Analysis of realia translation in "With Fire an Sword"

UNIWERSYTET RZESZOWSKI WYDZIAŁ FILOLOGICZNY INSTYTUT FILOLOGII ANGIELSKIEJ

JUSTYNA ŻAK

ANALYSIS OF TRANSLATION OF REALIA IN WITH FIRE AND SWORD ANALIZA TŁUMACZENIA REALIÓW W ANGLOJĘZYCZNYCH WERSJACH OGNIEM I MIECZEM

Praca magisterska napisana pod kierunkiem dr Doroty Osuchowskiej Akceptuję pracę

(podpis promotora i data)

Rzeszów 2012

I would like to acknowledge my sincere gratitude to Dr Dorota Osuchowska for her kind supervision and advice.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND TABLES…………………………………………...

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS……………………………………………………………

6

INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………….

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CHAPTER 1 Theoretical Background for the Analysis of the Translation of Realia…...

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1.1 Introduction………………………………………………………………………...

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1.2 Approaches to Translation…………………………………………………………

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1.2.1 Linguistically-oriented Approaches………………………………………...

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1.2.2 Culturally-oriented Approaches…………………………………………….

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1.2.2.1 The Skopos Theory and the Cultural Turn………………………….

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1.3 Equivalence………………………………………………………………………..

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1.3.1 Formal and Dynamic Equivalence…………………………………………

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1.3.2 Decoding, Recoding, ‘Invariant Core’ and Interpretation………………….

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1.4 (Un)translatability………………………………………………………………….

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1.4.1 Linguistic and Cultural Untranslatability…………………………………..

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1.4.2 Cultural Background and Cultural Distance………………………………..

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1.5 Literary translation………………………………………………………………...

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1.5.1 The Challenges of Literary Convergence…………………………………..

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1.6 The Concept of Realia…………………………………………………………….

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1.6.1 The Term Realia……………………………………………………………

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1.6.2 Other Terms………………………………………………………………...

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1.6.3 Classification……………………………………………………………….

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1.6.4 Limits to Realia Translation………………………………………………..

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1.7 Translating Realia…………………………………………………………………

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1.7.1 Global Translation Strategies; Domestication and Foreignisation…………

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1.7.2 Local Strategies Applicable for Realia……………………………………..

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1.7.3 Factors Influencing Translators’ Decisions………………………………...

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1.8 Conclusions………………………………………………………………………..

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CHAPTER 2 Background for the Analysis of Translation of With Fire and Sword…...

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2.1 Introduction………………………………………………………………………

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2.2 The Novel………………………………………………………………………...

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2.3 The Translators…………………………………………………………………...

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2.4 Conclusions………………………………………………………………………

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CHAPTER 3 Analysis of Translation of Realia in With Fire and Sword………………

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3.1 Introduction………………………………………………………………………..

54 3

3.2 Research Material…………………………………………………………………

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3.3 Research Results…………………………………………………………………..

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3.3.1 Identified Realia…………………………………………………………….

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3.3.2 Identified Strategies………………………………………………………...

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3.3.3 Tendencies in Strategy Use………………………………………………...

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3.3.4 Examples of Strategy Use…………………………………………………..

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3.3.4.1 Generalisation……………………………………………………..

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3.3.4.2 Borrowing…………………………………………………………

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3.3.4.3 Synonym…………………………………………………………..

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3.3.4.4 Paraphrase…………………………………………………………

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3.3.4.5 Functional equivalent……………………………………………...

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3.3.4.6 Official equivalent………………………………………………...

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3.3.4.7 Omission…………………………………………………………..

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3.3.4.8 Adaptation…………………………………………………………

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3.3.4.9 Metonymic translation…………………………………………….

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3.3.4.10 Modulation……………………………………………………….

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3.3.4.11 Calque……………………………………………………………

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3.3.4.12 Concretisation……………………………………………………

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3.3.4.13 Neutralisation…………………………………………………….

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3.3.4.14 Definition………………………………………………………...

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3.3.4.15 Explanation………………………………………………………

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3.3.4.16 Expliciation……………………………………………………...

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3.3.4.17 Combination……………………………………………………..

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3.3.5 Translation Errors…………………………………………………………..

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3.3.6 Factors Influencing the Translation of Realia – Summary…………………

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3.3.7 Global Strategies in the Analysed Texts – Summary………………………

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3.3.8 Conclusions…………………………………………………………………

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CONCLUSIONS………………………………………………………………………...

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APPENDIX 1 Compiled Results for Local Strategy Use by Curtin, Binion and Kuniczak………………………………………………………………...........................

APPENDIX 2 Realia Items Found in the Corpus, Their Meanings and Translations….

102 103

REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………………..

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SUMMARY……………………………………………………………………………...

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STRESZCZENIE………………………………………………………………………...

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND TABLES

Fig. 1.1 Nida’s model of translation (according to Bassnett 1992: 25)…………….

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Fig. 3.1 Curtin’s local strategy use…………………………………………….........

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Fig. 3.2 Binion’s local strategy use……………………………………………........

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Fig. 3.3 Kuniczak’s local strategy use………………………………………………

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Fig. 3.4 Combined results for local strategy use………………………………........

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Tab. 3.1 Realia found in the texts according to category…………………………...

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Tab. 3.2. Combinations of strategies – proportions……………………………........

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Tab.A1.1 Compiled results for local strategy use by Curtin, Binion and Kuniczak……………………………………………………………………………..

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Tab.A2.1 Realia items found in the corpus, their meanings and translations…….....

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

Ad Bor Calc Conc Def Expl Explicit Fe Gen Lit Met Mod Neut Oe Om Overtr Par SJP SJPP SL Strat.

SWO SXVII Syn TL Trans

adaptation borrowing calque concretisation definition explanation explicitation functional equivalent generalisation literal translation metonymic translation modulation neutralisation official equivalent omission overtranslation paraphrase Słownik języka polskiego Słownik języka polskiego PWN source language translation strategy Słownik wyrazów obcych i zwrotów obcojęzycznych Słownik języka polskiego XVII i 1. połowy XVIII wieku synonym target language transposition

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INTRODUCTION Translation has never been considered the easiest of tasks. From the earliest times its practitioners and theorists have been aware of various dilemmas and traps intrinsic to the attempts of rendering the thoughts expressed in one language by means of another. One of the most universal of these dilemmas, which must be faced during every process of translation, is between staying more loyal to the letter or to the spirit of the original (that is, between more literal or more free translation).

The situation is even more problematic when the source text depicts a reality which is particular to the described place and culture and at the same time mostly unknown to those from outside of it. Here, in turn, the principal quandary is about deciding whether to make the reader adjust to foreign concepts, or maybe rather adjust these concepts to the domestic notions known to the reader. Yet, this difficulty can assume numerous forms and demand all kinds of solutions. That is why the elements of culturally specific reality, known as realia, are a constant challenge to translators, which also explains why they have been chosen as a subject of interest of this thesis.

Realia very frequently occur in literary works, as these often transport the reader to the world very different from his or her own. This can certainly be said of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s With Fire and Sword, a national Polish epic whose action takes place in the 16th century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and which has been translated into English three times. Because of these two reasons it promised to be an abundant source of interesting research material.

