Issue 50 – 50!

2025

Publication date: 25.08.2025

Description

The publication has been supported by a grant from the Faculty of Polish Studies under the Strategic Programme Excellence Initiative at Jagiellonian University.

Licence: CC BY

Editorial team

Editor-in-Chief dr hab. Magda Heydel

Secretary dr Paulina Kwaśniewska-Urban

Issue editor dr hab. Magda Heydel

Issue content

Trzydziestolecie „Przekładańca”. Historia pięćdziesięciu zeszytów

Magdalena Heydel

Przekładaniec, Issue 50 – 50!, 2025, pp. 7-11

https://doi.org/10.4467/16891864PC.25.001.21598

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Concepts

Autor i tłumacz w galerii obrazów

Elżbieta Tabakowska

Przekładaniec, Issue 50 – 50!, 2025, pp. 15-29

https://doi.org/10.4467/16891864PC.25.009.21606

Transdisciplinary approach to translation is generally accepted as a framework for contemporary Translation Studies. The paper claims that a wider recognition of the cognitive theory of language and the cognitive model of grammar can significantly enrich scholars’ views on the processes and products of translation, and literary translation in particular. Most promising seems the analogy between visual perception and its verbal reflexes, which linguists of cognitivist persuasion consider as fundamental in explaining grammatical phenomena. In the paper, the claim is substantiated with an analysis of extracts from John Fowles’ novel The Magus and its Polish translation. Using descriptive instruments offered by the cognitive theory of grammar, the author discusses a selection of discrepancies between the original text and its Polish translation, shows that they evoke differing images and thus, ultimately, distort the meaning of the original. She shows that literary narration consists of images evoked by verbal expressions of nonverbal pictures that are actually seen or recalled; verbal imagery manifests properties in many respects similar to those defined in contemporary theories of art, notably various types of iconicity. The domain of ekphrasis stretches beyond the limits imposed by traditional poetics. Ekphrastic expressions are inherently subjective and metonymic, and so are verbal construals as described by Cognitive Grammar, which proves to be sa pertinent analogy.

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Drogi niemieckiej krytyki przekładu literackiego. Prolegomena do badań historyczno-kulturowych

Piotr de Bończa Bukowski

Przekładaniec, Issue 50 – 50!, 2025, pp. 30-41

https://doi.org/10.4467/16891864PC.25.008.21605

Disputes around translators and translations are not only pivotal moments in the development of reflection on translation, but also extremely important events in the history of culture and society. In the present paper, I want to briefly introduce and interpret three important disputes around translations into German: the first one concerns Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible, the second one focuses on the 18th-century discussion around translations of Shakespeare into German, and the third one refers to the fierce polemic on the translation of Lawrence Norfolk’s novel Lemprière’s Dictionary and the criteria for translation criticism that flared up in Germany in the 1990s.

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Sztuczna inteligencja w kabinie. Tłumaczenie symultaniczne w kontekście rozwoju technologii

Agnieszka Chmiel

Przekładaniec, Issue 50 – 50!, 2025, pp. 42-52

https://doi.org/10.4467/16891864PC.25.011.21608

The article discusses the use of technology in simultaneous interpreting, with a focus on artificial intelligence (AI) and its impact on the professional practice of interpreters. It first focuses on remote simultaneous interpreting (RSI), which has become widespread as conferences were held predominantly online during the pandemic. Previously marginalized, RSI has gained prominence, contributing to more research on its effectiveness and technical challenges, such as reduced sound quality, increased cognitive load and difficulties in communicating between booth partners. The author then discusses computer-assisted interpreting tools that are used in the preparation stage and when interpreting in the booth. As these technologies are AI-powered, they enable speech recognition, automatic glossary creation and on-screen display of transcriptions and terminology. Studies show that such support significantly reduces cognitive load and improves interpreting accuracy. The article also describes machine interpreting, which is still at an early stage of development. Despite technological advancement, machine interpreting suffers from error propagation and difficulties in recognizing context and non-verbal signals. However, the author predicts that such interpreting will be used increasingly in contexts with a low risk of error. The article also outlines future scenarios: we can expect that the use of AI in interpreting will become standard, which prompts reflection on the future of the profession and poses new questions for interpreting studies.

