Tłumacze i ich biografie – pytania metodologiczne

Author(s): Markus Eberharter / Language(s): English Issue: 47/2023

This article considers the methodological issues of research in Translator Studies, that is, concerning translators themselves and their biographies. Above all in the perspective of the cultural turn of the 1990s, which led to a new understanding of both the translators themselves and their role in intercultural communication, undertaking and clarifying the principles of such research seems to be a consistent step in the theoretical development of the discipline of Translation Studies. The article lists and defines the most important aims and objectives of biographical research on translators. Also presented are specific research models and paradigms, which can be used to reconstruct and describe so-called translator biographies. Finally, the author considers to what extent it is advisable to combine facts about the life and activities of translators into larger and coherent biographical narratives. In this respect Translation Studies could benefit from the conclusions of Biographical Studies, particularly regarding the reliable and adequate use of data collected in biographical research.

Zapisana w cudzym archiwum: re/dekonstrukcja postaci Bolesławy Kopelówny na podstawie spuścizny Zygmunta Żuławskiego

Author(s): Joanna Sobesto / Language(s): Polish Issue: 47/2023

The main aim of the paper is to present the private and professional biography of Bolesława Kopelówna – a female translator from English active in the interwar period (1918–1939) in Poland. Unusually prolific as a translator, criticized by her contemporaries and then forgotten, Kopelówna authored dozens of translations from various genres: including fiction, children’s literature, and romance novels. She was also an interpreter and worked in the field of specialized translation. She traveled often and was engaged in the socialist movement in Poland.As an official archive of Kopelówna does not exist, I would like to re/deconstruct her biography through Zygmunt Żuławski’s – her friend and colleague – personal papers: letters to Kopelówna, diaries and some enigmatic traces of her own presence in his archive. By applying tools from translation history, especially contemporary findings on archives of female writers, I attempt to answer the question why Kopelówna was so intensely criticized. Microhistorical study on female translator, through the extension of the notion of an archive takes part in the discussion on the potential of translation history in literary history and cultural studies.

Minio dzieciom. O twórczości przekładowej Janusza Minkiewicza

Author(s): Ewa Nicewicz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 47/2023

Janusz Minkiewicz was an excellent poet, satirist, translator, contributor to many important periodicals, friend of Tuwim and Brzechwa, author of famous satires and political cribs, but also of numerous works for children and translator. His first translation published in book form appeared after the war, quickly gaining a circle of enthusiasts, both among children and adults. To date, more than a dozen titles intended for a young audience have been published, the vast majority of which have been reprinted many times. Minkiewicz translated mainly from Russian, but his translation output also included English poetry, German or Italian. The paper – the result of a search conducted at the Polish Writers Donation Library, at the State Archive in Warsaw, at the Nasza Księgarnia and at the Adam Mickiewicz Museum in Warsaw – is the first attempt to look at Janusz Minkiewicz’s translation output addressed to young readers.

Mikrohistoria Bronisława Zielińskiego w polu translatorsko-literackim

Author(s): Agnieszka Adamowicz‑Pośpiech / Language(s): Polish Issue: 47/2023

Translators and interpreters have always played a key role as intercultural mediators, however, their biographies and functions as active agents of cultural change have only recently started to be studied. Following the sociological and material turn in translation studies, there has been a growing interest in the figure of the literary translator, not as a category of the translation process, but as a living human being who not „only” produces texts, but influences cultural transfer, introduces new poetics and shapes literary canons. Nowadays, researchers point to the necessity of describing the place and role of translators not only within Translation Studies, but above all, in the network of social contacts and relationships. The sociology of translators includes such issues as the status of translators in different cultures, pay rates, place and conditions of work, the public discourse of translation, i.e. the manifestations of the public image of the translating profession, which is visible, for example, in the press or in literary works. This area also encompasses research on translators’ attitudes towards their work, as revealed in essays, interviews, prefaces and translators’ archives. The paper focuses on the biography of the translator, placed in a broad historical and social context and thus, in the cultural and sociological dimensions of translator studies. In examining the biography of the Polish translator Bronisław Zieliński, the methodology of microhistory (adapted for translation studies by Jeremy Munday) will be used and combined with Anthony Chesterman’s theoretical proposal of translator studies.