The thesis is divided into three chapters. The first chapter presents the evolution of theoretical approaches to translation, especially to the handling of cultural problems, as well as some important notions relevant to this discussion. It also touches upon literary translation, to eventually go on to consider problems relevant to the question of realia translation. The second short chapter introduces the novel With Fire and Sword and its translators. The third, final chapter, contains a practical analysis of realia translation conducted on the basis of selected chapters from the voluminous novel.

Through its results, it seeks to ascertain which tendencies with regard to global and local translation strategies can be said to prevail in the translators’ work, what factors had an influence over their choices and what is the effect of their efforts.

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CHAPTER 1 Theoretical Background for the Analysis of the Translation of Realia

1.1 Introduction

This chapter first attempts to present various ways in which translation has been approached by theorists, and to present some definitions of the term which resulted from these approaches. It then goes on to examine crucial notions in translation studies: equivalence and translatability (or untranslatability, as some researchers would have it).

It tries to look at these issues from different perspectives, while also discussing important elements in each of them. The following discussion turns to literary translation. It first tries to examine its general aspects, and then focuses on a problem more closely linked to the subject of this thesis, that is the cultural convergence, which often results from such a translation. The next issue in the centre of this chapter’s attention is, in turn, one of the vital elements of such a convergence, namely realia, whose handling in translation constitutes the very subject of this thesis. First the term itself is examined, and then other terms are mentioned which are sometimes used synonymously with it. Next the discussion considers various classifications of realia and, importantly, limits to their translation. Finally the chapter goes on to discuss the problem which is central to this dissertation, namely the translation strategies used in realia translation as well as factors which may exert an influence over this process.

1.2 Approaches to Translation

The notion of translation might seem quite uncomplicated at first. It is not, however, which is best reflected in the fact that over the years various scholars have defined the concept in different ways. Although this might seem something of an oversimplification, we could discern two general approaches that have been most 8

frequently taken towards the subject: a linguistically-oriented and a culturally-oriented one. We shall look at them in more detail in the following subsections.

Before we begin, though, it seems appropriate to note the distinction formulated

by Neubert (1967) who, quite sensibly, differentiated between the study of translation as a process and as a product of that process (Bassnett 1992: 34). Obviously, theorists have taken both of these aspects into account, although they concentrated on the process of translation more often; it is understandable, since the description of the product can be, after all, easily deduced from it. Our forthcoming discussion will follow them in this respect.

1.2.1 Linguistically-oriented Approaches

Let us start this section by a definition by Koller (1972: 69–70 as quoted by Shell-Hornby 2006: 54), according to whom ‘[i]n linguistic terms translation can be described as transcoding or substitution; elements a1, a2, a3… of the language system L1 are replaced by elements b1, b2, b3 of the language system L2.’ 1 This statement can indeed serve as a very good introduction to the so-called linguistic approach to translation, which has for a long time been prevalent in translation studies. In fact, translation studies themselves have until quite recently been considered merely a subdiscipline of applied linguistics. 2 The approach in question, as its very name suggests, examined translation mainly from the linguistic viewpoint. In addition, as Snell-Hornby (2006: 49) asserts, it could be described as source-text oriented and atomistic. The latter could mean either that it treated smaller elements such as words or sentences as units of translation rather than larger entities, or that it treated the entire translated text in isolation from the environment in which it was going to operate.

It has to be admitted, though, that not all linguistically-oriented theories perceived the unit of translation in such a limited way. Catford’s (1965: 1) claim that 1

‘Linguistisch kann die Übersetzung als Umkodierung oder Substitution beschrieben werden: Elemente a1, a2, a3... des Sprachzeicheninventars L1 werden durch Elemente b1, b2, b3....des Sprachzeicheninventars L2 ersetzt.‘ 2 It did not begin to change until about 1970s (Snell-Hornby 2006).

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‘[t]ranslation is an operation performed on languages: a process of substituting a text in one language for a text in another’ goes to show that he also considered the ‘textual material’ (Catford 1965: 20) as a whole to be the unit of the translation process. What is more, not all of such theories considered translation an exclusively interlingual phenomenon either. For instance, Jakobson (1959: 114) in his essay ‘On Linguistic Aspects of Translation’ postulated that [w]e distinguish three ways of interpreting a verbal sign (…): (1) Intralingual translation or rewording is an interpretation of verbal signs by means of other signs of the same language.

(2) Interlingual translation or translation proper is an interpretation of verbal signs by means of some other language.

(3) Intersemiotic translation or transmutation is an interpretation of verbal signs by means of nonverbal sign systems.

Snell-Hornby (2006: 21) found it ‘striking’ and important for Translation Studies that Jakobson ‘goes beyond language in the verbal sense and does not look merely across languages’ but instead ‘sees translation from a semiotic viewpoint as a transfer of signs, as an interpretation of signs by means of other signs’.

Jakobson’s belief actually seems to anticipate the one held by Bassnett (1977: 22), who was of the opinion that we should primarily examine translation from the point of view of semiotics, the science that preoccupies itself with sign systems, structures, processes and functions.3 She adds that ‘[b]eyond the notion stressed by the narrowly linguistic approach, that translation involves the transfer of ‘meaning’ contained in one set of language signs into another set of language signs (…), the process involves a whole set of extra-linguistic criteria also (…).’ (ibid.) Many other scholars held that view as well, and approached translation from other viewpoints than the purely linguistic one. It is to these approaches that we shall now turn.

3

Hawkes (1977), as referred to in Bassnett (1992: 22).

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1.2.2 Culturally-oriented Approaches

Edward Sapir declared very firmly that ‘[l]anguage does not exist apart from culture’ (Sapir 1949: 207, as quoted in Katan 1999: 73). Theorists of translation have been aware of this ‘at least since ancient Rome’, and practicing translators ‘almost certainly knew all about (…) [it] long before’ (Robinson 1997: 170).

Also the theorists who focused primarily on the linguistic aspects of translation did not omit its cultural aspect; Catford (1965), for instance, took it into consideration.

In the 1960s a scholar who paid a lot of attention to it was Eugene Nida (1964a), who mainly preoccupied himself with the problems of Bible translation. Yet it was the French scholar George Mounin (1963) whose definition of translation featured the concept in one of the most prominent ways. Namely, he described it as ‘a series of operations of which the starting point and the end product are significations and function within a given culture’ 4 (Bassnett 1992: 24).

1.2.2.1 The Skopos Theory and the ‘Cultural Turn’ In fact, Mounin’s (1963) definition of translation bore many similarities to the one produced about twenty years later by Hans J. Vermeer, which, however, drew more far-reaching conclusions and proved to be much more influential. Together with Katharina Reiss he developed a theory which perceived translation as an offer of information in the target culture which actually only imitates its corresponding offer of information from the source culture (Reiss and Vermeer 1984: 80, as referred to in Kielar 2001: 81). 5 They both believed that: 4

Emphasis by Bassnett.

Kielar (2003: 79-80) exemplifies this with the case of Jonathan Swift’s book ‘Gulliver’s Travels’, which was written as a satire on the society of 18th century Britain. However, the reader may only receive an information about such a satire; due to time and space distance the information contained in the text is not fully relevant any more. The book’s potential translator might respect this original function of the text, or treat it rather as a timeless satire on social institutions and human flaws in general. Likewise he might count it among the masterworks of world literature, as youth’s literature etc. What follows is that the translator needs to interpret the offer of information contained in the original in order to provide its adequate imitation. It needs to be stressed, however, that in the case of transposing Swift’s satire into youth’s literature the term adaptation would perhaps be more appropriate, since such a process would inevitably involve a certain amount of alterations, if not rewriting (see Bastin 2001).

