Rola przekładu w budowaniu narracji w miejscach pamięci Holokaustu w Polsce. Wstępne wnioski z badania pilotażowego w Państwowym Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau i dalsze perspektywy
Translation and the Meaning-making in Holocaust Memorial Museums in Poland: Preliminary Results from a Pilot Study in the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum and Plans for Further Research

Summary/Abstract: 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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