In the Mirror of Translation. The Translator’s Biography of Cristina Campo

Author(s): Małgorzata Ślarzyńska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 47/2023

The subject of this article is the translation work of the Italian writer Cristina Campo (born Vittoria Guerrini), one of the most prominent Italian writers of the 20th century, poet, translator, and essayist, analysed in a biographical key. The aim is to look more closely at Cristina Campo’s biography – described so far in the only biography book (De Stefano 2002), but also recorded in the voluminous correspondence the writer left behind – through the framework of her translation activity. Of interest from this point of view become both her translation choices and reading choices (“the lovely kinsmen of the shelf,” as the writer called her favourite books) – related to a large extent to Campo’s literary temperament, her experiences in her private life, and her friends – as well as her choice of translation activity itself, largely conditioned by the need to spend a large part of her life in seclusion due to the incurable heart disease that Campo suffered from since her birth. An attempt will be made to answer the question of how illness and other life circumstances influenced her choice of translation activity, the selection of texts to be translated and the translator’s actual working conditions.

Tożsamość literacka Chateaubrianda: od tłumaczenia Raju utraconego Miltona do świadomej roli memorialisty i jego monumentalnej kreacji w Pamiętnikach zza grobu

Author(s): Aleksandra Kamińska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 14/2023

The aim of this article is to examine how Chateaubriand’s translation of Milton’s Paradise Lost influenced his monumental portrayal of the memorialist in Memoirs from Beyond the Grave. The writer is aware that his work marks the culmination of his literary creation: hence the reference to Milton drawing on the beauty and universalism of the Bible. In this context, the works of both writers show convergence in terms of thematic and stylistic threads. The most important common features are a preference for contrasts and the belief that man must come to terms with the decrees of providence. Chateaubriand emphasizes these elements even more strongly, referring to irony of fate and prolepsis.

Dialog Jana Kasprowicza z tragikami greckimi

Author(s): Barbara Bibik / Language(s): Polish Issue: 14/2023

Jan Kasprowicz was one of the most prominent authors at the turn of the 20th century. He was also a very eager translator. All scholars agree that, above all, he was interested in works of those authors who expressed ideas similar to those he himself believed. In my paper I would like to take a closer look at two works by Kasprowicz, Baśń nocy świętojańskiej and Uczta Herodjady, and discuss whether the Oresteia by Aeschylus, which Kasprowicz translated at the time, influenced those works.

Rzeczy i natura a (nadto) mówiące ja. Przekłady a wiersze Miłosza

Author(s): Marta Anna Skwara / Language(s): Polish Issue: 14/2023

The author analyzes the connections between Miłosz’s poetry and his translation work based on his translations and interpretations of the poetry of Wallace Stevens and Chinese poets, especially the poem “Another Spring” by Tu Fu. The subject of particular interest is Miłosz’s vision of “realistic poetry” and poetic epiphany related to the attempt to create/translate poems in which “the voice of the subject disappears”. The author also examines how Polish literary criticism accepted Miłosz’s translations and interpretations, relating them to the poet’s own poems. The article proves that Miłosz practiced the art of translation quite freely, in the interpretation of foreign poems he often used generalizations and unauthorized comparisons, which was not much discussed during the poet’s lifetime, and even after his death the dialogue with Miłosz as an interpreter and translator of poetry was not very polemical in the country. Combinations of Miłosz’s translations and his own works were often used as the poet had planned it, without any attempt to verify the translation or the interpretation associated with it. The world’s “realistic poetry”, in which the voice of the subject disappears, was largely the poet’s creation, and the connections with his own work confirm the dependence of Miłosz’s translations/interpretations on his own poems and insurmountable problems with the presence of the lyrical subject.