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translation is not the transcoding of words and sentences from one language to another, but a complex form of action in which someone provides information on a text (source language material) in a new situation and under changed functional, cultural and linguistic conditions, preserving formal aspects as closely as possible (Vermeer 1986: 33, as quoted in Snell-Hornby 2006: 53). 6

This is the essence of the well-famed skopos theory (skopos meaning ‘goal’ in Greek), which declared the aim of the translation (determined by the changing situation and conditions) to be superior to the form and sometimes even to the content of the source text. Consequently it was said to be the decisive factor in the choice of translation strategies. Such a view, in turn, allows for many possible versions of the translation (Kielar 2003: 82).

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Barbara Z. Kielar explains this statement by giving an example of

someone translating the fragment ‘i chołodziec litewski milcząc żwawo jedli’ (of the Polish epic poem ‘Pan Tadeusz’) as ‘and they quickly ate beetroot soup’ if someone treated the text as of merely informative function and simply aimed for the communication of its basic sense to the reader. However, if the translated text was treated as artistic, the translator would have to put some more effort in his work since his goal would then be to satisfy the potential readers’ aesthetic expectations (Kielar 2003: 83).

The skopos theory was preceded by the polysystem theory 8 and the postulates of the ‘Manipulation School’, concerned with literary translation, whose ‘members’ argued that ‘[f]rom the point of view of the target literature, all translation implies a certain degree of manipulation of the source text for a certain purpose’ (Hermans 1985: 11, as quoted in Snell-Hornby 2006: 48). These assumptions constituted ‘the essential premise of the new paradigm’ (Snell-Hornby 2006: 49) whose appearance in translation studies was later to be called the ‘cultural turn’ of the 1980s (ibid.). It was then that linguistic features of the source text together with the source text itself were ousted from the 6

‘( …)Translation ist nicht die Transkodierung von Wörtern oder Sätzen aus einer Sprache in eine andere, sondern eine komplexe Handlung, in der jemand unter neuen funktionalen und kulturellen und sprachlichen Bedingungen in einer neuen Situation über einen Text (Ausgangssachverhalt) berichtet, indem er ihn auch formal möglichst nachnahmt‘.

7 The authors of the theory, K. Reiss and H. J. Vermeer, support it with the claim that ’end justifies the means’ (Kielar 2003: 83).

8 Introduced, among others, by Itamar Even-Zohar, this theory postulated that literature (and thus literary translations) is no longer something static as it was considered in the past, but that literary texts form a complex, very dynamic system (a polysysyem), whose elements constantly interact with one another in different ways (Holmes 1988: 107, as quoted in Snell-Hornby 2006: 48).

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position of a central issue in translation studies in favour of the target text and the translation’s function in it. 9 This was, among other things, explained by the fact that it is, after all, the target or recipient culture, which initiates the decision to translate and therefore the needs and expectations of the members of this culture – the potential readers – should be respected in the first place (Toury 1985: 18–19 and Kussmaul 2004: 22, as referred to in Snell-Hornby 2006: 51). Toury (1985: 18–19) summarizes these postulates quite well by stating that it is in the interest of the target text and culture and not the source text that the translation is actually acting (Snell-Hornby 2006: 51).

Heading towards a conclusion, it seems worth clarifying how the word ‘culture’, which has already been used so many times, is understood here. There is in fact no uniformity among researchers as for the definition of the term, and plenty of such definitions have been created. 10 Vermeer (1989: 9, as quoted in Snell-Hornby 2006: 55) defined it as ‘the totality of norms, conventions and opinions which determine the behaviour of the members of a society, and all results of this behaviour (such as architecture, university institutions etc. etc)’.11 This formulation is partially encompassed in Newmark’s (1988: 94) short but meaningful definition of culture as, simply, ‘the way of life and its manifestations’.

As the previous passages have striven to show, and as Snell-Hornby (2006: 55) summarizes, the concept of culture is ‘basic to the functional approach to translation as a special form of communication and social action in contrast to abstract codeswitching’ for which it has been frequently taken.

1.3 Equivalence

Another notion which for many is just as vital for the discussion on translation is equivalence. A large number of theorists considered it embedded in the very definition of translation, and it was an important point of reference in the approaches mentioned 9

That is why these new approaches are often termed functional (Snell-Hornby 2006: 49).

Katan (1999: 16) mentions the list compiled by the anthropologists Kroeber and Kluckhohn (1952: 181) containing 164 definitions.

11 ‘die Gesamtheit der Normen, Konventionen und Meinungen, nach denen sich das Verhalten der Mitglieder einer Gesellschaft richtet, und die Gesamtheit der Resultate aus diesem Verhalten (also z.B. der architektonischen Bauten, der universitären Einrichtungen usw. usw.)‘.

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before, whether they acknowledged the importance of equivalence or dismissed it altogether. In Kenny’s words (2001: 77), while being a ‘central concept in translation theory’, it is also ‘a controversial one’. Therefore it deserved to be considered separately.

The supporters of equivalence-based theories of translation understood it as ‘the relationship between a source text (ST) and a target text (TT) that allows the TT to be considered as a translation of the ST in the first place.’ (ibid.) Many proponents of the aforementioned linguistically-oriented approach could be classified as such; for instance Catford’s another definition of translation is ‘the replacement of textual material in one language (SL) by equivalent material in another language (TL).’12 Anthony Pym (1992: 37) takes note of the ‘mere tautology’ present in the line of thought according to which equivalence is presented as a defining element of translation, but at the same time appears to be itself defined by it. Yet, as Kenny (2001: 77) asserts, few theorists have tried to propose definitions of equivalence which would attempt to evade this. Instead, they have mostly devoted their attention to creating typologies of equivalence, concentrating on the levels at which equivalence could exist (such as word, sentence or text)

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or on the type of meaning which is supposedly retained through it (including

denotative, connotative or pragmatic meaning).

1.3.1 Formal and Dynamic Equivalence

A ‘typology’ or rather dichotomy of equivalence that could be said to somehow take into account the last mentioned categories is the one introduced by Eugene Nida (1964a).

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It is probably the most influential (and certainly most famous) theory on

equivalence of all that have been proposed so far.

Concerned with Bible translating, Nida realized how this process may be hindered by cultural differences, and so did not believe it should be made even more

12

Catford (1965: 20) as quoted by Pym (1992: 38). Emphasis by Catford.

See, for instance, Baker (1992).

14 All Nida’s opinions appended with the date 1964a can also be found in the work labeled with the date 1964b. This is because the latter is the original work containing his novel theories, whereas the former is Nida’s contribution in Venuti’s The Translation Studies Reader which summarizes their most important aspects. The reference to this publication is provided due to its better availability. Obviously, this does not operate the other way round.

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difficult by striving to achieve exact equivalence (which is impossible anyway).

Instead, he opted for seeking ‘the closest natural equivalent (…), first in terms of meaning and secondly in terms of style’ (Nida and Taber 1969: 12). This ‘may well involve radical departures from the formal structure’ (Snell-Hornby 2006: 25), which led Nida to differentiate between formal and dynamic equivalence. Admittedly, such opposition is nothing particularly new or revolutionary, as it might immediately evoke associations with ‘traditional dichotomies between “sense-for-sense” and “word-forword” translating which date back to antiquity’ (Venuti 2000: 122) or with the equally well-known opposition of ‘free’ and ‘literal’ translation, emphasized for instance by Catford (1965).

