Erudition, Wit and Intertextuality in Translation. Umberto Eco’s Turning Back the Clock: Hot Wars and Media Populism in Polish
Umberto Eco’s work within the fi eld of translation studies is not well known in Poland
(for example, his Dire quasi la stessa cosa. Esperienze di traduzione is still waiting for
its Polish version). Fortunately, Polish readers know and enjoy his fi ction and essays;
most recently they have been offered Turning Back the Clock: Hot Wars and Media
Populism. Its three translators, Joanna Ugniewska, Krzysztof Żaboklicki and Anna
Wasilewska met the same challenges as other translators of Eco’s works: erudition,
wit and intertextuality. Moreover, they had to deal with the fact that this collection of
column articles is a compositional whole anchored in a specifi c political and social
situation. Therefore, Eco’s typical reliance on the intelligence of his readers and his
intellectual games had to be accounted for: the translators could not explain away
the pleasure of arrival at the solution to Eco’s puzzles. Ugniewska, Żaboklicki and
Wasilewska rely on two strategies, preferred by Eco himself: they treat translation as
communication between two cultures and they try to avoid overexplaining or improving
the original (though occasionally they cannot resist amplifying or glossing). Another
question is the untranslatability (or partial translatability) of Eco’s linguistic puns – the
Polish translators offer interesting equivalents, which are discussed in greater detail.

Erudition, Wit and Intertextuality in Translation. Umberto Eco’s Turning Back the Clock: Hot Wars and Media Populism in Polish
Umberto Eco’s work within the fi eld of translation studies is not well known in Poland
(for example, his Dire quasi la stessa cosa. Esperienze di traduzione is still waiting for
its Polish version). Fortunately, Polish readers know and enjoy his fi ction and essays;
most recently they have been offered Turning Back the Clock: Hot Wars and Media
Populism. Its three translators, Joanna Ugniewska, Krzysztof Żaboklicki and Anna
Wasilewska met the same challenges as other translators of Eco’s works: erudition,
wit and intertextuality. Moreover, they had to deal with the fact that this collection of
column articles is a compositional whole anchored in a specifi c political and social
situation. Therefore, Eco’s typical reliance on the intelligence of his readers and his
intellectual games had to be accounted for: the translators could not explain away
the pleasure of arrival at the solution to Eco’s puzzles. Ugniewska, Żaboklicki and
Wasilewska rely on two strategies, preferred by Eco himself: they treat translation as
communication between two cultures and they try to avoid overexplaining or improving
the original (though occasionally they cannot resist amplifying or glossing). Another
question is the untranslatability (or partial translatability) of Eco’s linguistic puns – the
Polish translators offer interesting equivalents, which are discussed in greater detail.