Translation Today: Literary Translation in Focus

Christian Jakob Altmann discusses the Banat-Transylvanian-German-Romanian multicultural consciousness of Nobel Prize winner Herta Müller, the writer being a member of the German minority living in Banat of Temeswar, Romania. The study promotes a view of values that are unique to each culture, even though they may not necessarily be unique in different cultural spheres. This aspect proves to be a great hindrance in Polish and Czech translations despite the different preconditions determining the transfer of culturally marked words in both of the languages in question. The author emphasizes the troublesome nature of a third culture’s references as such elements may be absent in the culture of the translation or be their domestic equivalent free of unfamiliar associations.

Marek Piela provides an interesting discussion of some special difficulties of literary translation from modern Hebrew into Polish encountered in the novel Mar Mani by A. B. Yehoshua. The novel comprises five conversations carried on in the space of time between the fifth conversation conveyed, which took place in 1848, and the first one, which happened in 1982. The first conversation is written in present-day spoken Hebrew, whereas the previous conversations use different styles of language exhibiting literary, bookish or archaic natures. Hebrew mainly applies different grammatical features to differentiate between the two involved registers, which constitute a potential difficulty for the translator. Nevertheless, the novel has been successfully translated into Polish by Leszek Kwiatkowski, who rendered the source registers by means of vocabulary.

Michał Organ offers a study examining the Polish-English translation of archaisms in Andrzej Sapkowski’s fantasy novel Blood of Elves. The analysis discusses some prevailing tendencies governing the selection of techniques for translation of archaisms proposed by Lefere (1994) and their impact on the reception of the English translation of the novel. The author concentrates on the issues related to the notion of archaisms and archaisation of a text, briefly presents the use of archaisms in The Witcher fantasy saga and provides a summary of different translation techniques and strategies used when rendering archaisms. The theoretical introduction is complemented by a comparative analysis of archaisms in selected lines of dialogue found in Polish and English versions of the book. In the course of the analysis, it is suggested that the majority of archaisms are translated by the application of a minimal modernisation technique.

The chapter authored by Ruzanna Ghazaryan and Ishkhan Dadyan places stylistic devices found in Lawrence Durrell’s Balthazar and its Russian translation into the centre of interest. In the undertaken study, the authors follow linguostylistic and linguopoetic methods of analysis to discuss the artistic value of the novel and the writer’s personality dynamics. The analysed stylistic devices found in the text are compared with their counterparts in the Russian translation to determine the changes introduced during the rendition of the novel. The typology of translation transformations proposed by Barkhudarov serves as the basis for the conducted analysis.

The next contribution, authored by Valentyna Savchyn, offers an analysis of Robert Burns’ poetry in Ukrainian translation delivered by Mykola Lukash. The author bases her study on the two views expressed by Lefevere (1992), firstly that translation is perceived as a rewriting of the source text conveying a certain ideology and poetics, and as such having a manipulative potential, and secondly that the translator projecting the image of the original author and his or her work affects their perception in the target literature. The proposed study delves into the way in which Robert Burns is presented in the Ukrainian translation. Additional aspects of the analysis include an examination of the impact made by the translator’s ideology and poetic motivations on Burns’ image as presented in the translation. Furthermore, the author discusses the cultural and ideological shifts introduced into the translation as an outcome of explicit and implicit manipulations.

In turn, Weronika Sztorc approaches the translators’ footnotes in Polish renditions of literary works published within the latest 30 years. One of the basic functions of footnotes added to a given translation is the explanation of particular decisions undertaken during the process of rendition. However, paratexts added by translators are also included in forewords or afterwords, and they usually concern previous translations of a given literary work. The author offers a study of selected footnotes discussing previous renditions found in literary works published within the last 30 years. As presented, such footnotes may be predominantly informative, but some of them express a very subjective character revealing the personal traits of their author, for instance a disapproval of predecessors’ translation decisions. The author raises an interesting aspect of such paratexts, as footnotes added by translators may form coherent stories stressing the work of the translator and the difficulties encountered and suggesting that there is no one proper way of translating a given work into the target language.

The study contributed by Iryna Odrekhivska addresses the shift towards self-reflection in translation studies resulting in a review of the discipline’s relevance in contemporary social, cultural, academic and other contexts. The view expressed by the ‘metaturn’ of translation studies is discussed by the author who examines some key tendencies present in the discipline. By the employment of a wider and comprehensive perspective, the study elaborates on selected trends conveying ‘the future of the past’ in translation studies, for instance, the research into metahistoriography and present historiographical accounts of translation. The author applies Yehuda Elkana’s (1981) concept of ‘images of knowledge’ to emphasize the necessity of viewing translation ‘knowledge’ in a wider and more inclusive perspective. The chapter also focuses on the ‘present’ of the discipline, as the concept of ‘metaturn’ takes into account the transdisciplinarity of translation studies as well as the need to establish ‘Post-Translation Studies’ and discusses their implications for translation pedagogy.