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Indeed, formal equivalence along with ‘word-for-word and ‘literal’

translation ‘focuses attention on the message itself, in both form and content’ (Nida 1964a: 129), trying to reproduce them as faithfully as possible. Nida names this kind of translation a ‘gloss translation’, as it would in his view require a multitude of footnotes to make the text fully understood. Its aim in Nida’s opinion would be mainly to enable the reader to acquaint himself thoroughly with the source-text context and manner of expression.

In contrast, dynamic equivalence relies on ‘the principle of equivalent effect’ (Nida 1964a: 129),16 according to which the aim of translation should be ’that the relationship between receptor and message (…) be substantially the same as that which existed between the original receptors and the message’ (ibid.). In other words, it focuses on evoking a response that is similar to the one which the source language message evoked (Nida and Taber 1969: 24). Nida’s further explanation is that

[a] translation of dynamic equivalence aims at complete naturalness of expression, and tries to relate the receptor to modes of behavior relevant within the context of his own culture; it does not insist that he understand the cultural patterns of the source-language context in order to comprehend the message (Nida 1964a: 129).

As an example of such a type of equivalence let us use the already ‘much-quoted’ example of Lamb of God (a symbol of innocence) having been translated as Seal of God for the Inuit people to whom lambs are unknown, or the sentence Give us this day our daily bread in which bread would be replaced with fish or rice in cultural contexts 15

A relatively recent polar opposite formed in the same vein is Gutt’s (2004) quotational and paraphrastic mode, previously presented by him as direct and indirect translation.

16 He acknowledges Rieu and Philips (1955: 155) as those who mentioned the phrase first.

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where these are basic food (Snell-Hornby 2006:25 and Prunč 2001: 118, as quoted in Snell-Hornby 2006:25).

Nida (1964: 130) asserts that’ [b]etween the two poles of translating (i.e. between strict formal equivalence and complete dynamic equivalence) there is a number of intervening grades, representing various acceptable standards‘ of translation.

Interestingly, the example that Nida himself provided to illustrate dynamic equivalence has by some been considered as an instance of the unacceptable in translating. Namely, J. B. Phillips’ rendering of the New Testament phrase greet one another with a holy kiss as give one another a hearty handshake all around

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which Nida (1964a: 130)

quoted was called by Bassnett (1992: 35) ‘a piece of inadequate translation in poor taste’. She has actually used it to voice her, and not only her concern about ‘the principle of equivalent effect’, which, as she suggests, ‘involves us in areas of speculation and at times can lead to very dubious conclusions’ (ibid.).

One cannot but agree with her, considering how elusive a thing ‘equivalent effect’ can in fact be. Yet, it would seem that the idea of dynamic equivalence as such should have found favour with the participants in the ‘cultural turn’; after all, it expressed their own ideas concerned with ‘providing information on a text (…) in a new situation and under changed functional, cultural and linguistic conditions’.

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However,

it could not have happened, because they did not even fully accept the notion of equivalence as such. As Snell-Hornby (2006: 54) puts it, their approach included ‘explicit rejection of the (…) linguistic definition of translation as an equivalent version of the source text’. For the proponents of the skopos theory equivalence was only one of the many possible goals in translation and not something a translator should always aim to achieve.

1.3.2 Decoding, Recoding, ‘Invariant Core’ and Interpretation

Still, even they could not completely dismiss other elements of Nida’s theory.

For one, he asserted that translation involves a process of decoding and recoding the

17 18

Romans 16: 16.

Vermeer (1986: 33), as quoted in Snell-Hornby (2006: 53).

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message, in other words – a process of analysis, transfer and restructuring

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(Nida

1964a and 1969).

Figure 1.1 Nida’s model of translation (according to Bassnett 1992: 25).

As an example of this process at work, Bassnett (1992: 25) uses the situation of having to translate the friendly English greeting word hello into French. The French dictionaryprovided alternatives are ça va? and hallo. However, hallo is primarily used when answering the telephone, in contrast to ça va?, which is not a counterpart of the more formal and routine English How do you do?, but actually functions similarly to the English hello and can be used in its place. What the translator had to do here, then, was to isolate the notion of greeting and replace it with a phrase carrying the same notion. In short, as Bassnett (1992: 26) concludes, the translator must usually extract from the utterance the core of meaning and then re-express it using resources available in the target language. This core of meaning has also been called the invariant core which is represented by ‘stable, basic and constant semantic elements in the text’ (Popovič 1976, as quoted in Bassnett 1992: 35), common to all existing translations of this text. They ‘should not be confused with speculative arguments about the “nature”, the “spirit” or “soul” of the text; the “indefinable quality” that translators are rarely supposed to be able to capture’ (Bassnett 1992: 35) and with which, nevertheless, equivalence (and ‘equivalent effect’ in particular) has often been equated.

Identifying the invariant core obviously involves the necessity of the interpretation of the text by a translator, what was pointed out for instance by Jakobson (1959: 111) as well as by the skopos theorists. Though Roman Jakobson (1959: 114) was the author of the famous, somewhat consolatory ‘equivalence in difference’ formula, the previously quoted example of chołodziec litewski translated as beetroot 19

It has also been called decomposition and recomposition (Nida and Taber 1969).

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soup serves very well to illustrate his conviction that sometimes translation rather seems to be just ‘an adequate interpretation of an alien code unit’ and full equivalence is impossible (Bassnett 1992: 24). Bassnett (1992) further elaborates on these ideas, suggesting that even apparent synonymy (as in the case of such pairs of words like perfect and ideal or conveyance and vehicle) does not ensure equivalence. This is because each lexical unit contains in itself a set of associations and connotations that are untransferable. Therefore equivalence should by no means be equated with sameness. Still, it certainly does not mean that translators should dismiss it and abandon aiming for it altogether; it is, after all, as Newman (1994: 4694, as quoted in Kelly 2001: 79) put it, ‘a commonsense term for describing the ideal relationship that a reader would expect to exist between an original and its translation.’

1.4 (Un)translatability

Bearing in mind our previous discussion (especially its last part), it is impossible to avoid a conclusion that before one can speak of equivalence, translatability must be ensured. It is yet another vital concern of translation studies. Yet, much of scholarly discussion on translation has actually centered on untranslatability, leading some theorists to even consider in an ‘impossible’ activity altogether.

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Such convictions

appeared to a large extent due to the stance of the German philosopher and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt, who believed that language is the embodiment of the spirit of the nation that speaks it, and that it contains within itself this nation’s own unique worldview (Koczur-Lejk 2006: 328). Another significant contribution to the notion was the famous Sapir-Whorf theory, whose main assumption was that language and the cultural distinctions embedded in it influence or indeed determine the way people perceive reality (weak and strong version of the hypothesis, respectively).21 This was believed to create a serious barrier to cross-language communication.

Still, not all linguists were so convinced of the pervasive nature of untranslatability. In 1963 Georges Mounin introduced the concept of the so-called ‘universals’ of language and culture as a valid argument against it (Venuti 2000: 121).

