From Achleitner to Zweig – Three Decades of Austrian Literature in Poland
The bibliographical research on Polish translations of Austrian literature and their
reception was published in 2009 as Austrian Literature in Poland from 1980 to 2008.
An Annotated Bibliography (Literatura austriacka w Polsce w latach 1980-2008.
Bibliografi a adnotowana, edited by Edward Białek and Katarzyna Nowakowska). This
monumental work of over twenty Polish scholars features 266 authors on 500 pages.
It tracks down translations of fi ction and non-fi ction; it lists monographs, articles and
reviews (including theatre and TV adaptations and their reception). The abundance
and variety of the material documents well the familiarity of the Polish audience with
Austrian literary output. Relatively a small country, Austria nevertheless enjoys a great
popularity in Poland. The image of Austrian literature that the bibliography uncovers
is fl attering: the authors presented through translation and literary discussion are wellchosen
and representative, although there are some inexplicable absences – for example,
Karl Kraus – which may be caused by delay, rather than by lack of interest. Three
reasons for such a thorough presentation of Austrian literature in Poland are worth
mentioning: the well-recognized contribution of Austrian authors to the world literature
(it is enough to mention Arthur Schnitzler, the “inventor” of the stream of consciousness;
Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Georg Trakl; concrete poets such as Friedrich Achleitner,
Hans Carl Artmann, Konrad Bayer and Ernst Jandl; prose writers and playwrights such
as Stefan Zweig, Thomas Bernhard or Elfriede Jelinek); the common history of Austria
and Poland; and the presence of excellent translators.

Few stories have been translated so often and into so many languages as the classical
fairy tales. Therefore, they are a true challenge for translation studies. This article wants
to outline a methodology for investigating fairy tales in translation. The method is
essentially a comparative textual analysis, inspired by translation studies, literary theory,
linguistic criticism and discourse analysis. It can be applied to the synchronic research
of fairy tale translations within a restricted period of time as well as to the diachronic
research of translations of one or more fairy tales over a longer period of time. A step-by-
-step model is presented which makes it possible to classify and analyze changes in
translations as well as adaptations. In order to bridge the gap between content and
linguistic levels, a linguistic analysis is linked to focal points, grouped under categories
from literary studies. The examples are taken from six recent Dutch translations of
Sleeping Beauty, published between 1995 and 2007. In the fi nal part of this study,
a scheme is offered for the interpretation of the changes the analysis brought to light.
It takes into account individual as well as social factors and it is based on the concepts
of norms, systems and functions. By presenting a structured method of analysis, this
article hopes to reinvigorate the study of fairy tales in translation.

L’étude comparative de deux traductions de «Cendrillon ou la petite pantoufl e de
verre» de Charles Perrault montre comment le conte est réorienté vers la jeunesse en
Angleterre à partir de projets très différents. «Cinderilla: or, The Little Glass Slipper»,
publié par Robert Samber dans Histories, or Tales of Past Times. With Morals en 1729,
est considéré comme la première traduction du conte en langue anglaise. Plus près
de nous, sa retraduction par l’écrivain britannique Angela Carter, «Cinderella: or, The
Little Glass Slipper», parue dans The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault en 1977, donne
une nouvelle actualité au conte de Perrault. La première traduction propose un calque
du conte qui illustre les conditions matérielles et l’interdiscours des traducteurs de Grub
Street au début du XVIIIe siècle, tandis que la deuxième adapte le conte pour les enfants
dans une perspective féministe au XXe siècle. Mon analyse s’attache surtout à dégager
les enjeux de la (re)traduction de Carter, qui se démarque délibérément de Samber pour
renouveler le sens du conte de Perrault et de sa morale.

Once Upon a Time There Was a Puss in the Boots: Hanna Januszewska’s Polish Translation and Adaptation of Charles Perrault’s Fairy Tales
The opening of the article examines the history of the reception of fairy tales – in
particular Perrault’s tales – in Poland since 1700; it attempts to explain the reason for
the long established Polish tendency to adapt rather than to translate this kind of literary
works. The introductory presentation is followed by an in-depth comparative analysis
of the fi rst ever Polish translation of Mother Goose Tales by Hanna Januszewska,
published in 1961, and the adaptation of Perrault’s tales made by the same author about
ten years later. The examination focuses on two questions: fi rstly, on the cultural distance
between the original French text and the Polish context of fairy-tales tradition, resulting
in a series of objective translation diffi culties; secondly on the cultural, stylistic and
linguistic shifts introduced by Januszewska to the tales in the process of transforming
her earlier translation into a free adaptation of Perrault’s work. The goal of this scrutiny
is not only to compare originality or literary value of Januszewska’s two proposals,
but also to try to understand the reasons that lie behind the enormous popularity of the
adapted version. The faithful translation, by all means a good text in itself, did not gain
any recognition, and if not exactly a failure, was nevertheless an unsuccessful attempt
to introduce Polish readers to the original spirit of Mother Goose Tales.

