Magdalena Heydel

The main problem discussed in the paper is the authenticity of speech of the inhabitants of Chełmno in the sequence filmed outside the parish church in Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah. The authors analyze a number of characteristic features of the bystanders’language vis a vis the French translation provided on-stage by the interpreter Barbara Janicka, and the English subtitles. It is argued that the language of the bystanders carries important information on the speakers’individual and collective identity, and gives clues on the construction of memory, not just on the level of meanings, but also in its materiality. The analysis focuses on four planes which were identified as important for the construction of the implicit messages: semantic ambiguity of the utterances; narrative techniques used by the speakers; verb forms, especially the impersonal use of verbs; and syntax. The specific linguistic traits of the language used testify to the fact that the speakers lack adequate tools to verbalize their traumatic memories and to reflect on the reality that they were part of. The analysis of the linguistic landscape of the scene also leads to conclusions about the instrumentalization of speakers on the part of the film director. The French and English translation in and of the sequence –a summary rather than a rendition –clearly, albeit perhaps not intentionally, contributes to this effect. Through linguistic analysis and wide contextual interpretation, unpacking the way the bystanders speak, creates a new, hitherto unacknowledged, source of knowledge on witnessing and trauma.

The main problem discussed in the paper is the authenticity of speech of the inhabitants of Chełmno in the sequence filmed outside the parish church in Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah. The authors analyze a number of characteristic features of the bystanders’ language vis a vis the French translation provided by the interpreter  Barbara Janicka, and the English subtitles. It is argued that the language of the bystanders carries important information on the speakers’ individual and collective identity, and gives clues on the construction of memory, not just on the level of meanings, but also in its materiality. The analysis focuses on four planes which were identified as important for the construction of the implicit messages: the semantic ambiguity of the utterances; the narrative techniques used by the speakers; verb forms, especially the impersonal use of verbs; and syntax. The specific linguistic traits testify to the fact that the speakers lack adequate tools to verbalize their traumatic memories and to reflect the reality that they were part of. The analysis of the linguistic landscape of the scene also leads to conclusions about the instrumentalization of speakers on the part of the film director. The French and English translation in and of the sequence – a summary rather than a rendition – clearly, albeit perhaps not intentionally, contributes to this effect. Through linguistic analysis and wide contextual interpretation, unpacking the way the bystanders speak creates a new, hitherto unacknowledged, source of knowledge on witnessing and trauma.

In pursuing Pound’s ideology on translation and adaptation, my paper suggests that the appeal of interpreting translation through a framework of cultural symbology lies, to a great extent, in the power and appeal of the narrative of modernity. Whether we argue that Pound’s art of translation can be explained historically or we take Pound’s aesthetics as infused mainly with ideogram devotion to order and authority, we invariably assume the identity between his idiom of translation and the grammar of modernity. My paper is exploring aspects of Pound’s logic binding translation and imitation, which I take to be a mode of fashioning, with own poetic mould. This logic is that of semblance and appropriation, which dictates that his newly found idiom bridges the division between verbal and non-verbal, between language and the given or phenomenal. 

Starting from the assumption that poetry is a communication between minds, mediated by its style, I maintain that its translation should take into account both the way poetic style reflects a cognitive state and also the cognitive effects of style upon the reader.
Parks (1998) notes that the “divergence” of target from source text in translated novels gives us access to the “vision” of the original writer. I consider whether such divergence also applies to translated poetry.
Looking at translations of Wilfred Owen and Michael Hamburger into German, I argue that the point of greatest divergence from the source text corresponds to what Riffaterre (1959) called a “convergence”: a point in the text at which a number of stylistic features come together, and I link these two concepts to the Chinese notion of the “eye of the poem”. This is the point at which the concentration of stylistic features such as repetition, ambiguity and metaphor allows access to the cognitive state informing the poem and also gives rise to a concentration of cognitive effects.
The eye of the poem is not just a metaphor; and it can be located not only by comparing target text with source text, as Parks does, but also by close stylistic analysis of the original poem. It is essential to the way poetry communicates and thus, for the translation to be not only a successful translation but also a successful poem, it must both recognise the eye of the original and also itself have an eye.

Claude Lanzmann’s nine-hour documentary Shoah (1985) is a rich source of knowledge on the Nazi extermination of Jews in Central Europe. Its main material consists of interviews with people who witnessed the Holocaust, conducted in the very locations of the wartime events. The present paper analyses an iconic scene from Chełmno on Ner, where between 1940–43 and 1944–45 the first Nazi death camp was located. A group of locals – gathered in front of the parish church, around one of the survivors of the camp – recall the events, sometimes in stunning technical detail. Their Polish utterances are translated into French; English subtitles are based on the French of the interpreter. The Polish linguistic material is not neutral: it is marked with dialectal and sociolectal features; the speakers engage in conversation on the side, comment on the situation of the interview in various ways, verbal and non-verbal. In the translation, both into French and English, sentences are skipped, the plurality of voices is flattened, and differences in memory are smoothed out. The resulting text is rather a summary than a translation. The paper offers close-up analyses of chosen sequences from the interview to show the complexity of the communication situation and the extent of distortion caused by the way translation works in the film. It also offers an alternative translation, which aims at giving voice to the actual people of Chełmno and acknowledging as fully as possible the complication and difficulty of memory construction through language, especially in a highly traumatic context. It hopes to offer insights into the bystander position in Holocaust discourse.

Claude Lanzmann’s nine-hour documentary Shoah (1985) is a rich source of knowledge on the Nazi extermination of Jews in Central Europe. Its main material consists of interviews with people who witnessed the Holocaust, conducted in the very locations of the wartime events. The present paper analyses an iconic scene from Chełmno on Ner, where between 1940–1943 and later 1944–1945 the first Nazi death camp was located. A group of locals –gathered in front of the parish church, around one of the survivors of the camp –recall the events, sometimes in stunning technical detail. Their Polish utterances are translated into French; English subtitles are based on the French of the interpreter. The Polish linguistic material is not neutral: it is marked with dialectal and sociolectal features; the speakers engage in conversation on the side, comment on the situation of the interview in various ways, verbal and non-verbal. In the translation, both into French and English, sentences are skipped, the plurality of voices is flattened, and differences in memory are smoothed out. The resulting text is rather a summary than a translation. The paper offers close-up analyses of chosen sequences from the interview to show the complexity of the communication situation and the extent of distortion caused by the way translation works in the film. It also offers an alternative translation, which aims at giving voice to the actual people of Chełmno and acknowledging as fully as possible the complication and difficulty of memory construction through language, especially in a highly traumatic area. It hopes to offer insights into the bystander position in Holocaust discourse.