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Rola przekładu w budowaniu narracji w miejscach pamięci Holokaustu w Polsce. Wstępne wnioski z badania pilotażowego w Państwowym Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau i dalsze perspektywy

Agnieszka Podpora, Dorota Gołuch

Przekładaniec, Issue 50 – 50!, 2025, pp. 53-64

https://doi.org/10.4467/16891864PC.25.010.21607

The article discusses our ongoing research into the role of translation in shaping the narratives that Holocaust memorial museums in Poland present to hundreds of thousands of international visitors every year. Positioning our work at the intersection of Holocaust studies, memory studies and research on museum translation, we demonstrate a pressing need for a better understanding of the translational processes which, we argue, are vital to the work and mission of Holocaust memorials. In the article, we outline the research questions, sources and methods of our pilot study Translation in Holocaust Memorial Museums and Negotiation of Memories: A Study of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum (funded by a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant). We also discuss preliminary findings, which are based on thirty-four interviews with curators and guides from the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, as well as an initial exhibition analysis. In particular, we demonstrate that the Museum employs a two-pronged translation strategy to reach international visitors. The strategy involves trilingual – Polish, English and Hebrew – displays of key museum texts, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, a uniquely multilingual provision of live guided tours, in which guides-educators translate the Museum’s core narrative into over twenty languages. Overall, we show that translation, in its different guises, mediates and co-creates that core narrative, contributing to the complex processes of shaping the memory of the Holocaust and the Nazi atrocities during World War Two. We conclude by mapping out our plans for further research, which include working with other institutions (notably the State Museum at Majdanek and the Museum and Memorial in Sobibór), as well as conducting visitor studies in the partner institutions.

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Prezentacje

Wieki (nie)wierności. Historia polskich przekładów Shakespeare’a od początku do chatbotów

Anna Cetera-Włodarczyk

Przekładaniec, Issue 50 – 50!, 2025, pp. 67-81

https://doi.org/10.4467/16891864PC.25.002.21599

The article presents methodological reflections that emerged following the completion of the project of the digital repository of all Polish Shakespeare translations (19th–21st century) (https://polskiszekspir.uw.edu.pl). Set aside the texts of translations, the site offers extensive studies on translators, translation strategies and reception of approximately three hundred Polish rewritings of Shakespeare’s plays completed over the last two centuries. In particular, the paper exemplifies the relations between retranslation practice and historical context, the specificity of translators archives, and the consequences of the availability of translation corpora.
The age of (human) translation represents a distinctive phase of Shakespeare reception, markedby the variability of continuously contested translation norms. This fluidity stemmed from the elevated position of the playwright in the European canon, the evolution of editorial theories and the shifting demands of the theatre. Furthermore, digital resources are interpreted as archives of the knowledge about translations, actively modelling cultural memory by their regressive patronage bestowed on past translations. The conclusion postulates a gradual decline in logocentric models of drama translation.

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Komunikacja Głuchych i z Głuchymi w sytuacjach kryzysowych. Głusi Żydzi w hitlerowskich obozach koncentracyjnych

Małgorzata Tryuk

Przekładaniec, Issue 50 – 50!, 2025, pp. 82-98

https://doi.org/10.4467/16891864PC.25.007.21604

Language mediation in zones of conflict or crisis has been ubiquitous throughout history. It is a complex activity that has been the subject of much study and research from theoretical, methodological, ethical and translation history perspectives.
In armed conflicts, the challenge for translators and interpreters, including sign language interpreters, goes beyond linguistic and cultural issues. In such situations, the interpreter may not be fully aware of the consequences of his/her mediation.
The issue of communicating with Deaf, particularly Deaf Jews in crisis situations during the Second World War, has only recently been addressed by researchers. Few studies have been devoted to the topic of communication of Deaf Jews in Nazi concentration camps. My paper, based on archival materials, memoirs and testimonies, will focus on the situation of Deaf Jewish inmates in Nazi concentration camps, their limited ability to communicate with other inmates, and the means of accessing information to ensure any chance of survival. The paper will also address the issue of interpreting Deaf survivors’ testimonies and the challenges posed by critical differences between Deaf and hearing cultures.

