On parle ici non pas d’une culture de traduire, mais d’une telle culture
litteraire qui devait son origine et ses qualites au fait que les traductions litteraires etaient
pratiquees, qu’on traduisait d’une langue a une autre les ouevres litteraires ecrites et
qu’on les traduisait a l’ecrit. Or, telle etait dans l’Antiquite la seule culture litteraire
latine qui, depuis la moitie du IIIe siecle avant J.-C., se composait en grande partie
des traductions du grec. Celles-ci pourtant n’etaient pas ce que sont les traductions
d’aujourd’hui. En traduisant en latin les ouevres grecques, on les transformait plus ou
moins, en en faisant des ouevres nouvelles: on en faisait les traductions qui etaient en
meme temps les imitations et les emulations propres. Rien de tel genre n’etait connu
dans la litterature antique grecque. Les Grecs qui se contentaient d’imiter leur ecrivains
d’antan, Homere en premier lieu, ne faisaient les traductions des autres langues ni
dans l’Antiquite, ni meme a l’ epoque byzantine. La traduction de la Bible hebraique
au IIIe siecle avant J.-C. devait son origine non pas aux Grecs, mais aux Juifs de la
Diaspore qui ne comprenaient plus leur langue maternelle. Pour l’Occident latin, au
contraire, la pratique litteraire des ecrivains romains antiques est restee exemplaire et
obligatoire: du Moyen-Age a travers les siecles de la Renaissance jusqu’a l’epoque
moderne le paradigme antique romain de la traduction-imitation-emulation regnait
non seulement dans les ecrits latins de ces epoques, mais aussi dans ceux composes
en langues vernaculaires. Les ecrivains de la Renaissance, latins et vernaculaires, y
etaient extremement diligents, en traduisant les oeuvres des auteurs anciens grecs en
latin et leurs oeuvres et a la fois les oeuvres des auteurs latins en langues vernaculaires.
De meme que les ecrivains latins antiques, ils pratiquaient eux aussi les taductionsimitations-
emulations.
C’est en analysant, sous l’aspect de cette caracteristique generale, quelques
exemples de la pratique des traducteurs romains – de Live-Andronique et de Catulle
poetes, de Ciceron, traducteur a la fois de la poesie et de la prose grecques et en meme
temps theoricien de la traduction – que l’auteur de l’article essaye de caracteriser les
splendeurs et les ombres de ce qu’il appelle la culture de traduction.

The culture of Ancient Greek literature is very different from our modern
one. As its medium, the Ancient Greek language is incomprehensible outside the
general context of Greek civilisation. Any translation of an Ancient Greek text is to
some extent false, or at least artifi cial, and it cannot express the special character of the
reality of the original. Selected translations of passages from Homer, Herodotus and
Aeschines illustrate the incompatibility of the ancient and modern styles of narration.
The study of the language of literature in relation to the reality it represents is advocated
as a possible solution to this problem. Readers are also recommended to make the effort
to study the ancient originals instead of reading the texts in translations, which can
never be fl awless.

The author takes a close look at translating ancient texts from the viewpoint
of a historian. He explains why historians of Antiquity are usually against the very
idea of translating Greek and Latin literature. He then proceeds to argue that historical
knowledge is indispensable if a translation is to be rendered. This argument is supported
by a detailed analysis of the standard Polish translation of two biographies by Plutarch,
Life of Aristides and Life of Cimon.

Using Plautus’ comedies as an example, the article shows how the translation
of erotica has varied depending on the dominant habits and customs of a given period.
It underlines two opposite trends: one allows an increasing license to evoke fantasy;
the other inhibits the graphic and vulgar side of the texts (especially in the choice of
language). If an erotic pun in the original evokes only sexual associations and allusions,
translators often feel obliged to be bold in their rendering of the text. But there can be
no consenting to the use of vulgar language. On the one hand, translators are hindered
by the conviction that language of the characters in ancient plays should not appear too
modern. On the other hand, dictionaries offer a practically biblical (or merely archaic)
vocabulary when it comes to the obscene. In effect, erotica usually tends to sound more
archaic than the rest of the text.

Before recently, there was no full Polish translation of Apollonius Rhodius’
Argonautica. However, fi ve Polish classical scholars, W. Klinger, Z. Abramowiczówna,
J. Łanowski, W. Steffen and W. Appel, have translated excerpts of this Hellenistic epic
into Polish. A comparative analysis of these excerpts with the relevant passages from
the fi rst complete Polish version of the Argonautica by E. Żybert-Pruchnicka makes it
possible to trace the individual strategies of the translators. The most important decision
which every translator of epic poetry has to take at the beginning of his or her work is
to choose the form in which the poem will be rendered. In Polish there are three main
traditions of translating epics: in thirteen-syllable meter, in prose, and in hexameter.
The last type of versifi cation was chosen by fi ve out of six of the translators mentioned
above; only Świderkówna decided to render the Apollonian poem in thirteen-syllable
verse. There are also stylistic and language differences that occur in the passages, due to
the individual preferences of the translators, as well as the writing style characteristic for
the times in which they lived. Klinger, for instance, prefers modernist stylistics, while
Steffen chooses to archaise the language of the poem. However, the aim of this article
is not to evaluate the translations but to open a discussion on how poems written over
two thousand years ago might be rendered in an adequate and contemporary fashion.

We owe many aspects of Western culture to the Greeks; yet it was the Romans
who took the fi rst steps in the fi eld of translation. This article presents a selection of
characteristics of translation methods used by the Ancients and, more particularly, their
broad understanding of translation as exemplifi ed by Aulus Gellius, Roman writer of
the second century CE.