A Polish History of Brother Grimm’s Fairy Tales
The article discusses the diffi culties with translating Grimm’s Fairy Tales into
Polish. The fi rst part demonstrates the specifi c features of the original text and
Bruno Bettelheim’s conclusions about “the meaning and importance of fairy tales”.
The second part is a critical review of the existing Polish translations. The third part
refers to the main goals of the new Polish translation. The conclusions stress that
the new Polish translation should be addressed to the same recipient as the original
Children’s and Household Tales, i.e., both to children and adults.

Was a New Polish Translation of Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales and Stories Necessary?
A positive answer to the above question seems obvious after a critical analysis of the
history of the reception of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales and stories in Poland
in the second part of the 19th century and in the fi rst part of the 20th century. On the
one hand, over a hundred years ago the writer was classifi ed as an author of exclusively
children’s literature due to intended or unintended misinterpretations of the spirit of
his prose. This classifi cation was then inherited by next generations of readers and
translators. On the other hand, a huge number of various kinds of mistakes in translation
depleted Andersen’s unique style. The analysis shows how Andersen’s narration was
changed to traditional literary style (especially when it came to dialogues); how humour
and irony were either overlooked, misunderstood or judged improper for children; how
translators miscomprehended Danish grammar and vocabulary; and how little attention
was paid to the consistency of the text.
The effect is a narration which is “too sweet,” often lengthy, boring, and at times
illogical. The analysis compares selected examples from the most recent complete
edition of 167 fairy tales and stories translated from Danish by Boguslawa Sochanska
(2006) with the previous complete edition (of 155 fairytales and stories) translated from
German by Stefania Beylin and Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, whose work has enjoyed high
recognition for 50 years. The detailed discussion of mistakes and misunderstandings
in Polish translations done from German also illustrates typical diffi culties that appear
when translating Andersen’s prose. Therefore, the article points out similar problems
with giving Andersen’s prose its proper shape in the most recent Polish edition.

Translations of Fairy Tales between National Mobilization and Commodifi cation. German-Language Children’s Literature in Nineteenth–Century Croatian Society
After a brief review of the approaches of folklore studies and children’s literature
studies to the issue of translation, the article focuses on nineteenth-century Croatian
translations of German fairy tales. They are discussed from the point of view of literary
history, i.e. in the context of their textual and paratextual features, their relationship
to source texts and their involvement in the processes of national integration. They
are also interpreted from the point of view of the history of reading, i.e. in the context
of children’s consumption of German children’s books in nineteenth-century Croatia.
Finally, they are investigated from the book history perspective, i.e. at the level of
adoption of German children’s literature publishing genres and strategies in nineteenthcentury
Croatian children’s literature. Careful examination of these aspects shows that
the appropriation of fairy tales originally written and published in German in nineteenthcentury
Croatian society followed different (oral, written, German-language, Croatianlanguage)
routes and had different outcomes. The complexity of these routes and
outcomes reminds us that literature is not only symbolic (written, textual), but also
material (reading, editing, publishing). Moreover, it reminds us that children’s literature
is entangled not only in concepts of childhood and literature, but also in other cultural
concepts such as nation and class.