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Trzy typy zagadek w historii polskiego przekładu literackiego

Marzena Chrobak

Przekładaniec, Issue 50 – 50!, 2025, pp. 99-110

https://doi.org/10.4467/16891864PC.25.003.21600

The aim of the paper is to present three types of riddles appearing in the history of Polish literary translation, as well as suggestions for methods of solving them. The first type involves the attribution of the authorship of an anonymous translation; here I will use the example of my own attempts to identify the author of an eighteenth-century translation of Voltaire’s philosophical story La Princesse de Babylone. The second type involves the explanation for the fact that the Polish translation appeared very soon after the publication of the original, under conditions of a long publishing process and limited possibilities for the international circulation of texts in the People’s Republic of Poland; the case of Beckett’s drama Fin de partie is discussed here. Thirdly, I try to find out how some texts which, in theory, should not be admitted to the People’s Republic of Poland literary field, were smuggled into it by engaged agents under favourable historical circumstances.

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Jerzy Kamil Weintraub (1916–1943). O tłumaczu i jego archiwum osobistym

Markus Eberharter

Przekładaniec, Issue 50 – 50!, 2025, pp. 111-121

https://doi.org/10.4467/16891864PC.25.004.21601

This text is dedicated to the relatively unknown Polish translator Jerzy Kamil Weintraub (1916–1943). The basis for this portrait is Weintraub‘s extensive personal archive, which fortunately survived the Nazi occupation of Warsaw during World War II and is now housed in the Literature Museum in Warsaw, though it has not yet been utilised for research. Based on these materials, this text reconstructs Weintraub‘s translator biography and his translation oeuvre, thus attempting a first recognition of Weintraub‘s significant contribution to the history of literary translation in Poland before 1945.

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Zofia A. Kowerska – zapomniana tłumaczka. O autorce pierwszego polskiego przekładu zbioru Kinder- und Hausmärchen braci Grimm

Eliza Pieciul-Karmińska

Przekładaniec, Issue 50 – 50!, 2025, pp. 122-130

https://doi.org/10.4467/16891864PC.25.005.21602

Zofia A. Kowerska’s translation of the Children’s and Household Tales by Brothers Grimm (1896) was the first Polish rendition of all two hundred fairy tales and ten children’s legends based on the original 7th edition of the German tale collection (1857). Kowerska was not only the first translator of the Grimms’ tales but also an amateur folklorist who collected and published local oral tradition. Her translation can be characterized as cultural adaption as she tried to substitute German folklore with analogical Slavic motifs. The article presents her contribution to the Polish reception of the tales by Brothers Grimm and shows possible reasons why this important achievement was forgotten throughout the 20th century.

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„Słowo wstępne wygłosił prof. Stefan Srebrny i on też dokonał skrótów w tekście”. O współpracy Stefana Srebrnego z Polskim Radiem w Wilnie

Barbara Bibik

Przekładaniec, Issue 50 – 50!, 2025, pp. 131-139

https://doi.org/10.4467/16891864PC.25.006.21603

Stefan Srebrny was one of the most prominent Polish classicists in the 20th century. Not only was he an outstanding academic, but he was also a reknown translator and stage director of the time. In the University Library of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń there are manuscripts by Stefan Srebrny which prove that his activity was broader than generally assumed. In this paper I will shed more light on his collaboration with the Polish Radio in Vilnius.

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Analyses

Perytekst wydawniczy francuskich i niemieckich przekładów utworów laureatów Nagrody Nike, czyli jak przekład gra prestiżem

Elżbieta Skibińska

Przekładaniec, Issue 50 – 50!, 2025, pp. 143-157

https://doi.org/10.4467/16891864PC.25.016.21613

The aim of this article is to determine which features of the works awarded the Nike Literary Prize have been accentuated in the editorial peritext of their French and German translations as particularly relevant to the image of the work, its author and – in the background – the literature it represents. The study shows that the process of consecration through translation emphasises innovative and formally attractive descriptions of the world, whose virtually constant component is the complex individual-historical relationship.

