The Quest for the Golden Fleece: on Translating Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica
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RIS BIB ENDNOTEThe Quest for the Golden Fleece: on Translating Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica
Publication date: 05.11.2013
Przekładaniec, Issues in English, Special Issue 2013 – Selection from the Archives, pp. 56-70
https://doi.org/10.4467/16891864ePC.13.037.1454Authors
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The Quest for the Golden Fleece: on Translating Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica
Before recently, there was no full Polish translation of Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica. However, five 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.
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Information: Przekładaniec, Issues in English, Special Issue 2013 – Selection from the Archives, pp. 56-70
Article type: Original article
University of Wrocław, plac Uniwersytecki 1, 50-137 Wrocław, Poland
University of Lodz, Poland, ul. Narutowicza 65, 90-131 Łódź
Published at: 05.11.2013
Article status: Open
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