May Reduction Serve Foreignization? What Happened to Sierotka Marysia in English Translation?
The translation of Maria Konopnicka’s O Krasnoludkach i sierotce Marysi (The Brownie
Scouts) into English is an interesting fusion of two translation strategies that are usually
considered mutually exclusive. At fi rst glance, this careful and faithful rendering of
passages describing Polish tradition, culture, history, geography and folklore is a good
example of foreignization. Taking the reader who represents a dominant culture on
a trip to an unknown peripheral culture, it seems to stand in opposition to Lefevere’s
understanding how cultural capital and asymmetries between cultures infl uence the
translator’s decision to adapt source culture’s exotic elements to the target reader’s
horizon of expectations. Thus, her decision not to domesticate the original places
Katherine Żuk-Skarszewska (nee Hadley) in a group of translators called bridgeheads
by Cay Dollerup. They aim at familiarizing the target language audience with most
interesting and valuable aspects of the source language culture.
Yet this assumption is undermined by Żuk-Skarszewska’s frequent use of reduction
technique, which helps her to deal with the culture-specifi c elements she considers less
important. Instead of a typical adaptation strategy, in The Brownie Scouts two radically
different solutions co-exist: efforts to faithfully preserve some items and fragments
characteristic of the source language culture are counterbalanced by decisions to cut
other elements and passages in order to make room for what the translator judges more
worthwhile. As a result, reduction becomes an integral part of the translation strategy,
and it is used to control the intensity of the overall foreignizing effect. This unusual
strategy becomes even more interesting to observe, as the elements the translator gives
up most readily are usually those related to the child (characters, subject-matter and
folklore). Paradoxically, it is children who lose most in this translation of the book
about them.

From the American Plantation to the Interwar Poland: How Uncle Remus Became Bam-Bo the Negro
The article opens with the introduction of Joel Chandler Harris and his literary output,
since Harris is unfamiliar to Polish readers, despite his well-established position in
the American literary canon. As a so-called local colorist, Harris depicted American
plantation life in 19th-century Georgia: he included many cultural and folk elements in
his works. The analysis of his stories about Uncle Remus concentrates on (1) the levels
of narration; (2) the linguistic complexity of the text (the stories abound in slang and
dialectal expressions); (3) the form; and (4) the folklore value. The same four aspects
of the analysis guide the discussion of the Polish translation of Harris’s work. The only
Polish version of his stories comes from 1929 and was done by Władysława Wielińska.
As the target audience of the translation were children, the ultimate aim of this analysis
is to determine the profi le of the translation as a book for children, to consider it against
the skopos of the source text, and to establish the extent to which the peculiar character
of Uncle Remus stories was preserved.

Dated Translations. On Shortcomings of Existing Polish Versions of Rudyard Kipling’s story The Cat That Walked by Himself
The existing Polish translations of Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories, created in early
20th century, seem faulty nowadays, mainly due to the loss of many stylistic features
of the original. One of the causes might be a generic absence: prose written in Polish
at the time does not bear any similarity to Kipling’s manner. The articles points out the
weaknesses of the two Polish translations of the story entitled The Cat That Walked by
Himself. It concludes with the attempt at a new translation.

Adaptations in the Globalization Era
The article investigates the concept of adaptation in the context of globalization and
points to considerable potential of the research on contemporary adaptations, not yet
fully realized within translation studies. It provides an overview of several theoretical
approaches to the adaptation of children’s literature and presents adaptation from
a historical perspective. It then focuses on selected Disney adaptations of Peter
Pan published in Poland at the turn of the 20th century. Of special interest in these
Disney adaptations are pictures, which are identical in different editions, whereas the
accompanying texts differ widely. The visual is thus ‘recycled,’ whereas the texts change
in style, the depiction of characters, the use of tenses and culture specifi c items. The
article also introduces the category of glocal adaptations, that is, Disney adaptations
retold by Polish verbal masters, such as Jeremi Przybora or Jacek Kaczmarski. Though
examples of cultural homogenization, these adaptations are partly indigenized by wellknown
local fi gures and therefore may be viewed as glocal texts in which the global
and the local overlap

Borders of Children’s Literature. Reception of Picture Books in Italy and the Question of Reading Aloud
The article opens with the idea of the international “republic of childhood” without
geographical and political borders, as conceived by Hazard and promoted after the
Second World War. According to O’Sullivan (2004, 2005), this concept of childhood,
and consequently of children’s literature, is idealistic and does not address real problems
connected with the process of translation. As a matter of fact, the translation of a book
for children from one language into another is not as easy as it might seem: frontiers
and custom-houses do exist (Bertea 2000: 94). A peculiar cas limite is represented by
the reception of the picture book in Italy: introduced thanks to the pioneering work of
the publishing-house Emme Edizioni and of its translators, the genre was then rejected.
Italy had to wait a decade to see the same and similar picture books republished, but
it is still paying the price of this initial closing of the borders, which happened even
though the translators paid custom-duties and import-duties. These depended not only
on the prevailing child image held by the Italian society, but also on the different image
of the adult, who was going to read picture books aloud and who was ready to put on a performance for the child reader (Oittinen 2000). In particular, examples of the discrepancy between the adult and the child images of the source texts and of the target texts selected from American and English picture books and their Italian translations will be investigated.