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Pożegnanie Jidyszlandu

Andrzej Pawelec

Przekładaniec, Issue 50 – 50!, 2025, pp. 158-170

https://doi.org/10.4467/16891864PC.25.012.21609

In Canto VI of his Shoah epic poem Dos lid fun oysgehargetn yidishn folk [The Song of the Murdered Jewish People] Itzhak Katzenelson describes orphans in the Warsaw Ghetto at the end of the winter of 1942, half a year before the ghetto’s liquidation. His description of a two-year-old girl, who had seen horrors in reality which her grandmother could not see in dreams, surprisingly moves from the girl’s “serious eyes” to “Jewish seriousness” (der yidisher der ernst) which is like “a Holy Scripture for the world”. The article comments on several translations of this passage: the Polish, English, French and two German ones. All translators interpret “der yidisher der ernst” – against the author’s actual intention, according to the argument presented – in the context of the Shoah and its significance for the non-Jewish world rather than as the last tribute to the perished Yiddishland and Jewish uniqueness among the nations. It is suggested that the main source of the problem is not the word’s polysemy but rather Katzenelson’s exalted last vision of “true Jewishness”.

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Jak mówić o Gorzkich żalach w języku angielskim?

Jean Ward

Przekładaniec, Issue 50 – 50!, 2025, pp. 171-183

https://doi.org/10.4467/16891864PC.25.013.21610

The essay “How can we speak in English about Gorzkie żale?” arose from an attempt to discuss the conversations of the soul with the Sorrowful Mother of God from this Polish baroque Passion devotion, at an English-language conference on the theme of the dramatised word. Some parts of the devotion are compared with a translation into English made for the Diocese of Michigan in 1986, not in order to criticise the translators’ work, but in order to expose some of the outstanding qualities of the Polish text, which is both a devotional and an artistic masterpiece. The simplicity and concreteness of its language and imagery emerge clearly by comparison with the translation, which often resorts to Latinate vocabulary and conventionally religiose expression, remote from everyday experience and not demanding the spiritual and imaginative engagement that is required by the original. The comparison also draws attention to an extremely important aspect of the devotion: its remaining throughout in the darkness of Good Friday, lightened only by love. The essay concludes that while it might be possible to make a translation which retains more of the qualities of language of the original text, it would be extremely difficult to do this in such a way as to accommodate the traditional melody, which is an essential element of the devotion.

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Zmagania z rymem (Owidiusz Amores I 4, 17–28)

Ewa Skwara

Przekładaniec, Issue 50 – 50!, 2025, pp. 184-193

https://doi.org/10.4467/16891864PC.25.014.21611

The article presents the methods and consequences of searching for rhyme in the translation of Ovid’s elegy (Am. I 4, 17–20). In this situation, the translator is forced to conduct a particularly thorough analysis of the semantic scope of the original to select appropriate synonyms, and the struggle with rhyme usually leads to abandonment of Latin syntax. The appearance of synonyms in the translation (and not dictionary equivalents of the original), as well as a different sentence structure in the translation are most often regarded as a lack of fidelity caused by rhyme.

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Słownik jako intertekstualna pajęczyna (i tłumacze)

Marta Kaźmierczak

Przekładaniec, Issue 50 – 50!, 2025, pp. 194-202

https://doi.org/10.4467/16891864PC.25.015.21612

The article covers selected intertextual issues highlighted by the Polish translation of The Dictionary of Imaginary Places. Drawing on entries based on texts by Cervantes, Jünger, Aleksandr Zinoviev, Norton Juster (with Rimbaud embedded) as well as on graphic material and captions, I discuss examples of text–text, text–genre and text–reality relations and their translational implications and realizations.

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Discussions

Ach, jeśli ty Goethego znasz w oryginale...