Pakt z czytelnikiem, relacja i przekład. O przekładzie kulturowym à la Tout-Monde w twórczości Patricka Chamoiseau

Author(s): Agata Mrowińska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 14/2023

This article attempts to present the idea of cultural transaction in the light of Édouard Glissant’s theory of Tout-Monde and his poetics of Relation. Translation becomes a mean to introduce the Otherness to the reader who must accept its part in the reader-writer pact legitimizing the cultural transaction and its aims. The novel Solibo Magnifique, written by Patrick Chamoiseau in 1988, serves as an illustration of this process.

Nazwa „mowa chachłacka” w relacjach powojennych przesiedleńców ze Wschodu zamieszkałych w zachodniej Polsce

Author(s): Katarzyna Czarnecka,Ewa Dzięgiel,Alla Kravchuk / Language(s): Polish Issue: 36/2023

This paper concerns the usage of the linguonym mowa chachłacka (Khakhol language) in Galicia, Podolia and Volhynia during the first half of the 20th Century. Therefore, it can be considered in the realm of historical sociolinguistics. The source material is comprised of interviews, recorded 1992–2006, with over 100 forced migrants from eastern voivodeships of the interwar Second Polish Republic. After World War 2, the respondents were resettled from their home towns into the new borders of post-war Poland, areas which belonged to Germany until 1945. The research method chosen was partially standardized interviews, which were first recorded and then written down. The paper is focused around the following issues: 1) which linguistic variety was referred to as mowa chachłacka in the interwar period within the researched communities, 2) whether this name contained a value judgement, 3) what was the prestige of mowa chachłacka in these communities. The first chapter of the paper concerns the history of the Russian lexeme хохол/хaхол, which forms the basis of the linguonym mowa chachłacka, and which has been used since the 17th Century to refer to Ukrainians. The article takes into account ideas concerning researching social attitudes to a language, such as standard language ideology and monoglossic ideology.

Нощ, сняг, смърт: скандинавската криминална литература през погледа на феминизма

Author(s): Atanas Dobrev / Language(s): English,Bulgarian Issue: 1/2024

This article aims to present the relationship between Scandinavian Crime Fiction and feminism, as well as the significant role of women writers in the development of the Nordic Noir genre. It focuses on the Norwegian Noir and the novel Fear not by the Norwegian writer Anne Holt. The article also highlights certain themes, motifs and distinctive features common to feminist literary works of the Scandinavian Crime genre and their particularities. Finally, it proposes a hypothesis as to why this kind of literature continues to be so loved and sought after by readers all over the world.

Лични имена от абстрактни съществителни в българското наименуване

Author(s): Niya Radeva / Language(s): English,Bulgarian Issue: 1/2024

The article discusses the limited number of abstract-noun anthroponyms in our national naming practice. Three groups are analyzed – nouns ending in -а/-я, nouns ending in -e, and nouns ending in а consonant. Their appearance and development over time, as well as the emergence of their derivative female and male personal names, are traced and compared. The reason for their low frequency is the abstract semantics of the nouns which has made them unacceptable to- and not preferred by the Bulgarians. Even fewer and rarer are those ending in -e or in a consonant. Some of the motivating words are nouns of neutral gender and others are feminine, but the ending is typical of the masculine gender. This has made them unsuitable as either female or male proper names.

Когниция и синтаксис. Граматика на предикацията

Author(s): Mariana Georgieva / Language(s): English,Bulgarian Issue: 1/2024

The article presents a cognitive analysis of the morphological nature of predication explication at a syntactic level. The analysis is based on the principle of cognitive matching. It proposes a third axis in the coordinate system of language – consciousness, or the phenomenal zero – and emphasizes the dialectical interrelationship in grammar. The article also refines the definition of the main parts of the sentence, emphasizing their absolute equality and independence.

