Retracing the History of Literary Translation in Poland: People, Politics, Poetics

283 Pages·2021·3.528 MB·English

by  Magda Heydel (editor), Zofia Ziemann (editor)

Retracing the History of Literary
Translation in Poland
This book, the first of its kind for an English-language audience, intro-
duces a fresh perspective on the Polish literary translation landscape,
providing unique insights into the social, political, and ideological under-
pinnings of Polish translation history.
Employing a problem-based approach, the book creates a map of dif-
ferent research directions in the history of literary translation in Poland,
highlighting a holistic perspective on the discipline’s development in the
region. The four sections explore topics of particular interest in current
translation research, including translation and cultural borderlands, the
agency of women translators, translators as intercultural mediators, and
the intersection of translation research and digital methods. The 15 con-
tributions demonstrate the ways in which Polish culture has represented
translated work in its own way, informed and shaped by socio-political
changes in Polish history. At the same time, the volume situates Polish
research in translation within the growing body of work on Central and
Eastern European translation studies, as well as looking at them against
the backdrop of the international development of the discipline.
This collection offers a valuable addition to existing research on
Western literary canons, making it key reading for scholars in translation
studies, comparative literature, cultural studies, and Slavonic studies.
Magda Heydel is associate professor and the head of the Centre for
Translation Studies at the Faculty of Polish Studies, Jagiellonian University
in Krako´w and editor in chief of Przekładaniec. A Journal of Translation
Studies. Her work is mainly in literary translation and translation history.
She is also a literary translator from English into Polish.
Zofia Ziemann teaches translation at the Centre for Translation Studies,
Jagiellonian University, Krako´w. She is also a freelance translator, inter-
preter, and editor. Her main research area is translation history, with a
particular focus on literary retranslation.
Routledge Research on Translation and Interpreting History
Edited by Christopher Rundle, Pekka Kujamäki and Michaela Wolf
This series showcases cutting-edge research in English on the interdis-
ciplinary dialogue between translation and interpreting studies and
historical perspectives. Building off the emergence of translation and
interpreting history as a subdiscipline of the field in its own right, the
series features interdisciplinary work spanning a range of cultural and
geographical contexts which engages in the treatment of translation and
translation practice as social and historical events.
Languages in the Crossfire
Interpreters in the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939)
Jesús Baigorri-Jalón
Translated by Holly Mikkelson
Queering Translation History
Shakespeare’s Sonnets in Czech and Slovak Transformations
Eva Spišiaková
Retracing the History of Literary Translation in Poland
People, Politics, Poetics
Edited by Magda Heydel and Zofia Ziemann
For more information about this series, please visit https://www.routledge.
com/Routledge-Research-on-Translation-and-Interpreting-History/
book-series/RRTIH
Retracing the History of
Literary Translation in Poland
People, Politics, Poetics
Edited by
Magda Heydel and Zofia Ziemann
First published 2022
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this title has been requested
ISBN: 978-0-367-34375-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-04440-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-32536-6 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9780429325366
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Contents
List of Contributors viii
Introduction: Researching Translation History in Poland 1
MAGDA HEYDEL AND ZOFIA ZIEMANN
Part 1
Translators and Mediators 19
1 Translator Inferiority Revisited: The Case of Women
Translators in Poland in the Early 18th Century 21
KAROLINA DĘBSKA
2 Shakespeare on the Edge(s): Translating the Bard in a
Historically Multicultural Space 37
ALICJA KITLASZ
3 Restraint and Licence in Polish Translations of Ancient
Greek Tragedies 50
BARBARA BIBIK
4 Translation as Mission: Wanda Dynowska-Umadevi and
Her Polish-Indian/Indo-Polish Project 64
EWA DĘBICKA-BOREK AND ZOFIA ZIEMANN
5 The New York State of Polish Verse, or Frank O’Hara
Translated, Re-translated and Re-written 80
JERZY JARNIEWICZ
vi Contents
Part 2
Translation Politics 97
6 My Pale Rusalka, a True Heathen: Reading Polish
Jane Eyre across Centuries 99
KASIA SZYMAn´ SKA
7 Translation and Politics: A Case of the First Polish
Translation of Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov 114
KINGA ROZWADOWSKA
8 Polish Originals of English Works: The Ideological
Frameworks for Translations of Joseph Conrad in
Poland 1897–1974 128
MAGDA HEYDEL
9 Polish Reception of Translated Postcolonial Literature
1970–89: A Metametonymic Study 144
DOROTA GOŁUCH
Part 3
Translation and the Book Market 163
10 French Children’s Literature in Poland after 1918 165
NATALIA PAPROCKA
11 Inspiration from Translation: The Golden Age of