Edward Balcerzan

Przekładaniec, Issue 50 – 50!, 2025, pp. 205-213

https://doi.org/10.4467/16891864PC.25.017.21614

The cultural turn in translation studies promised profound changes. The proposals of certain themes (as institutions, gender…) were indeed new. Yet on the Polish ground the contexts of culture, the contribution of translations to the shaping of the receiving literatures, the possibility of reading translations as independent texts, the programmes and images of translators were not. A disturbing peculiarity of the manifestos of the turn is the reduction of the image of translational communication, the abandonment of most research techniques in favour of descriptivism and the ideologisation of the study of translation, seen as a cultural text, controlled by politics or commerce.

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Wokół koncepcji tłumacza jako drugiego świadka – uwagi krytyczne

Małgorzata Gaszyńska-Magiera

Przekładaniec, Issue 50 – 50!, 2025, pp. 214-225

https://doi.org/10.4467/16891864PC.25.018.21615

The article, drawing on Sharon Deane-Cox’s concept, explores the role of translators of traumatic texts, particularly the testimonies of Holocaust survivors, within the framework of contemporary Translation Studies. In this view, which is influenced by the psychoanalytic works of Dori Laub, the translator of survivors’ testimonies acts as a secondary witness. To convey the survivor’s message faithfully in another language, the translator must “listen” to their voice with empathy. Translating testimonies, therefore, demands not only linguistic proficiency but also the ability to interpret meanings hidden between the lines. In this role, the translator bears the responsibility of preserving the memory of another person’s trauma. The grounding of Deane-Cox’s concept in theories that assert the inexpressibility of trauma, treat written testimonies as if they were spoken, and place significant responsibility on the translator may, however, invite some critique.

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Reading matter (remote)

Wymiary polskiego przekładoznawstwa. Numery „Przekładańca” w liczbach

Agata Hołobut, Jan Rybicki

Przekładaniec, Issue 50 – 50!, 2025, pp. 229-261

https://doi.org/10.4467/16891864PC.25.019.21616

This article presents a quantitative analysis of a corpus of forty–eight issues of “Przekładaniec” published so far (a total of 3,145,647 words) in terms of who publishes texts in it and what affiliations they represent, who the authors of “Przekładaniec” most readily quote, and how their interests evolve over time. We examine how the Polish translation studies discourse has been shaped in the journal and what terms it uses. We also follow the translation studies trends represented by the authors and the thematic links between particular issues. We use for this purpose: simple descriptive statistics, stylometric analysis, network analysis and document embedding.

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Files to download

Title and imprint pages PDF Contents PDF Notes about Authors PDF

Słowa kluczowe: base, conceptualisation, dimensions of imagery, ekphrasis, iconicity, image, profile, relation, subjectification, scene construal, translation history, translation criticism in Germany, the Bible, Shakespeare, Lawrence Norfolk, remote simultaneous interpreting, CAI, machine interpreting, simultaneous interpreting, computer assisted interpreting, translation, Holocaust memorial museums, Auschwitz-Birkenau, museum narratives, memory, Poland, drama translation, translation history, Shakespeare translations, digital resources, communication, translation, concentration camps, Deaf, Jews, survivors, history of Polish literary translation, literary translation in the People’s Republic of Poland, Voltaire in Polish, Beckett in Polish, anonymous translations, Jerzy Kamil Weintraub, literary translation before 1945, translation biography. personal archive, Children’s and Household Tales by Brothers Grimm, translator studies, Zofia Antonina Kowerska – Polish translator, Stefan Srebrny, radio, Vilnius, radio play, Nike award, translation, editorial peritext, book cover, Itzhak Katzenelson, Yiddishland, Holocaust, translation, Bitter Lamentations, Good Friday, simplicity of language, emotional charge, translation, rhyme, elegiac couplet, Ovid, love elegy, intertextuality, translation of dictionaries, mock didacticism, fictitious proper names, ethics of quoting from translations, literary culture, authorial literature, literature in translation, politicality, apoliticality, poetics, rhetoric, the creative process of a translator, secondary witness, testimony, trauma, translator, corpus studies, stylometry, translation studies

Funding information