Special Issue

Issues in English

Publication date: 05.11.2013

Description

The English-language electronic version of Przekładaniec was made possible by a grant from the National Programme for the Development of Humanities 2012-2013 awarded by the polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education.

Licence: None

Editorial team

Editor-in-Chief dr hab. Magda Heydel

Secretary dr Zofia Ziemann

Volume Editor Magda Heydel

Issue content

The Bright and the Dark Sides of the Culture of Translation

Juliusz Domański

Przekładaniec, Special Issue 2013 – Selection from the Archives, Issues in English, pp. 7-14

https://doi.org/10.4467/16891864ePC.13.033.1450

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Traduttore traditore: Is It Possible to Translate Ancient Greek Texts?

Włodzimierz Lengauer

Przekładaniec, Special Issue 2013 – Selection from the Archives, Issues in English, pp. 15-27

https://doi.org/10.4467/16891864ePC.13.034.1451

The culture of Ancient Greek literature is very different from our modern one. As its medium, the Ancient Greek language is incomprehensible outside the general context of Greek civilisation. Any translation of an Ancient Greek text is to some extent false, or at least artifi cial, and it cannot express the special character of the reality of the original. Selected translations of passages from Homer, Herodotus and Aeschines illustrate the incompatibility of the ancient and modern styles of narration. The study of the language of literature in relation to the reality it represents is advocated as a possible solution to this problem. Readers are also recommended to make the effort to study the ancient originals instead of reading the texts in translations, which can never be fl awless.

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The Historian of Antiquity and the Art of Translation: Marginal Notes to a Translation of Plutarch’s Lives

Aleksander Wolicki

Przekładaniec, Special Issue 2013 – Selection from the Archives, Issues in English, pp. 28-46

https://doi.org/10.4467/16891864ePC.13.035.1452

The author takes a close look at translating ancient texts from the viewpoint of a historian. He explains why historians of Antiquity are usually against the very idea of translating Greek and Latin literature. He then proceeds to argue that historical knowledge is indispensable if a translation is to be rendered. This argument is supported by a detailed analysis of the standard Polish translation of two biographies by Plutarch, Life of Aristides and Life of Cimon.

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Eros with a Veneer: Translating Erotica in Ancient Comedy

Ewa Skwara

Przekładaniec, Special Issue 2013 – Selection from the Archives, Issues in English, pp. 47-55

https://doi.org/10.4467/16891864ePC.13.036.1453

Using Plautus’ comedies as an example, the article shows how the translation of erotica has varied depending on the dominant habits and customs of a given period. It underlines two opposite trends: one allows an increasing license to evoke fantasy; the other inhibits the graphic and vulgar side of the texts (especially in the choice of language). If an erotic pun in the original evokes only sexual associations and allusions, translators often feel obliged to be bold in their rendering of the text. But there can be no consenting to the use of vulgar language. On the one hand, translators are hindered by the conviction that language of the characters in ancient plays should not appear too modern. On the other hand, dictionaries offer a practically biblical (or merely archaic) vocabulary when it comes to the obscene. In effect, erotica usually tends to sound more archaic than the rest of the text.

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The Quest for the Golden Fleece: on Translating Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica

Emilia Żybert-Pruchnicka

Przekładaniec, Special Issue 2013 – Selection from the Archives, Issues in English, pp. 56-70

https://doi.org/10.4467/16891864ePC.13.037.1454

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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Translation Criticism in Ancient Rome. Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights

Katarzyna Ochman

Przekładaniec, Special Issue 2013 – Selection from the Archives, Issues in English, pp. 71-86

https://doi.org/10.4467/16891864ePC.13.038.1455

We owe many aspects of Western culture to the Greeks; yet it was the Romans who took the first steps in the fi eld of translation. This article presents a selection of characteristics of translation methods used by the Ancients and, more particularly, their broad understanding of translation as exemplified by Aulus Gellius, Roman writer of the second century CE.