Целокупност

Author(s): Elena Nalbantova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2024

The Realization of the Glottal Stop in Utterances Read by Students of Czech as a Second Language

Author(s): Michaela Kopečková / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2023

The paper presents the results of the research. It investigates the realization of the glottal stop in the speech of non-native speakers learning Czech. The glottal stop, a consonant sound, is used in Czech to delimit words or morphemes starting with a vowel. The research aims to determine if non-native speakers reduce the glottal stop, identify types of deviations, and highlight the need to include glottal stop pronunciation in Czech language teaching from the A1 level. The study involved 61 students with varying levels of Czech proficiency, who read a prepared text. The analysis focused on the error rate in glottal stop realization, comparing speakers based on their mother tongue and language competence. Results showed that the most problematic sections were combinations with prepositions and complete sentences. The study emphasizes the importance of teaching the glottal stop to improve the overall quality of spoken Czech for non-native speakers.

Realizace českých vokálů ve čteném projevu frankofonních mluvčích

Author(s): Pavla Poláchová / Language(s): Czech Issue: 2/2023

The present study focuses on the acoustic analysis of spoken Czech of Francophone speakers and focuses on the realization of vowels (which were measured and evaluated using the Praat program). The background material for the analysis were audio-recordings of loud Czech reading by 50 students studying Czech with French as a mother tongue. The analysis shows that the realization of Czech vowels is influenced by negative transfer from the native language, which decreases with higher language level.

Slovesná valence v češtině nerodilých mluvčích

Author(s): Andrea Hudousková / Language(s): Czech Issue: 2/2023

The paper presents the results of the analysis of verb valency in non-native Czech on the basis of the learner corpus MERLIN. In order to confirm the hypothesis based on previous studies on valency in non-native Czech, i.e. that non-native speakers overuse prototypical patterns and central meanings of verbs, the use of verbs and their valency frames were examined in 148 texts at CEFR levels A2, B1, and B2. The research based on 3350 occurrences of verbs leads to the conclusion that the number of valency patterns and expressed meanings indeed does not significantly increase with higher level of proficiency.

Урбанистическая инфографика как вид визуализации на уроках русского языка как иностранного в условиях профессиональной гимназии

Author(s): Olga Vatkova / Language(s): Russian Issue: 1/2023

Infographics has recently begun to be used in the methodology of teaching Russian as a foreign language, but it is obvious that it has a number of undeniable advantages in teaching foreign speakers productive types of speech activity. The article discusses the possibilities of teaching Russian as a foreign language to Bulgarian students using the method of urban infographics. Particular attention is paid to the use of this type of visual technology in the study of urbanonyms. The scientific novelty lies in the definition of such a type of graphic visualization as “urban infographics”, in the context of the methodology for teaching Russian as a foreign language on the example of the regional component. Examples of tasks using urban infographics are given.

Жени на екрана: филмовата адаптация като идея и идеология

Author(s): Polina Penkova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 31/2023

The text examines the phenomenon of film adaptation of a literary text as a recontextualization and readaptation of idea concepts that transforms the original piece of work. The adaptation is analyzed by its property to change the existing dominant ideas, thus becoming a tool for reconceptualization and even ideological redaction. This property is depicted by examining adaptations of literary works that challenge the perceptions of women: “Eva on the third floor” (1982) by Darina Gerova and “Seven Angry Women” (1999) by Mariya Stankova. The analyses of the films demonstrates the changes that apply after the bending of a text in favor of some kind of concept or ideology is done.

Автофикцията в литературата и киното като терапия

Author(s): Viktoria Viktorova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 31/2023

In recent years autofiction is a concept that has become increasingly popular in literary texts and documentaries. The article examines the interrelationships and interdependence between fact and fiction in the two arts through the desire to search and find the truth in Milena Makarius’ novel “Dossier: Janna” and the film “I See Red People” directed by Bozhina Panayotova, who is the writer’s daughter. Through personal discourse, personal, family and collective crises are revealed, but unconscious psychotraumas are also treated.