20 21

Cf. Winter’s (1961: 81) assertion that ‘to translate it to attempt the intrinsically impossible’.

Cf. Bassnett (1992: 22) or Katan (1999: 74-75).

18

As Kielar (2003: 119–120) explains, these simply result from the fact that all humans are inhabitants of the same planet which provides particular living conditions (to some extent the same for everybody), as well as from certain biological and psychological features that are equally common to all of us. Moreover, as Nida (1964b: 138) remarks, ‘all people recognize that other peoples behave differently from themselves’; what is more, in most cases they are ready to learn new skills and attempt to grasp concepts that were previously unknown to them.22 Obviously, though, as Kielar (2003: 120) and Lyons (1981: 323–324) remind us, a reasonable degree of ‘cultural overlap’ is usually of great help in enhancing the chances of mutual understanding and thus, effective translation.

The above considerations led Kielar (2003: 121) to support the view presented

by Catford (1965: 93), who believed that translatability is a phenomenon of a gradable character. According to this standpoint a text may be more or less translatable, but not completely translatable or absolutely untranslatable.

1.4.1 Linguistic and Cultural Untranslatability

Nevertheless, Catford (1965: 93) acknowledged the existence of untranslatability in reference to fragments of texts. He was the author of the division into linguistic and cultural untranslatability.

The first one was said to occur ‘when there is no lexical or syntactical substitute in the TL for an SL item’ (Bassnett 1992: 39). As an example of such items we could quote definite or indefinite articles in English and the gender of nouns in German (Jakobson 1959: 113–114) as well as instances of polysemy and homonymy resulting in untranslatable plays on words (Kielar 2003: 121). Still, with an obvious exception of wordplay or language puns, such incompatibilities do not usually render an entire utterance untranslatable. It has been demonstrated by Bassnett (1992: 39) on the example of the German Um wieviel Uhr darf man Sie morgen wecken? and the English What time would you like to be woken tomorrow? Even though some distinctions and meanings included in the German text (speaking of the exact hour, the impersonal form 22

Lyons (1981: 308) quotes the example of Australian Aborigines who, while learning English as a second language, learn numbers and perform calculations without much difficulty despite the fact that in their languages there is usually no concept of numerals or any higher value than four.

19

darf man, the 3rd person polite form Sie ) are inevitably lost on the TL recipient, the main message is preserved.

However, it needs to be added that, especially in case of languages more distant from one another in geographical as well as typological terms, more serious discrepancies can occur, involving entire systems and not just separate items. This is, for instance, the case with English and Hopi, the language of the tribe Indians of the same name. Namely, the second one does not have a system of tenses which would in any way correspond to the Indo-European systems at all.

23

Such situations naturally

present the translator with much more difficulties, but still do not necessarily entail complete untranslatability. It might also be added here that linguistic discrepancies by no means occur only between separate languages, as the existence of dialects, jargons or slang proves. Indeed, the speech of any two people may exhibit them as well.

The second category presented by Catford (1965: 93), the cultural untranslatability, was described as existing when ‘a situational feature, functionally relevant for the SL text, is completely absent from the culture of which TL is part.’

Such a situation has often been called a ‘cultural gap’

24

and has already been hinted at

in our discussion a couple of times. As Newmark suggests, cultural gaps are bound to multiply in areas of cultural focus, whose mechanism he describes as follows: [W]hen a speech community focuses its attention on a particular topic (…), it spawns a plethora of words to designate its special language or terminology – the English on sport, notably the crazy cricket words (…), the French on wines and cheeses, the Germans on sausages, Spaniards on bull-fighting, Arabs on camels, Eskimos, notoriously, on snow (…).

(Newmark 1988: 94)

In turn, as Bassnett (1992: 40) informs, Catford (1965) asserted that more general and abstract lexical units such as home or democracy cannot be considered untranslatable. However, she contravenes his view by presenting an example of two supposedly equivalent sentences: I am going home (English) and Je vais chez moi (French), which are meant to demonstrate that the English term home has ‘a range of associative meanings that are not translated by the more restricted meaning of chez moi.

In addition, she mentions the differences in the functioning of the term democratic in different countries which may arise from its application by ‘totally different’ political 23

This very frequently mentioned example has been provided by Whorf (1956: 213, as quoted in Bassnett 1992:39).

24 See eg. Nemark (1988: 94).

20

environments.25 The problem here is the ‘set of non-transferable associations and connotations’ we have already spoken of, which leads Bassnett (1992: 41) to conclude that ‘there is no longer (if indeed there ever was) any common ground from which to select relevant situational features’.

Such a claim, in turn, leads us on to the more general issue of concerning the relationship of culture and language. In fact, many researchers have underlined the fact that these are very closely linked together. Such a belief was largely characteristic to the semiotic approach to culture and translation; Bassnett (1992: 41) cited a well-known semiotician Juri Lotman (1978) as having stated that ‘the very relation of culture to the sign and to signification comprises one of its basic typological features’. This has been expressed in a simpler way by Larson (1984: 436), who concluded that ‘all meaning is culturally conditioned’. To add to that, not only such elusive elements like meaning but also the form of language is influenced by culture;

26

after all, it is a tool to express

reality, including concepts and values particular to a community that uses it. It is obvious with reference to the lexicon, but less so when it comes to grammar. Still, to use an example cited before, we can assume that the Hopi Indians do not have tense system because they do not possess a concept of time similar to the one we do.

The above considerations constitute a view complementary to the one introduced

by Sapir and Whorf, and these two put together present us with an image somewhat reminiscent of a ‘vicious circle’ in which ideas and meanings specific for a culture become embedded in its language and then continue to constantly influence the thought of those who speak it. However, Boas (1986: 7) believed that language is not a barrier to thought but there is ‘a dynamic relationship between language, culture and thought’ (Katan 1999: 73). 27 And it is precisely the fact that Catford, apparently, ‘does not go far enough’ in considering this ‘dynamic nature’ which makes Bassnett conclude that he ‘invalidates his own category of cultural untranslatability’ (Bassnett 1992: 41). In fact, her, somehow radical, view is that ‘cultural untranslatability must be de facto implied in any process of translation’ (ibid.)

25

She mentions such organizations as the American Democratic Party, the democratic wing of the British Conservative Party and the German Democratic Republic (of East Germany).

26 Cf. Boas (1986: 7, as quoted in Katan 1999: 73): ‘the form of the language will be moulded by the state of that culture.’ This in fact resembles the standpoint of Humboldt.

27 Bassnett (1992: 23) herself optimistically calls it ‘the continuation of life-energy’.

21

1.4.2 Cultural Background and Cultural Distance

Discarding for a moment the exact divisions, it should be mentioned that a problem frequently seen as vital in dealing with untranslatability is ‘reconstructing within the framework of the target culture the cultural background which is an indispensable equipment of appropriate interpretation’ of the SL text in the TL culture (Burkhanov 1998: 168). Admittedly, ‘intransferable sets of associations and connotations’ linked to words could no doubt also be considered as being part of it. Yet it is actually about any information implicitly contained in the source text that needs to be made explicit to the target text recipient to make him able to actually understand it. It does not concern only connotation, then, but also behavioral patterns, traditions, beliefs and virtually any other information which is contained in the text but not immediately accessible in translation. Probably that is what Catford (1965: 93) might have meant when he spoke of situational features.

