The article discusses the interpretative and methodological potential inherent in the synergetic application of two categories paradigmatic for cultural studies and cultural literary theory: translatioand memory. It is argued that both categories, viewed as cultural metaphors and combined with each other, may serve as a complex model for the interpretation of cultural phenomena. The starting point for developing such a model is the insight that both concepts have undergone a similar semantic evolution in the discourse of cultural studies, and may now be represented as radial categories with a “prototypical centre” and metaphorical-metonymical extensions, translatio going far beyond interlingual “translation proper”. Next, some further contact zones between translatio and memory are outlined: firstly, their functional analogies, which are reflected in parallel metaphors depicting memory and translation (such as the “palimpsest” and the “devouring of the Other”). Secondly, the metaphor of the “dissemination of memes” is discussed as the most promising idea that brings together the discourse of translation studies with reflection on the mechanisms of collective memory, drawing attention to ethical and political aspects of both translatio and memory. The image of the “dissemination of memes” is also a point of departure for its derivative metaphors of “translation as memory transmission” and “memory as a space of translatio”. The conclusion is that the interactions between memory and translatio that engendered these metaphors could be put to use in comparative investigations. Finally, some representative research problems are formulated based on various configurations of literal and metaphorical meanings of both terms. It is emphasized that the coming together of divergent yet close pathways of translation and memory studies could be of mutual benefit to both fields of inquiry. 

Memory has been one of the main topics of the universal literature and nowadays postmemorial prose is an important trend of the Polish literature. A question arises whether the specific character of these works constitutes a peculiar challenge for translators and, thus, whether their translations should be treated as a separate issue within the field of translation studies. Recent memory studies show that contemporary societies consist of many social groups which often have conflicting interests and, therefore, they cultivate different memory practices regarding the same past events. Memory is treated as a dynamic phenomenon, which may be transformed in time and space, so it is constantly actualized. There are five factors which determine movements of memory: carriers, media, contents, practices and forms. Memory may travel thanks to media of different kind, e.g. monuments. Translation can be considered a memory medium, too; it allows memory contents to travel to another cultural space. This approach lets us look at literary translations from a fresh perspective and, consequently, develop a set of new research directions. This article aims at listing some of them. 

Oskarżona: Wiera Gran (Vera Gran: The Accused), a hybrid biographical work relating the life story and testimony of the Warsaw ghetto singer by the Polish second generation author Agata Tuszyńska, was translated to many languages. Yet, all the translations were made on the basis of the French one, which in fact reflects a strongly edited version of the original text. As the author of the article argues, the modifications introduced to Oskarżona: Wiera Gran upon its release on the foreign markets go far beyond the standard editing procedures and have to do with the fact that Tuszyńska’s original text openly questions a certain fixed paradigm of representing the Holocaust and some of the socially sanctioned patterns of Shoah remembrance. The comparative analysis of the Polish and the American editions of the book presented in the article traces the most significant changes introduced to the foreign adaptation, identifying three main areas where the misbehaved testimony to the Shoah – of the survivor and the secondary witness alike – was disciplined to conform to the largely globalised discourse of Holocaust memory, subjected to the regime of conventional representation and culturally reproduced reception patterns. 

Obituaries, being representative of collective memory, reveal not only whose lives we choose to remember (to allude to the suggestive title of Fowler, Bielsa 2007), but also what values and achievements we hold in high regard. Among others, obituaries of members of the following professions have been the subject of research: librarians (Dilevko, Gottlieb 2004), psychologists (Kinnier et al. 1994) and academics (Hamann 2016). The present paper focuses on obituaries devoted to literary translators, published in academic journals and literary and cultural magazines in 2000–2017. Content analysis, deployed as the main research method in this paper, proved to be useful in identifying references to specific values, typical of translators’ lives and work. As a result, a classification of the most frequently mentioned translators’ characteristics and achievements was prepared. Recurrent characteristics presented translators as competent, hard-working, good friends, intelligent and independent-minded, while their top achievements included prizes and awards, prestigious friendships and acquaintances, and merits for establishing closer relations between nations. The vast majority of texts were positive-factual or personal-emotional in character, but a few included criticalfactual remarks, mainly on translators’ character and the clash of one’s ideals or ambitions with reality. Attention has been drawn to multidirectional careers of most translators. In the last part of the article, obituaries were described as a cultural phenomenon in the context of memory culture, with a special emphasis on the categories of the communicator and the addressee, as well as the language. 

Nabokov’s novella The Eye is usually read as a story in which the narrator tries to use his failed suicide attempt to announce his own death and assume the role of an observer, who, as it turns out in the end, is merely watching over his own (alienated) figure. The ending seems to project a reintegration of the self. In this essay, the process of Nabokov’s translation of the novella into English is seen as connected with the spectral elements of the story, resulting in a new reading embedded into the framework of liminality: the narrating hero keeps on dying, without, however, being able to escape his private inferno, because his obsessive memory continues to reproduce the same murky world, merely transferring the hero deeper and deeper into its narrowing circles. Each of these circles is an attempt to translate the text of (un)reality to the new language of consciousness, and each of these attempts reduces the hero to the status of a still more spectral voice, while still confining him to the boundaries of self. It seems quite fitting in this context that Nabokov, speaking of self-translation, described it as an unremitting torment of the body being transfigured into spirit. The essay also compares Nabokov’s translation practice to his own views on translation expressed in essays and interviews, pointing out the fundamental differences: self-translation demands the death of the original text, out of which the phantom of existence in another language may be born – a ghost, each movement of which is always double, divided into the observer and the observed. 

The article is an attempt to transfer into the field of translation studies selected theories of performance and of performative strategies of establishing relations with the past. The author seeks to define the act of translating old theatrical texts – a fragmentary trace of the Italian dell’arte, a theatrical practice which is forgotten yet paradoxically still reproduced based on specific principles – as “performing remains”. The term is borrowed from Rebecca Schneider, an American performance scholar who introduced it into contemporary humanities in her book Performing Remains. Art and War in Time of Theatrical Reenactment (2011) to describe the theatrical reconstructions of historical events and artistic transformations of historical performances. The tensions between the material and non-material traces of the past and the possibilities of their contemporary transformation in performative actions, as described by Schneider, provide a point of departure for reflecting on the act of translating as an epistemological tool for constructing knowledge about the past and, at the same time, for making the past present in a performative way.  

The article discusses the study by Anita Kłos of the Italian author Sibilla Aleramo (1876–1960) and her links with the Polish literary culture in the first half of the 20th century. Apart from Aleramo, a poet, novelist, playwright and diarist, “a muse of countless artists”, “an emancipatory icon”, the book also presents Zofia Nałkowska, Stanisława (Soava) Gallone, Emilia Szenwicowa, Thérèse Koerner and Maria Poznańska. In fact, Kłos depicts two literary cultures: Italian and Polish, portrayed in detail ca. 1910 and 1930, in the context of the translations she analyzes. The monograph, written with a feminist slant, goes definitely beyond the narrow framework of a classic comparative case study: it reconstructs the two moments in the Italian and Polish literary life with impressive accuracy and it covers a wide range of topics related to both literatures and cultures.