Translating Vita Sackville-West’s Seducers in Ecuador into Polish: Cultural and Linguistic Challenges
Translating Vita Sackville-West’s Seducers in Ecuador into Polish: Cultural and Linguistic Challenges

Summary/Abstract: Despite writing during Modernism, Vita Sackville-West generally avoided the formal experimentation associated with this literary period. Seducers in Ecuador, however, stands out as one of her most formally innovative works. To date, no translation of the novella into Polish has been undertaken. Thus, the author of this paper has carried out the task independently. This study examines the challenges encountered in the translation process. The analysis focuses on three principal areas: sociocultural differences, irony, and the translation of technical and archaic vocabulary.Methodologically, the paper uses an autoethnographic approach to examine the translator’s subjective experience and reflections on the linguistic and cultural challenges encountered during the translation process. Drawing on theories developed by Eugene Nida, Katharina Reiss, and Hans J. Vermeer, the study explores the tension between domestication and foreignisation, as well as between dynamic and formal equivalence.The analysis demonstrates that dynamic equivalence is the most effective strategy in the majority of cases, particularly when translating culturally specific references, tonal irony, and syntactic structures that would sound unnatural if rendered literally in Polish. A reader-oriented approach enables the translator to preserve the communicative effect and readability of the original text while adapting it to the expectations of the target audience. At the same time, it is shown that formal equivalence remains necessary in passages where excessive adaptation would weaken the literary style or tone of the novella. The paper concludes that successful literary translation requires a flexible combination of strategies rather than exclusive reliance on either domestication or foreignisation.

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