As Gutt (2004) asserts, difficulties resulting from lack of appropriate background knowledge are in direct proportion to cultural distance between the two communities. This distance, as Robinson (1995: 172) suggests, can be brought about by difference in place as well as time. Yet, he reminds that apparent lack of such distance does not necessary yield complete understanding. He demonstrates this by means of the fact that men and women, adults and children of ‘the same culture’ (and, indeed, even the same family) do not always, after all, understand each other. What follows is his conclusion that ‘[c]ultural boundaries exist in the midst of what used to seem like unified and harmonious cultures’ (Robinson 1995: 172).

28

How easy it is for these

boundaries to temporarily appear and hinder the exchange of information is shown in a statement by Hirsch (1987:2, as quoted in Gutt 2004: 27). He argued that ‘[a]ny reader who does not possess the knowledge presupposed by the text he is reading will in fact be illiterate with respect to this very text’.29 The situation of reading could obviously stand for any type of communication here.

28

The scholar speaks, for instance, of ‘[l]ocal cultures, regional cultures, national cultures, international cultures. Foreign cultures. Border cultures. School cultures, work cultures, leisure cultures; family cultures (…)’ (Robinson 1995: 175).

29 Translation mine.

22

1.5 Literary Translation

The notion of reading brings us on to the problem of literary translation, which we will now examine more closely. The main reason for the potential problems linked to the translation of literary works is that they are, as no other type of texts, characterized by the ‘focus on the message’ (Jakobson 1960/1987, as quoted in Burkhanov 1998: 138). This does not only signalize that ‘message’ is an important element in them, because it is so in typically informative and persuasive texts as well. Instead, the focus on the form of the message is rather meant here.

Using the classic distinction long utilized in literary studies, which classifies literature into lyric, epic and dramatic works of art,30 Newmark (1988: 163) has proposed a straightforward, commonsense division of literary translation into translation of poetry, prose and drama. It is commonly believed that poetry (as well as drama, since it may contain poetry as well), presents the translator with many more difficulties than prose. This is because the ‘focus on the message’ itself, and its form in particular, is in this case much greater than elsewhere. However, it can be safely stated to be present in all kinds of literary works. Therefore Jakobson’s (1959: 118) statement that, when it comes to poetic art, only ‘creative transposition’ comes into question rather than some literal rewriting, can be easily extended to include the translation of prose as well. Every single kind of literary translation is a demanding endeavour, since each one is, to a certain extent, ‘an original, subjective activity at the centre of a complex network of social and cultural practices’ (Bush 2001: 127).

Of course, this ‘subjectivity’ and ‘creativity’ has its limits, as the ‘message’ of the work always has to be retained in some way. Leighton (1991:50) mentions numerous requirements issued with respect to translations, which lead us to the conclusion that it is vital that the translator identifies what this ‘message’ really consists of. Namely, she states that translations are, among others, expected to be ‘full-valued’, ‘adequate’ and ‘faithful to both the form and content of the source text’. It is impossible to notice that some of these terms might in fact be considered rather vague, and the expectations indeed conflicting with each other. The ‘full’ preservation of ‘values’ presented in the text might, after all, stand in the way of its ‘adequacy’, while excessive faithfulness to form might hinder the content (and vice versa). It is up to the translator to 30

Burkhanov (1998: 139).

23

strike a balance between these elements, and to do this, he has to decide on his priorities. In other words, he must know what the ‘values’ and ‘content’ he has to preserve actually are.

Between the commonly mentioned polar opposites of ‘literal’ and ‘free translation’31 there is a continuum of variants differing in the degree of relatedness to the source text on the one hand and the innovation introduced by the translator on the other. Each of these is in multiple ways ‘faithful’ and at the same time ‘unfaithful’ to the original (Balcerzan 2000:14-15). The mode of operation a translator chooses is dependent on the type of text, the ‘projected’ reader and (as skopos theorists proposed) the general aim of the work, as well as ‘moment in history’ and specific socio-cultural features making up the literary translation tradition of a country

32

(Brzozowski 1992:

190). Obviously enough, due to the influence of all these factors some features present in the original work might ‘deactivate’ themselves with reference to target readers (this might happen, for instance, to an immediate ‘Author’s moral purpose to the Reader’ 33).

Yet other might prove more universal and in all circumstances stay as relevant as they ever were.

Additionally, the translation itself is by no means something definite and constant. Unlike the original work, perceived as a ’one-time’, unique text, the product of the translator’s work is usually only considered as one of the many possible (or indeed existing) renderings of it. In other words, it most of the time functions in a series of translations,

34

which is in fact ‘open’ and can always embrace new versions

(Balcerzan 2000:14).

31

Balcerzan actually calls them ‘translation proper’ and ‘adaptation’.

Most of the time translators will try to conform to this tradition. However, they may also enrich it by introducing new elements, just as was the case with those who ‘imported’ the limerick to Poland thanks to translating and later imitating the English ones (Kielar 2003: 57) or the translator who first calqued Faulkner’s way of writing, thus ‘discovering’ a new style in Polish narrative prose (Balcerzan 2000: 22).

As for translators’ motivations, see also pp. 33-34.

33 Newmark (1988: 171). Cf. note 5 on Gulliver’s Travels.

34 Such as the five Bulgarian translations of Pan Tadeusz (Balcerzan 2000) or the six French Hamlets (Heylen 1993).

32

24

1.5.1 The Challenges of Cultural Convergence

It seems fit to now quote a set of vivid phrases in which literary translation was described by Bush (2001). He stated that

[t]he work of literary translators implicitly and sometimes explicitly challenges the authority of the canon, the nationalism of the culture and the ‘death’ of the author. A literary translation is bilingual and bicultural and thus inhabits a landscape which is not mapped by conventional geographies; s/he is at home in the flux that is the reality of contemporary culture, where migration is constant across artificial political boundaries. (…) Literary translators are involved at a keen point of cultural convergence (…). (p.127)

Sometimes this convergence might manifest itself in the fact that the works selected for translation are ‘representative (…) of a particular quintessential use of language and feeling in the source culture’ (Bush 2001: 128). Yet in other cases the reason why a text is chosen is exactly the opposite, namely the universal, timeless qualities that it possesses. Some works actually include both features, and among these are, for instance, national epics. Such texts can be usually, much more than the others, described as ‘culturally marked’, abounding with expressions and content specific to a given area.

Such content may consist of political, institutional, socio-cultural, botanic, geographical or historical references as well as elements of traditions and rituals (Pazdan and Buk 2005: 52).

Koller (1997: 177) suggests that such elements can only be understood by someone well knowing the culture to which they are linked. Therefore, as Pazdan and Buk (2005: 51) remark, it would appear that we should require the translator trying to cope with such texts to exhibit a certain degree of acquaintance with the historical and political intricacies of a given region, as well as its natural environment, climate and customs. 35 Still, the two researchers remind that such an acquaintance is often insufficient even when it comes to the native speakers of the language, and translators could not infrequently be blamed for too small a knowledge of even their own culture. There are of course numerous compendia compiling facts from various fields of knowledge. Yet, as Pazdan and Buk (2005: 51) admit, leafing through them in an attempt to assimilate 35

In fact, these are exactly the requirements Katan (1999) proposes with respect to translators.