This paper, based on research conducted by the pioneers of the history of
oral interpreting (A. Hermann, I. Kurz) in the 1950s and on modern archaeological
evidence, presents the earliest references to interpreters in the Bronze Age, in the Near
East and the Mediterranean area (Mesopotamia, Egypt, Crete, Carthage). It discusses
a Sumerian Early Dynastic List, a Sumerian-Eblaic glossary from Ebla, the Shu-ilishu’s
Cylinder Seal, the inscriptions and reliefs from the Tombs of the Princes of Elephantine
and of Horemheb, the mention of one-third of a mina of tin dispensed at Ugarit to the
interpreter of Minoan merchants and the Hanno’s stele, as well as terms used by these
early civilisations to denote an interpreter: eme-bal, targumannu, jmy-r(A) aw, and mls.

The paper discusses a translation of the Roman tragedy Historia albo
tragedia Oktawii cesarzówny rzymskiej (History or Tragedy of Octavia the Roman
Emperor’s Daughter) by Józef Jan Woliński, published in 1728 and completed shortly
beforehand. Its author presents himself as a faithful servant of the Wessels and dedicates
his adaptation of the fi rst-century praetexta Octavia to Maria Józefa Wessel, Konstanty
Sobieski’s widow. The translator adapts the Latin text, on the one hand emphasising
Nero’s ferocity and despotism, on the other employing the stereotype of the abandoned
wife. The cruel emperor is charged with all the responsibility for the evil which consumes
Rome and his relatives, while Octavia is depicted as a fragile and passive victim of
his malice. However, the translator does not disregard the protagonist’s intimacy with
her brother and her nurse. Woliński underlines the moral aspect of the drama, hinting
at the imminent collapse of Nero’s power and his violent death by suicide, which
does not feature in the original. By removing Octavia’s fi nal lamentation, the Polish
translator makes her follow her nurse’s advice and desist from expressing her grief.
Given Woliński’s closeness to his benefactors around the time of writing his Historia
albo tragedia, it seems plausible to suggest the drama was privately commissioned, and
conceived as a solace to Wessel’s concerns when handing her beloved estate at Żółkiew
to her odious brother-in-law, Jakub Sobieski.

Among dozens of new translations of the New Testament published in the
last fi fty years, there are several versions by Jewish scholars which have yet to receive
enough attention. This article offers an analysis of the most characteristic features of
these translations, such as criticism of the existing versions outlined in the introductory
sections, as well as actual techniques by which the Jewish origin and character of the
text is emphasised in three spheres: superfi cial, cultural and religious, and theological.
Each of these is illustrated with numerous examples, juxtaposed with traditional
versions. It is argued that, regardless of the ideological motivation underlying the origin
of the Jewish translations of the New Testament, they offer valuable and otherwise
unavailable insights into the original message of the ancient Christian writings.

The essay focuses on Czesław Miłosz’s translation of Psalm 51, one of the
most celebrated penitential psalms. Unlike the medieval practice of illuminating books
of psalms, where the images offered a vivid and concrete narrative context for the pleas
and lamentations, Miłosz aims to highlight the universal and archetypal dimension of
King David’s prayers. He sets out to create a new hieratic Polish style to reconcile
liturgical use with the evocative qualities and unique prosodies of Hebrew poetry,
without sacrifi cing a coherent theological interpretation. To reproduce the characteristic
repetitions and parallelisms, Miłosz draws lexical and syntactic inspiration from the
earliest Polish translations of the psalms, notably the Psałterz Puławski (Psalter of
Puławy, late fi fteenth century). Ultimately, his translation forms a complex amalgam,
bringing together the religious intuitions of Judaism, the hieratic tradition of the Polish
language and the semantic intensity of Miłosz’s own poetry.

The paper presents the fi rst almost complete edition of Shakespeare’s sonnets
in Polish which, appeared in 1913 and has since been forgotten. The translator, Maria
Sułkowska, chose to appear under the pseudonym Mus. She omitted sonnets 134 and
135 as untranslatable puns, and wrote a preface in verse where she expounded her
views on Shakespeare’s Sonnets and their translation. Her version is shown in the light
of a highly critical 1914 review and in the context of the fi rst Polish monograph on
Shakespeare’s poetry by Roman Dyboski (1914) who quoted Sułkowska’s translation
throughout, although with a few alterations of his own. Even though some of the sonnets
must be a challenge to the Polish reader because of the choice of obsolete vocabulary or
syntax, the whole merits attention for consistency of the translator’s decisions as well
as the attention to detail.

This comparative analysis of two translations of Charles Perrault’s
“Cendrillon ou la petite pantoufl e de verre” shows how the French conte was adapted
for children in England at different moments and refl ects different projects. Robert
Samber’s “Cinderilla: or, The Little Glass Slipper,” published in Histories, or Tales of
Past Times. With Morals (1729), is known as the fi rst English translation of the tale.
More recently, Angela Carter’s retranslation “Cinderella: or, The Little Glass Slipper,”
published in The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault (1977), pays homage to Samber
but also modernises the tale to carry a more emancipatory message. While Samber’s
translation refl ects the working conditions of Grub Street writers and acculturation of
Perrault’s fairy tale in Protestant England, Carter gives it a feminist twist as she turns
it into a “fable of the politics of experience.” She would later rewrite it as “Ashputtle
or The Mother’s Ghost” (1987), this time using Manheim’s English translation of the
Grimms’ “Aschenputtel” as a starting point.