Siedemnastowieczne polskie tłumaczenia jezuickich relacji z misji na Dalekim Wschodzie w kontekście problematyki historii przekładu
Polish 17th-Century Translations of Jesuit Accounts from the Far East in the Context of Translation History

Summary/Abstract: Right from the beginning of their missionary activity, the Jesuits painstakingly drafted and collected various documents. These accounts were printed in Latin or Italian, and soon translated into other languages. In Poland, in the first three decades of the 17th century, more than a dozen reports from China, Japan, Vietnam and Tibet were printed, constituting the first eye-witness accounts from these territories, not only in Poland, but in Europe at large. Polish translations offer material for various kinds of analysis. This article discusses the work of two Polish translators, members of Society of Jesus, who used different strategies depending on their intended target readership. Szymon Wysocki was interested mainly in religious aspects of the Far East missions and he got rid of most of culture-specific items as his writing was dedicated to young adepts of the Society. Fryderyk Szembek, on the other hand, paid attention also to cultural aspects of the accounts he translated. However, his attitude towards cultural otherness was less neutral than in the source texts. His translations constituted an important source of knowledge for the 17th century Polish reader. Both translators had to cope with difficulties such as proper names or culturally marked vocabulary and with the genre specifity of these texts, new to the Polish literary system. In my research I use the methodological framework of polysystem theory, Lefevere’s theory of rewriting and Pym’s concepts in the history of translation, referring also to translation sociology, theory of reportage, history of culture and history of languages.

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