological reflection forms the creative foundation of modern translation science. It creates spaces for constructing more and more inspirations in literature and culture through artistic translation also in the 21st century. In his monograph of the German theologian and translator Friedrich Schleiermacher, Piotr de Bończa Bukowski presents Schleiermacher’s views on the exceptional importance of disseminating world literature through translation, various aspects of the choice of text and translator, translation thoughts and the requirements Schleiermacher set for literary criticism, and translation criticism in particular. The following article focuses on the concept of the thoughts of the German Romanticist and on the selection of research guideposts in the reading of the Polish comparative translator.