Dosłowność przekładu – problemy i konsekwencje. Casus staropolskiego tłumaczenia dialogu „De constantia” Justusa Lipsjusza
, Literalness of Translation—Problems and Consequences. The Case of the Old-Polish Translation of Justus Lipsius’ Dialogue “De constantia” (“On Constancy”)

Summary/Abstract: The authoress makes Justus Lipsius’ work “De constantia” (1584) in its old-Polish translation by Janusz Piotrowicz entitled “O stałości księgi dwoje” (1600) (“On Constancy in Two Books”) the subject of her paper. She analyses the specificity of translating the Latin text into Polish with special attention paid to literality as a translation method. Referring to the textual material, she demonstrates that this method requires deep understanding of cultural and intertextual context to make it a valuable instrument for rendering the original sense and rhetorical property. On selected samples of Piotrowicz’s translation she shows how literality may stress, enrich as well as impede interpretation of the text. Carrying out a comparative analysis, she shows that faithful reproduction of translation basis does not always guarantee complete agreement with the lexis and semantics of the original work, and that it may lead to misunderstanding, trivialization, and even total deformation of the original author’s intention and the source text. Justyna Dąbkowska-Kujko reveals and accentuates the essence of Piotrowicz’s preserving the lexical, stylistic, and conceptual fidelity, emphasising at the same time that literality, although a great advantage, may sometimes lead to overinterpretation or to generating metaphorical structures that are absent from the source text. Conclusions indicate that faithful reproduction of a Latin text into Polish should not solely result from proper understanding the original language anchored in context and referring to specialist terminology of the source text, but it also is a philosophical and aesthetic issue, it calls for precision, vigilance, for a deep reflection upon the translated work and its intercultural and polysemantic potential.

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