25

sequences of new terms is indeed a laborious task. Therefore, as they suggest, we should not marvel at the fact that translators sometimes take the easy way out of such problems which results in simplifications and even omissions. It becomes even less surprising if we consider the practical conditions under which translators usually operate, that is being nagged by deadlines, the situation on the publishing market and their own pressing financial needs. To be precise, though, the researchers’ last statement is not devoid of a certain amount of irony, since they in fact believe that the professional translators cannot completely yield to such circumstances. While not necessary having to pore over thick volumes, they should definitely be persistent, diligent and, importantly well educated. Yet just as vital a skill for them is being able to compensate for gaps in their knowledge by consulting appropriate media and competent specialists.

Nevertheless, the most valid conclusion here is the one formulated by Bush (2001: 130) who, paraphrasing Benjamin (1923), states that ‘whatever the restraints of the network of social and cultural factors’, the effort of literary translators deserves our respect since ‘it is ultimately [them] that give a literary work its ‘afterlife’: an existence in other languages’. As a consequence, adds Bush (2001: 127), they ‘exist where otherwise there would be silence’.

1.6 The Concept of Realia 1.6.1 The Term Realia The culture-bound element so likely to appear in particular literary works could be said to find its essence in what can be referred to as realia. Let us begin the discussion of them with a very apt remark formulated by Florin (1993: 122):

If we strip a cowboy of his traditional garb and attire him in the burnous of a Sahara shepherd he will lose all his semblance and turn into an Arab. If we make a geisha change her loose and airy kimono for a Tyrolean dirndl with a close fitting bodice there will be nothing Japanese left in her. (…) There is a great difference between an ancient Roman toga and the togas judges wear in some countries. Indian has jungles, South Africa has a veld, and Siberia has its taiga.

26

In 1969 Florin and Vlahov, two Bulgarian researchers formulated the definition of realia which has been often quoted since then, among others by an author of an online course on translation theory, 36 Bruno Osimo. According to this definition, realia are words (and composed expressions) (…) representing denominations of objects, concepts, typical phenomena of a given geographic place, of material life or of social-historical peculiarities of some people, nation, country, tribe, that for this reason carry a national, local or historical color; these words do not have exact matches in other languages (Vlahov and Florin 1969: 438, as quoted by Osimo).

This definition and the above quotation show that, although in previous sections we have at length discussed the concept of culture, realia are linked not only to culture but also to the nature coexisting with it as well. In fact, we might now acknowledge yet another sense of the word culture; besides the ‘way of life and its manifestations’37 it might also denote the community by which a certain way of life is employed. This is how we might make more sense of the explanation provided by Andre Lefevere in the preface to a chapter on realia by Florin (1993). In his consideration of the subject he actually utilizes a very telling expression; namely, he speaks of ‘the universe of reference’ of a culture.

As Osimo explains, the word realia originated in Latin; not the Latin spoken by the Romans, however, but the one used by scholars in the Middle Ages. As in Latin the plural neuter nominative of an adjective turns it into a noun, realia in this language have the meaning of ‘the real things’, as opposed to words, which are neither seen as ‘things’ nor as ‘real’. Realia is a plural of realis (that is ‘real’); we will not find such a word in most Latin dictionaries, though, because of them containing only the Classical and not the Medieval Latin occurrences.

In this sense, the word denotes objects of material culture. Yet, as Osimo stressed, and as we can conclude from Florin and Vlahov’s definition, in the field of translation studies the meaning of this term encompasses both the ‘objects’ (understood not only as material things but also concepts or phenomena) and the words signifying

36 37

http//www.logos.it/lang/transl_en.html.

Newmark (1988: 94).

27

those objects. What follows is the necessity to distinguish between realia being used in the first and in the second sense. 38 A further complication is that East-European researchers, who, as Osimo asserts, were among the first to use the term in translation studies, use it in a slightly different way. Namely, instead of considering it a plural neuter, they treat it as a feminine singular, as is the case in the Russian language where there is a singular feminine word реалия (realija). Therefore it is for them possible to also refer to only one of such words, which for us is not, the English language being devoid of such word as realium.

Another point to add here is that when the Russian word is used in the plural, it loses the -a ending and becomes реалии (realii). 39

1.6.2 Other Terms It must be said that there are many more expressions used to signify the cultural element in the language, such as culture-bound terms (Chesterman 2001), culturebound items (Snell-Hornby 1995: 20) or culture-specific items (Aixelá 1996: 58, as quoted in Kwieciński 2001: 169). In certain situations they certainly could be used interchangeably with realia (it pertains especially to culture-bound terms). Yet, one has to be aware that, particularly when the word item is involved, their scope of meaning is obviously much wider. Contrary to realia, it involves culture-specific elements of all kinds, such as proper names, forms of address, proverbs, idioms and metaphors, to name only a few. 40 However, there is one term very close in meaning to the one in the centre of our attention, namely the simple cultural word. It was introduced by Newmark (1988: 94), who distinguished universal, cultural and personal language. To be more precise, he juxtaposed cultural and personal words with universals, that is words denoting ‘general aspects of nature and humans and their physical and mental activities’ (Newmark 1988: 103) as well as ‘almost virtually ubiquitous artefacts like mirror or table’ (Newmark 38

The word in the first sense is for instance used in foreign language teaching to denote real-life objects, used in the classroom to aid the process of teaching a foreign language.

39 It might be added here that in translation studies conducted in Polish the word realia functions similarly to how it is used in English (cf. Pazdan and Buk 2005: 50). Importantly, in the Polish language the word also has a more general sense; it denotes the actual reality or the current state of affairs.

40 Notably, some researchers understand the term realia in a broader sense, i.e. as including names and titles as well, e.g. Klaudy (1997: 60, as quoted in Terestyényi 2011: 14).

28

1988: 94). As for cultural words, he gives such examples of them as monsoon, steppe or tagiatelle and remarks that there are usually translation problems with such words unless the source language and the target language are overlapping in terms of culture at some point. Speaking of personal language, Newmark mentions such self-invented examples as underlife meaning ‘the personal qualities and private life of a person’, or to be weaving a conversation, in the sense of ‘creating it’. As he reminds, these are instances of idiolect. Logically, they might be even harder to translate than cultural words because there are fewer chances of any overlaps occurring between individual concepts people invent to help themselves in the personal description of the reality around them.

In fact, the last example clearly shows an important difference in meaning between cultural words and realia; the first group could easily include various parts of speech (e.g. verbs, as is the case with personal language whose instances have been just presented), while the second can encompass nouns alone.

One more reason why realia seem to be the best word to be used here are certain theories presented in previous sections, namely Bassnett’s (1992) belief that the culturedetermined elements in the language could actually be said to include much more than it would seem, if not indeed the entirety of it. While this view is definitely rather radical, one cannot help admitting that it is to some extent justified. On the whole, it seemed better to employ a term which would be completely uncontroversial in this respect.

1.1.3 Classification

A frequently cited classification of realia is that by Newmark (1988: 103), who categorized them into the following groups: (1) Ecology (flora, fauna, plains, hills): tundra, pampas, honeysuckle, selva, savanna (2) Material culture (artefacts): (a) Food: zabaglione, sake, Kaiserschmarren (b) Clothes: anorak, kanga, sarong, dhoti (c) Houses and towns: bourg, chalet, kampong, wigwam

29

(d) Transport: rickshaw, cabriolet, tilbury (3) Social culture (work and leisure): biwa, sithar, reggae, rock (4) Organisations, customs, activities, procedures, concepts: (a) Political and administrative: Riksgdag, Bundestag, canton (b) Religious: dharma, karma (c) Artistic: art nuveau (5) Gestures and habits: holy kiss (a way of greeting in New Testament times).