Borders of Children’s Literature. Reception of Picture Books in Italy and the Question of Reading Aloud
The article opens with the idea of the international “republic of childhood” without geographical and political borders, as conceived by Hazard and promoted after the Second World War. According to O’Sullivan (2004, 2005), this concept of childhood, and consequently of children’s literature, is idealistic and does not address real problems connected with the process of translation. As a matter of fact, the translation of a book for children from one language into another is not as easy as it might seem: frontiers and custom-houses do exist (Bertea 2000: 94). A peculiar cas limite is represented by
the reception of the picture book in Italy: introduced thanks to the pioneering work of the publishing-house Emme Edizioni and of its translators, the genre was then rejected. Italy had to wait a decade to see the same and similar picture books republished, but it is still paying the price of this initial closing of the borders, which happened even though the translators paid custom-duties and import-duties. These depended not only on the prevailing child image held by the Italian society, but also on the different image of the adult, who was going to read picture books aloud and who was ready to put on  a performance for the child reader (Oittinen 2000). In particular, examples of the discrepancy between the adult and the child images of the source texts and of the target texts selected from American and English picture books and their Italian translations will be investigated.

Mysterious Bloody Dumplings. On Swedish Dishes and Their Translated Names in the Polish Emil of Lönneberga
The article starts with a short overview of the fundamental role food plays in children’s
literature. The motif of food can convey deep psychological as well as philosophical
meanings, and Astrid Lindgren made use of it with various purposes in mind:
symbolical, comical, anti-didactic or educational. The main analysis is limited to the
Polish translation of the name of one dish from the old Swedish cuisine – palt – which
appears in different contexts in Astrid Lindgren’s trilogy about Emil of Lönneberga.

“Nothing but the best is good enough for the young.” Dilemmas of the Translator of Children’s Literature
No doubt the world without Winnie the Pooh, Pippi Longstocking, Pinocchio or
Moomin Trolls would be less colourful. Characters from fairy tales imperceptibly
slip into young readers’ minds and tend to stay there forever. Children accept them
unconditionally and do not ask questions about their descent. Children’s response
to books is usually very spontaneous: a love at fi rst sight or an immediate dislike.
Therefore, it is very important that they receive “the best” – not only beautiful and wise
books but also book that are skillfully translated. Discussing the role of the translator of
children’s literature, this article focuses on such issues as child–translator relation and translator–author dichotomy. It points to different attitudes toward the translator’s
creativity and “visibility.” It examines terminological ambiguities of such notions as
“adaptation,” “reconstruction,” “rewriting” and “translation.” Finally, it deals with
translation challenges that arise from didactic, entertaining and aesthetic functions of
children’s books.

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.

Karl Dedecius’s Lesson
Błażej Kaźmierczak has compiled a Karl Dedecius bibliography which lists about 800
items: books, articles, anthologies, interviews. However, Karl Dedecius’s Works. An
Annotated Selected Bibliography (Dzieła Karla Dedeciusa. Wybór bibliografi czny
adnotowany) is still not complete. One reason for its incompleteness is the breadth and
variety of this eminent German translator’s output. Another is the meticulousness of the
Polish scholar, who has not included into his bibliography some of Dedecius’s works,
because – for example – their pages are not numbered. While such a scholarly pedantry
might be regretted, it is worth pointing out what makes this publication so valuable: the

