The aim of the article is to introduce a new series of studies on theoretical, methodological, analytical, and interpretive issues concerning “translation anomalies”. Functioning as a medium of artistic innovation and creative cognition, experimental literary translation can be compared to a laboratory, both for translators as well as literary and cultural scholars. It enables us 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, experiments in translation 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.

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.

* This article was written as a part of research fellowship under the Bekker NAWA Programme (agreement no. PPN/BEK/2019/1/00264/U/00001).

This article discusses the challenges of translating poetry generators in multi-authorial, creative collaborations and within the context of understanding text as a process. Stephanie Strickland’s and Nick Montfort’s Sea and Spar Between is in many respects a translational challenge that in some languages might be considered 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 arrangements, 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. Such a collision of cultures, languages, and tools becomes amplified when transposed 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 ourselves, 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.

Translated by the Authors

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 which will be functional for the target culture. As an experiment, possible substitutes are suggested for two cultures: Russian and Anglo-Saxon, corresponding to the languages into which Leśmian, the parodied poet, has been most extensively rendered. The author discusses factors conditioning the translatability of parody, including reception in the target context. The analysis concludes with a call for translations. Two such responses to the challenge are appended.

* Originally published in Polish in Przekładaniec vol. 43, 2021, DOI 10.4467/16891864PC.21.031.15145. The Appendix is extended as compared with the Polish version.

This article discusses the volume of essays Prismatic Translation, edited by Matthew Reynolds (Cambridge: Legenda, 2019) in light of the history of optical metaphors for translation and recent modernist studies. Tracing the conceptual genealogy of the term and the subtleties of its theoretical usage, the author 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 volume for professionals and students engaged in literary and cultural translation studies, as well as comparative modernist studies.

In their attempt to provide formal accounts of the concepts of truth and meaning, Tarski and Davidson did not completely purify their theories of cumbersome terms that retain a ‘semantic’ link to the physical reality. However, it can be argued that this burden was not located where the authors and their subsequent commentators generally claimed. The following article aims to demonstrate that a common semantic concept at the heart of their analyses was the idea of translation process. Firstly then, both theories will be briefly reconstructed on the basis of texts by the philosophers themselves. Subsequently, the place of a translative element will be pointed out. Its recognition will provide an interesting answer to several objections against the accounts, also shedding a new light on the outcome of their venture. Yet most importantly, the study shows that Tarski’s and Davidson’s definitions ultimately clinch an inextricable connection between translation and truth – a bond which should be acknowledged in any proper enquiry into the meaning of verity.