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For a Tin Ingot: The Archaeology of Oral Interpretation

Marzena Chrobak

Przekładaniec, Special Issue 2013 – Selection from the Archives, Issues in English, pp. 87-101

https://doi.org/10.4467/16891864ePC.13.039.1456

This paper, based on research conducted by the pioneers of the history of oral interpreting (A. Hermann, I. Kurz) in the 1950s and on modern archaeological evidence, presents the earliest references to interpreters in the Bronze Age, in the Near East and the Mediterranean area (Mesopotamia, Egypt, Crete, Carthage). It discusses a Sumerian Early Dynastic List, a Sumerian-Eblaic glossary from Ebla, the Shu-ilishu’s Cylinder Seal, the inscriptions and reliefs from the Tombs of the Princes of Elephantine and of Horemheb, the mention of one-third of a mina of tin dispensed at Ugarit to the interpreter of Minoan merchants and the Hanno’s stele, as well as terms used by these early civilisations to denote an interpreter: eme-bal, targumannu, jmy-r(A) aw, and mls.

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To Konstantynowa Sobieska on her Leaving Żółkiew: On a Translation of the Latin Octavia

Radosław Rusnak

Przekładaniec, Special Issue 2013 – Selection from the Archives, Issues in English, pp. 102-123

https://doi.org/10.4467/16891864ePC.13.040.1457

The paper discusses a translation of the Roman tragedy Historia albo tragedia Oktawii cesarzówny rzymskiej (History or Tragedy of Octavia the Roman Emperor’s Daughter) by Józef Jan Woliński, published in 1728 and completed shortly beforehand. Its author presents himself as a faithful servant of the Wessels and dedicates his adaptation of the fi rst-century praetexta Octavia to Maria Józefa Wessel, Konstanty Sobieski’s widow. The translator adapts the Latin text, on the one hand emphasising Nero’s ferocity and despotism, on the other employing the stereotype of the abandoned wife. The cruel emperor is charged with all the responsibility for the evil which consumes Rome and his relatives, while Octavia is depicted as a fragile and passive victim of his malice. However, the translator does not disregard the protagonist’s intimacy with her brother and her nurse. Woliński underlines the moral aspect of the drama, hinting at the imminent collapse of Nero’s power and his violent death by suicide, which does not feature in the original. By removing Octavia’s final lamentation, the Polish translator makes her follow her nurse’s advice and desist from expressing her grief. Given Woliński’s closeness to his benefactors around the time of writing his Historia albo tragedia, it seems plausible to suggest the drama was privately commissioned, and conceived as a solace to Wessel’s concerns when handing her beloved estate at Żółkiew to her odious brother-in-law, Jakub Sobieski.

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Restoring the Original Meaning: Jewish Translations of the New Testament

Piotr Blumczyński

Przekładaniec, Special Issue 2013 – Selection from the Archives, Issues in English, pp. 124-137

https://doi.org/10.4467/16891864ePC.13.041.1458

Among dozens of new translations of the New Testament published in the last fi fty years, there are several versions by Jewish scholars which have yet to receive enough attention. This article offers an analysis of the most characteristic features of these translations, such as criticism of the existing versions outlined in the introductory sections, as well as actual techniques by which the Jewish origin and character of the text is emphasised in three spheres: superfi cial, cultural and religious, and theological. Each of these is illustrated with numerous examples, juxtaposed with traditional versions. It is argued that, regardless of the ideological motivation underlying the origin of the Jewish translations of the New Testament, they offer valuable and otherwise unavailable insights into the original message of the ancient Christian writings.

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Occulta sapientiae. Czesław Miłosz translates Psalm 51

Anna Cetera-Włodarczyk

Przekładaniec, Special Issue 2013 – Selection from the Archives, Issues in English, pp. 138-153

https://doi.org/10.4467/16891864ePC.13.042.1459

The essay focuses on Czesław Miłosz’s translation of Psalm 51, one of the most celebrated penitential psalms. Unlike the medieval practice of illuminating books of psalms, where the images offered a vivid and concrete narrative context for the pleas and lamentations, Miłosz aims to highlight the universal and archetypal dimension of King David’s prayers. He sets out to create a new hieratic Polish style to reconcile liturgical use with the evocative qualities and unique prosodies of Hebrew poetry, without sacrifi cing a coherent theological interpretation. To reproduce the characteristic repetitions and parallelisms, Miłosz draws lexical and syntactic inspiration from the earliest Polish translations of the psalms, notably the Psałterz Puławski (Psalter of Puławy, late fi fteenth century). Ultimately, his translation forms a complex amalgam, bringing together the religious intuitions of Judaism, the hieratic tradition of the Polish language and the semantic intensity of Miłosz’s own poetry.