Translation as a War of the Worlds?
Translation studies and comparative literature as well as literary theory have common
goals, but also common enemies. To prove his point, Edward Balcerzan entitles his
collection of essays Translation as “the War of the Worlds”. On Translatology and
Comparative Literature (Tłumaczenie jako „wojna światów”. W kręgu translatologii
i komparatystyki) and develops his controlling metaphor through a series of engaging
arguments and examples which demonstrate the ongoing struggle in the two disciplines
between the need to order, classify and canonize – which he himself strongly advocates – and the tendency to blur and shift boundaries, visible in postmodernist thought,
deconstruction and intertextuality. The multilingual in translation proves a risky
challenge which insists on recording the traces of foreignness; the monolingual safely
counters the Babel myth and offers evidence that language can be a space for the
coexistence of literary worlds. Whereas it is diffi cult not to appreciate the author’s
subtle and inspiring analyses, which support his well-known claim that translation is an
art (elaborated over the thirty years of his work as a theorist of translation and literature,
translator and poet), one cannot resist asking questions about Balcerzan’s major premise
that translation is a war of the worlds. Should we no longer see translation as a creative
exchange where versions engage in a dialogue, but rather as a military expedition where
every subsequent version wars against all its predecessors as well as the original? If we
accepted that the function of translatology, comparative literature and literary theory
is to sanction unity and order, rather than transgressive abundance, who should decide
on canon-makers and select a single canonical translation? Balcerzan’s controversial
claims deserve attention and should be treated as an invitation to discussion – an
approach which complements the two pointed out by Anthony Pym as typical of
translation studies: confl ict or indifference.

Translator’s Feast
To the stock conceptualizations of translation Elżbieta Skibińska offers a delicious
novelty: translation as a culinary art, and the translator as an expert chef who loves to serve
foreign foods, at times replacing exotic spices with local ingredients, but always with
fl air and fi nesse. This conceptualization organizes the author’s thoughts on translation as
the dynamics of intercultural relations, collected in The Translator’s Cuisine. Studies of
Polish-French Translatory Relations (Kuchnia tłumacza. Studia o polsko-francuskich
relacjach przekładowych). She brings into her discussion particularly Itamar Even-
Zohar, Antoine Berman, Laurence Venuti, Richard Jacquemond and Marie-Hélène
Catherine Torres. Her essays on Polish and French literature, translations created in the
two countries and their reception profi t also from the statistical analysis: the number
of specifi c translations which appeared over a chosen period. Skibińska concludes that
Polish literature in France is at stand-by, eagerly used when the need for its symbolic
resources appears. In Poland, French literature has been claimed by political regimes
and establishments to meet their ideological needs. The analysis clearly shows Polish
literature and culture as “peripheral” and the French as “semi-central”. This overview
and general discussion is supported by case studies which concentrate on translation
questions prompted by culinary issues: its lexicon and anthropology. Not surprisingly,
Claude Lévi-Strauss and his 1965 seminal essay Le triangle culinaire make an important
appearance in Skibińska’s argument.
 

Star Dust or Sand in the Eyes?
In 1834 John Staples Harriot, an English offi cer and amateur linguist, published
simultaneously in Paris and London a play entitled Napoléon. Drame politique et
historique en cinq actes. A l’imitation de MACBETH, de Shakespear. Ideologically pro-
French, the play (written in French) was rooted in the aesthetics of the Shakespearian
drama and was composed at the time which naturally inspired its numerous artistic as
well as historical and political tensions. Therefore, Harriot tried to justify them and
secure for his work as big audiences as he could on both sides of the English Channel by
means of the extensive paratextual material. Apart from the appendix which lists various
historical sources, he wrote an elaborate preface addressed to his French audience,
where he defended the Shakespearian drama conventions, and an afterword with his
English version of the scenes borrowed directly from Macbeth, which was supposed
to persuade his English audience that the French play was faithful to the original
tragedy. Napoléon has never been staged, and is largely forgotten, but recently its
textual manipulations have become the focus of detailed historical and literary analysis,
which proves that studies of the paratext are important to translatological refl ection.
Such studies of varied and extensive material (Polish, French, Czech, Italian, Spanish,
Latin-American; fi ction and non-fi ction, children’s and specialized literature) were
conducted by a group of Polish scholars in Wrocław and published in 2009 in a volume signifi cantly entitled The Translator’s Glossary (Przypisy tłumacza), edited by Elżbieta
Skibińska. Through their detailed (therefore at times overwhelming) presentation, they
defy the stereotypical notion of the gloss, especially the footnote, as “dust” (Genette),
“parasite” or – less pejoratively – “censor” and “proofreader.” Instead of describing
the footnote as “pedantic” or “helpless”, they emphasize its role in conveying and
overcoming linguistic and cultural untranslatability. Paratext is a primary way of
marking and revealing the translators’ in-betweenness as their inherent positioning.

