Translation/Interpretation: A Few Remarks on the Translation of Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz’s The Crazy Locomotive into English Cover Image

Tłumaczenie a interpretacja. Kilka uwag o Szalonej lokomotywie Stanisława Ignacego Witkiewicza w przekładzie na język angielski
Translation/Interpretation: A Few Remarks on the Translation of Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz’s The Crazy Locomotive into English

Author(s): Małgorzata Wesołowska
Subject(s): Language studies, Language and Literature Studies, Theoretical Linguistics, Studies of Literature, Comparative Linguistics, Philology, Theory of Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Szczecińskiego
Keywords: comparative literature; translation studies; Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz; Daniel Gerould; C.S. Durer; The Crazy Locomotive

Summary/Abstract: Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz’s The Crazy Locomotive was published in 1968 in the collection of Witkacy’s dramas The Madman and the Nun and Other Plays translated into English by Daniel Gerould and C. S. Durer. As a translator and a researcher of Witkacy’s works, Daniel Gerould takes a double role. He interprets Witkacy’s play not only in his explicit comments published in his study Witkacy. Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz as an Imaginative Writer (1981) or in the introduction to The Crazy Locomotive, but also in his translation of the drama. The author of the article presents how Gerould’s explicit interpretation of The Crazy Locomotive as a catastrophic play, where the machine wreaks auto-destruction (which is not necessarily obvious in the Polish version), may influence the translation of the text into English. In her analysis of the Polish, French and English versions of the play, the author reveals different interpretational acts of the translators.

  • Issue Year: 2014
  • Issue No: 5
  • Page Range: 453-468
  • Page Count: 16
  • Language: Polish