It Gives You Shivers: Translating Polish Holocaust Testimony into Brazilian Portuguese

In this article, I try to lay out clearly and discuss selected issues encountered during the translation (with Eda Nagayama) of Bogdan Bartinkowski’s collection of stories Dzieciństwo w pasiakach (1969) into Brazilian Portuguese. My text combines a scholarly dimension with one of self-commentary in order to offer some general reflection on the subject of the ethics of translating testimony. It consists of three parts. In the first, I provide a concise overview of the state of research on the connections between translation and studies on cultural memory. Next, I present a series of observations relating to the emotional dimension of the process of translating Holocaust testimonies. In the final section, I compare solutions adopted in translations of Bartnikowski’s memoir into German, English, Italian, Spanish, French, Russian, and Portuguese. In the conclusions, I try to define the memory-(re)productive role of translation: reproductive, in that the translation of testimony demands a respect for the truth of the signs present in the original and their rendering in the target culture; and productive (creative) inasmuch as it demands of the author of the translation a series of procedures with the aim of inscribing a universal theme within the specific field of cultural memory.

*Niniejszy tekst powstałdzięki wsparciu programu SPECTRESS (Social Performance, Cultural Trauma and the Reestablishing of Solid Sovereignties), w ramach którego w sierpniu i wrześniu 2017 przebywałem na Uniwersytecie São Paulo.

In this article, I try to lay out clearly and discuss selected issues encountered during the translation (with Eda Nagayama) of Bogdan Bartinkowski’s collection of stories Dzieciństwo w pasiakach (1969) into Brazilian Portuguese. My text combines a scholarly dimension with one of self-commentary in order to offer some general reflection on the subject of the ethics of translating testimony. It consists of three parts. In the first, I provide a concise overview of the state of research on the connections between translation and studies on cultural memory. Next, I present a series of observations relating to the emotional dimension of the process of translating Holocaust testimonies. In the final section, I compare solutions adopted in translations of Bartnikowski’s memoir into German, English, Italian, Spanish, French, Russian, and Portuguese. In the conclusions, I try to define the memory-(re)productive role of translation: reproductive, in that the translation of testimony demands a respect for the truth of the signs present in the original and their rendering in the target culture; and productive (creative) inasmuch as it demands of the author of the translation a series of procedures with the aim of inscribing a universal theme within the specific field of cultural memory.

*Niniejszy tekst powstałdzięki wsparciu programu SPECTRESS (Social Performance, Cultural Trauma and the Reestablishing of Solid Sovereignties), w ramach którego w sierpniu i wrześniu 2017 przebywałem na Uniwersytecie São Paulo.