Alpha and Omega
Bringing together Paul Ricoeur’s On Translation and Peeter Torop’s Total Translation
seems a risky intellectual enterprise, even if its rationale and incongruities are
informatively pointed out by Edward Balcerzan, when he introduces this joint
publication in his foreward entitled Total Translation, or on the Power of Hyperbole.
The French philosopher’s phenomenological search for the true nature of translation is
accompanied by his awareness that fi nding an/the answer is not realistic. His refl ection
on translation does not clarify – it complicates instead. Ricoeur, inspired by Antoine
Berman and George Steiner, urges us to forsake the distinction into the translatable
and the untranslatable; he chooses to consider translation as “linguistic hospitality,”
which allows us to understand our identity in relation to “the other.” Ricoeur’s probing
of the mystery of translation stands in opposition to the systematizing and classifying
work of the Estonian semiotician. Torop’s attempt suffers from the enormity of the
discussed material and lack of precision. Unfortunately, the Polish version is fl awed,
so the presentation of Torop’s argument will profi t from careful re-edition or even
retranslation. Importantly, however, the two thinkers on translation should be presented
separately.

In Translation, That Is, Between Languages
Poets, but also writers of prose (especially poetic prose), who compose in France, Spain,
Italy, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria, Hungary, Germanspeaking
countries, Poland, Russia and the former Soviet Union, Estonia, Finland,
Norway and the Netherlands “should be particularly compelling for English-language
readers.” This opinion, which cannot be undermined, guides John Taylor, an American
critic, writer and translator, on the journey of discovery. His sixty-three essays, articles
and reviews (published between 1981 and 2008 in, e.g., the TLS, Yale Review, Antioch
Review, Poetry or Absinthe) do not aspire to exhaustiveness; instead, they signpost
readerly experience, but also ignorance which needs to be overcome, hopefully by
means of translation. With this aim in mind, Taylor assembles his compendium entitled
Into the Heart of European Poetry, where he presents authors who have earned his
love and respect; those who share certain philosophical and religious premises as well
as pursuits: “the exploration of the quotidian (not just facts and routines, but its very
essence), the search for the ‘thing-in-itself’ (and the corresponding anxiety of being
hopelessly separate from both the material world and imaginable transcendent realms),
the grappling with such dichotomies as subjectivity and self-effacement, presence
and absence, or negativity and affi rmation, as well as the examination of ‘origin’ and
uprootedness as categories that are as ontological as they are geographical, historical,
political, sociological, or cultural.” More signifi cantly, the 405 pages of this anthology
celebrate particularity and multilinguality. Taylor, who “as a product of the American
public school (...) had studied not a single foreign language at the time, except a bit
of Latin,” has since lived in Germany, Greece and France, and has translated from the
Greek and French. Therefore, his collection gives testimony to the resourcefulness of
translators: those named and those (yet) unnamed. As we read, spatial “in-betweenness”
transforms into linguistic “in-betweenness” – somewhere between English and
the original we arrive at comprehension, however partial. “In-translation” is indeed
a special case of “in-betweenness.”

Traffi c Problems on the Bridge: Translation Studies, Cognitive Linguistics and Literary Criticism
In her monograph entitled A Cognitive Approach to Equivalence in Literary Translation.
Illustrated by an Analysis of Images of Women in Henry James’s Portrait of a Lady and Its
Polish Translation Portret damy, Monika Linke claims that the discipline of translation
studies can be selected to become a bridge between linguistic and literary theories
of translation. Moreover, linguists and literary scholars can profi t from translation
studies as well. Such a claim that emphasizes the interdisciplinary nature of research is
admirable; as is the claim that cognitive linguistics should be recommended to tackle
the problems and challenges of translation criticism. However, no interdisciplinary
approach should constitute an excuse for shortages in the knowledge of contributing
disciplines. Unfortunately, Linke’s presentation of the two theories of cognitive
linguistics: Lakoff’s metaphor theory and Langacker’s theory of grammar, abounds
in misunderstandings and mistakes. Moreover, the theoretical part does not prove
very useful in the monograph’s second part, which offers ten case studies focusing
on selected linguistic aspects of the passages chosen from Henry James’s Portrait of
a Lady and its Polish version. Linke’s ambitious aim to “facilitate the application of
cognitive linguistics to translation studies” has not been achieved.