English-Language Literature for Children and Its
Impact on Polish Juvenile Fiction 181
ALEKSANDRA WIECZORKIEWICZ
12 Pseudotranslations in Poland after 1945 197
MARZENA CHROBAK AND OLGA MASTELA
13 From Fandom to Franchise: Polish Translations of
Anglophone Speculative Fiction and the Changing
Publishing Market 212
DOROTA GUTTFELD
Contents vii
Part 4
Translation History and the Digital Environment 227
14 The e-Repository of Polish Shakespeare Translations:
A New Research Environment for Studying Drama
Translation 229
ANNA CETERA-WŁODARCZYK
15 A Third Glance at a Stylometric Map of Native and
Translated Literature in Polish 247
JAN RYBICKI
Index 262
Contributors
Barbara Bibik is Assistant Professor at the Department of Classical
Studies, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Torun´ . Her research inter-
ests are centred on ancient Greek drama and its reception, and on
problems of translation from classical languages. She was awarded
scholarships from Fundacja Lanckoron´ skich and the foundation
Hardt pour l’étude de l’antiquité classique. Since 2007, she has served
as the president of the Traditio Europae Foundation, whose aim is to
popularise classical studies.
Marzena Chrobak is Associate Professor at the Institute of Romance
Studies, Jagiellonian University in Krako´w. Her publications include
Optymizm Kandyda oraz inne problemy oświeconych tłumaczy
[Candide’s optimism and other problems of the enlightened trans-
lators, 2009] and Między s´wiatami. Tłumacz ustny oraz komuni-
kacja międzykulturowa w literaturze odkrycia i konkwisty Ameryki
[Between worlds. The interpreter and intercultural communication
in the literature of the disovery and conquest of America, 2012]. She
translated 20 novels (Eduardo Mendoza, Mario Vargas Llosa) and 2
films (Pedro Almodo´var) from Spanish.
Anna Cetera-Włodarczyk is Associate Professor of English literature at
the University of Warsaw. She published several monographs on the
cultural history of Shakespeare in Polish translation, including a co-
authored, two-volume study Polskie przekłady Shakespeare’a w XIX
wieku (Polish translations of Shakespeare in the 19th century (2019)).
In the years 2016–2019 she managed a state-funded research project
to established a digital repository of Polish Shakespeare translations
in the 19th century, extended (2018) to incorporate the 20th and 21st
century. Since 2009 she has been collaborating with Piotr Kamin´ ski
(a translator) and editing a critical series of new Polish translations of
Shakespeare (the 7th volume forthcoming).
Karolina Deb̨ ska is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Applied Linguistics,
University of Warsaw. Her research interests include translation studies
and particularly the history of early women translators in Poland.
Contributors ix
Ewa Dębicka-Borek is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Oriental
Studies, Jagiellonian University in Krako´w. Her work concerns chiefly
Sanskrit religious literature and the dynamics of relations between the
Brahmanic and local traditions of South India.
Dorota Gołuch is Lecturer in the School of Modern Languages at Cardiff
University. She published book chapters and articles on the Polish
translation and reception of postcolonial writing and co-edited a spe-
cial issue of Comparative Critical Studies on translating peripheries.
Currently, she is writing about translation and solidarity, as well as
undertaking a project on translation, memory, and the Holocaust.
Dorota Guttfeld is Assistant Professor at the Translation Studies Unit,
Department of English, Faculty of Languages, Nicolaus Copernicus
University in Torun´ . Her research interests are centred on cultural ele-
ments in literary and audiovisual translation.
Magda Heydel is Associate Professor at the Centre for Translation Studies,
the Faculty of Polish Studies, Jagiellonian University in Krako´w. She
published books on T. S. Eliot (2003) and Czesław Miłosz (2013)
and co-edited anthologies of translation studies: international (2009)
and Polish (2013, 2019). She is the editor in chief of Przekładaniec.
A Journal of Translation Studies. She translated more than 20 books
from English (i.a. Virginia Woolf, Joseph Conrad, Seamus Heaney,
Alice Oswald, Katherine Manfield).
Jerzy Jarniewicz is Head of the Department of British Literature and
Culture at the University of Ło´dz´ . He has published 13 books on con-
temporary British, Irish and American poetry, the counterculture of
the Sixties, and literary translation. He is an awarded poet, essayist,
and literary translator, with more than 20 translated books of fiction
and poetry, including authors such as James Joyce, Philip Roth, John
Banville, Denise Riley, Ursula Le Guin, Raymond Carver.
Alicja Kitlasz is a doctoral candidate at the Faculty of Modern Languages,
University of Warsaw. She works on Placyd Jankowski, one of the
early Polish Shakespeare translators. She was part of the team creating
the digital repository of 19th-century Polish Shakespeare translations
(http://polskiszekspir.uw.edu.pl/) and co-authored Polskie przekłady
Shakespeare’a w XIX wieku (Polish translations of Shakespeare in the
19th century, 2019)
Olga Mastela is Assistant Professor at the Chair for Translation Studies,
Jagiellonian University in Krako´w. In 2019, she published a book on