Translator as Polemicist: The Clash of Paradigms in the First Polish Edition of Said’s Orientalism

Weronika Szwebs

Titles

Translator as Polemicist: The Clash of Paradigms in the First Polish Edition of Said’s Orientalism

Abstract

The article analyzes the paratextual activity of Witold Kalinowski, the author of the first Polish translation of Edward Said’s Orientalism (1991), paying special attention to his polemical remarks and their relation to the vision of scientific, theoretical discourse. The translator does not strive for invisibility. On the contrary, he uses footnotes and brackets inserted in the main text to comment on different aspects of Said’s work. He signals problems ensuing from the differences between languages and cultures, explains the nature of linguistic difficulties and justifies his own solutions. He also takes on the role of editor and commentator, explaining Said’s allusions, supplementing the discussion with additional information, anticipating readers’ doubts about certain facts that might sound suspicious, and even inserting bracketed additions and clarifications which suggest that the original is unclear or imprecise. Finally, Kalinowski overtly expresses his polemical attitude: he provides certain parts of Said’s discussion with sic! annotation (thus suggesting that the author is wrong) and adds footnotes where he argues with what he sees as the author’s dubious and far-fetched interpretations. The Translator’s Note gives certain insight into the nature of the disagreement between the author and the translator. Explaining why Orientalism is a difficult book to translate, Kalinowski enumerates its troubling features: the combination of different types of discourse and the large number of polemical accents, due to which the book is not fully scientific. The moment of the book’s publication might suggest that such a qualification could have been a result of the then scarce presence of poststructuralist thought and cultural studies in the Polish humanities. However, the analysis of Witold Kalinowski’s articles as well as his doctoral thesis from the 1980s shows both his awareness of the theoretical currents that influenced Orientalism and his critical attitude towards Marxist thought. It is the aversion to the Marxist-inspired interpretations – both Kalinowski’s personal methodological conviction and a widespread attitude in the early post-communist Poland – that seems to be the reason of the clash in the first Polish translation of Said’s work.

Translated by Gabriela Dudek.

*The article was written as part of the project “Translation of theoretical discourses in the Polish humanities at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries” (no. 2017/25/N/HS2/01585) financed by the National Science Centre, Poland. The author also obtained funding for a doctoral scholarship from the National Science Centre (no. 2018/28/T/HS2/00514).

* Originally published in Polish in Przekładaniec vol. 41, 2020 (DOI: https://doi.org/10.4467/16891864PC.21.006.13588).

The article analyzes the paratextual activity of Witold Kalinowski, the author of the first Polish translation of Edward Said’s Orientalism (1991), paying special attention to his polemical remarks and their relation to the vision of scientific, theoretical discourse. The translator does not strive for invisibility. On the contrary, he uses footnotes and brackets inserted in the main text to comment on different aspects of Said’s work. He signals problems ensuing from the differences between languages and cultures, explains the nature of linguistic difficulties and justifies his own solutions. He also takes on the role of editor and commentator, explaining Said’s allusions, supplementing the discussion with additional information, anticipating readers’ doubts about certain facts that might sound suspicious, and even inserting bracketed additions and clarifications which suggest that the original is unclear or imprecise. Finally, Kalinowski overtly expresses his polemical attitude: he provides certain parts of Said’s discussion with sic! annotation (thus suggesting that the author is wrong) and adds footnotes where he argues with what he sees as the author’s dubious and far-fetched interpretations. The Translator’s Note gives certain insight into the nature of the disagreement between the author and the translator. Explaining why Orientalism is a difficult book to translate, Kalinowski enumerates its troubling features: the combination of different types of discourse and the large number of polemical accents, due to which the book is not fully scientific. The moment of the book’s publication might suggest that such a qualification could have been a result of the then scarce presence of poststructuralist thought and cultural studies in the Polish humanities. However, the analysis of Witold Kalinowski’s articles as well as his doctoral thesis from the 1980s shows both his awareness of the theoretical currents that influenced Orientalism and his critical attitude towards Marxist thought. It is the aversion to the Marxist-inspired interpretations – both Kalinowski’s personal methodological conviction and a widespread attitude in the early post-communist Poland – that seems to be the reason of the clash in the first Polish translation of Said’s work.

Translated by Gabriela Dudek.

*The article was written as part of the project “Translation of theoretical discourses in the Polish humanities at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries” (no. 2017/25/N/HS2/01585) financed by the National Science Centre, Poland. The author also obtained funding for a doctoral scholarship from the National Science Centre (no. 2018/28/T/HS2/00514).

* Originally published in Polish in Przekładaniec vol. 41, 2020 (DOI: https://doi.org/10.4467/16891864PC.21.006.13588).

Keywords

travelling theory, Edward Said, orientalism, postcolonialism, translation of theory, translator's visibility

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Information

Information: Przekładaniec, Issues in English, Special Issue 2022 – East-West. Transactions, pp. 120 - 148

DOI: https://doi.org/10.4467/16891864ePC.22.014.16934

Article type: Original article

Titles:

Polish:

Translator as Polemicist: The Clash of Paradigms in the First Polish Edition of Said’s Orientalism

English:

Translator as Polemicist: The Clash of Paradigms in the First Polish Edition of Said’s Orientalism

Authors

Weronika Szwebs

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9806-515X

Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Wieniawskiego 1, 61-712 Poznań, Poland

Published at: 2022

Article status: Open

Licence: CC BY

Percentage share of authors:

Weronika Szwebs (Author) - 100%

Gabriela Dudek (Translator) - 0%

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-

Publication languages:

English

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