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Maria Sułkowska’s Translation of Shakespeare’s Sonnets

Marta Gibińska-Marzec

Przekładaniec, Special Issue 2013 – Selection from the Archives, Issues in English, pp. 154-170

https://doi.org/10.4467/16891864ePC.13.043.1460

The paper presents the fi rst almost complete edition of Shakespeare’s sonnets in Polish which, appeared in 1913 and has since been forgotten. The translator, Maria Sułkowska, chose to appear under the pseudonym Mus. She omitted sonnets 134 and 135 as untranslatable puns, and wrote a preface in verse where she expounded her views on Shakespeare’s Sonnets and their translation. Her version is shown in the light of a highly critical 1914 review and in the context of the first Polish monograph on Shakespeare’s poetry by Roman Dyboski (1914) who quoted Sułkowska’s translation throughout, although with a few alterations of his own. Even though some of the sonnets must be a challenge to the Polish reader because of the choice of obsolete vocabulary or syntax, the whole merits attention for consistency of the translator’s decisions as well as the attention to detail.

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Cinderella’s Metamorphoses: A Comparative Study of Two English Translations of Perrault’s Tales

Martine Hennard Dutheil de la Rochère

Przekładaniec, Special Issue 2013 – Selection from the Archives, Issues in English, pp. 171-188

https://doi.org/10.4467/16891864ePC.13.044.1461

This comparative analysis of two translations of Charles Perrault’s “Cendrillon ou la petite pantoufl e de verre” shows how the French conte was adapted for children in England at different moments and refl ects different projects. Robert Samber’s “Cinderilla: or, The Little Glass Slipper,” published in Histories, or Tales of Past Times. With Morals (1729), is known as the fi rst English translation of the tale. More recently, Angela Carter’s retranslation “Cinderella: or, The Little Glass Slipper,” published in The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault (1977), pays homage to Samber but also modernises the tale to carry a more emancipatory message. While Samber’s translation refl ects the working conditions of Grub Street writers and acculturation of Perrault’s fairy tale in Protestant England, Carter gives it a feminist twist as she turns it into a “fable of the politics of experience.” She would later rewrite it as “Ashputtle or The Mother’s Ghost” (1987), this time using Manheim’s English translation of the Grimms’ “Aschenputtel” as a starting point.

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Słowa kluczowe: antiquity, Catullus, Cicero, culture of translation, aemulatio, Homer, imitatio, Livius andronicus, translation in ancient Greece, translation in ancient Rome, Septuagint, translation, ancient Greek, Homer, Herodotus, Aeschines, translation, ancient Greek literature, Latin literature, historiography, Plutarch, Lives, ancient comedy, erotica in translation, Plautine comedy in Polish translation, Plautus, Apollonius Rhodius, epic poetry in translation, Polish translations of the Argonautica, translating dactylic hexameter, antiquity, translation criticism, translation in ancient Rome, imitatio, aemulatio, Cicero, Horace, Quintilian, Aulus Gellius, interpreting, archaeology, archaeological evidence, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Crete, Carthage, Bronze Age, Near East, Octavia, translation, Józef Jan Woliński, Maria Józefa Wessel, New Testament, Jewish translation, ideology, original meaning, restoration, Czesław Miłosz, translation, the Bible, the Book of Psalms, Psalm 51, Shakespeare’s sonnets, translation, Maria Sułkowska, Mus, Charles Perrault, Cinderella, translation, Robert Samber, Angela Carter

Special Issue 2013 – Selection from the Archives

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