Another classification that is often mentioned has been proposed by Vlahov and Florin (1969). As Florin (1993: 123) states, ‘[r]ealia may be classified thematically, according to material or logical groups they belong to; temporally, according to the historical period they belong to; and geographically, according to the locations in which they are used.’ Let us examine this classification in more detail.

The thematic category is divided into such subcategories as: (1) Ethnographic realia: grouped in such spheres as (a) Everyday life: sarong, sombrero, moccasin, bungalow, igloo (b) Work: fellah, gaucho, kolhoz (c) Art and culture: blues, reel, canzonetta, commedia del arte (d) Purely ethnic realia: Basque, Comanche, Cossack, gringo, cockney (e) Measurements and money: verst, Pfund, dime, Groschen.

Quite logically, Florin (1993) remarks that there is a multitude of other categories, groups and subgroups which would be too numerous to present.

(2) Social and political realia: 41 (a) Regional administrative agencies: shire, state, canton (b) Organisms and offices: Knesset, Sejm, junta, senate, khan, sheriff (c) Social and political life: Bolshevik, Ku Klux Klan, Roundheads, fan, hippie (d) Military realia: legion, phalange, general, marshal, moschetto, katyusha.

(Florin 1993: 123–124)

41

In contrast to the rest of the classification, this category was not elaborated on by Florin (1993), but its subcategories were quoted by Osimo.

30

Interestingly, some examples cited here draw our attention to the fact that in some cases the word realia might also be used, paradoxically, to talk about people and not just things. To be more precise, words such as Basque or Comanche might be considered names of an ‘object’ or a ‘phenomenon’ of a particular ethnic group, but they can still be used to talk about the members of this group. This also points to the fact that the field of realia is in fact often bordering on the field of proper names.

Next, Florin (1993: 124) also mentions a geographical category; such words as the Norwegian fiord, the Hungarian puszta, the Arabian simoom or the Dutch polder can be cited as examples of lexical items belonging in it. He further classifies geographical objects on the basis of the language area they belong to, discriminating between national realia, microlocal realia, international realia and regional realia.

When it comes to the temporal criterion, realia are divided into modern and historical. Yet, as Florin (1993: 124-125) notices, this simple classification is made more complex by two factors: the interdependence of object and time (as would be the case with a helmet in a medieval as opposed to a modern source text), and by the interdependence of place and time (which is exemplified by toga, where a distinction is necessary between the garment worn by ancient Romans and modern judges).

Moreover, it would be a commonsense observation that in fact all the three categories are interrelated. It is not hard to imagine a situation in which a certain object has occurred only in a certain place and at a certain time.

Lastly, Florin (1993: 125) also distinguishes a fourth criterion of classification, which has not been mentioned before, that is the degree of acceptability of realia in the target language. Due to the fact that realia are so hardly, if at all, translatable, a very frequent solution with respect to them has always been simply to borrow the original word into the target language. There are many words which have come to function as borrowings in such a number of languages that they can be actually considered international realia (like pizza), to use the term introduced above. Obviously this is a most welcome phenomenon from the point of view of translators. However, if a word has begun to appear in the target language, but is not fully accepted in it yet, the person performing the translation has to make a choice: they can either use the borrowing, and so reinforce it, or try to replace it with some kind of an equivalent, thus attempting to counter it in a way. Naturally enough, the third solution is to introduce a new borrowing, which will either remain a temporary invention or spread in the target language, depending on its function in the text and on how influential that text is. We 31

have to remember that borrowing is, after all, a recognized translation strategy,42 despite the fact that its very essence is the absence of translation.

As we can see, there are substantial differences in the listed categories. Of course, there are also similarities, for instance all categorizations recognize the category of social realia in some way, Yet, there are inconsistencies in the way particular realia are assigned to particular categories, and the boundaries of categories themselves are not fully clear. For instance, one might wonder why Newmark (1998: 103) includes only realia from the spheres of work and leisure in his category ‘social culture’ and creates an additional category of ‘organisations, customs, activities, procedures, concepts’. It seems a bit subjective that rock and art nouveau belong to these separate categories instead of just one. When it comes to Florin’s (1993: 123) list, the category of social (and political) realia is equally problematic. Here, in turn, the boundary between this category and the category of ‘ethnographic realia’ is a bit dubious. To give just one example, it is not entirely clear why it is the category ‘ethnographic realia’ which should contain the subcategory ‘work’ (with such a realia item as fellah), and not the category of social and political realia, which, in a very similar subcategory ‘social and political life’ contains such realia items as fan or hippie.

What follows from this is that rigorous confinement to just one selected categorization of realia does not appear justified. It is not to say that such categorizations are useless altogether. Their most beneficial aspect seems to be the fact that they can sometimes inform the process of translating realia. This is the case with the fourth criterion in Florin’s (1993: 125) classification, which advises translators to try to discern already assimilated borrowings from those which have not fully undergone that process.

1.6.4 Limits to Realia Translation

Moving on to discussing translation of realia, and summing up the discussion of the notion as such, we should summon Lefevere’s reflection on the subject which he

42

See, for instance, Vinay and Darbelnet (2003: 85). Borrowing as a translation strategy will be also discussed in the next section.

32

expressed in the introduction to Florin’s (1993) chapter. As he asserts, there are at least two reasons why realia are worthy of serious consideration in translation studies.

Firstly, it is because they show beyond all doubt that translation, despite being based in language, is by no means limited to it. Rather than simply transferring words from one language to another, the translator’s task is transferring things from one ‘universe of reference’ 43 to another.

Secondly, the case of realia proves that despite all possible effort, translations will always remain translations. Regardless of all the strategies invented to cope with the problem, in the end it will actually remain insoluble because, as Lefevere puts it, ‘the universe of reference of culture A never totally overlaps with the universe of reference of culture B’ (Florin 1993: 122). This sounds very reminiscent of Sapir’s insightful if a little overblown remark stating that ‘worlds in which different societies live are different worlds, not just the same world with different labels attached’ (Sapir 1956: 44, as quoted in Katan 1999: 12). Citing Lefevere once again, ‘samovars will remain samovars and never really become transposed kind of stoves’ (Florin 1993: 122). This is actually evident in all the examples used earlier, since nearly all of them are in fact, somehow ironically, borrowings into English. In other words, each of them might be seen as a testimony to a situation in which a translator simply gave up, abandoning the aim to introduce those items to the readers by actually translating. This supports Lefevere’s belief that some gaps between languages and cultures cannot be bridged through translation as such. To quote Lefevere for the last time here, realia actually ‘affirm the “otherness” of the original in the midst of the most idiomatic use of the target language’ (Florin 1993: 122).

Nevertheless, there were many translators who did not become daunted by this, and thus many translation strategies were developed to deal with the issue of realia. It is with these strategies that we are going to preoccupy ourselves now.

43

Florin (1993: 122).

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1.7 Translating Realia

1.7.1 Global Translation Strategies; Domestication and Foreignisation

As Levý (1967:148) noticed, ‘translation is a decision process’ in which translators constantly have to choose between different options available to them. What they are choosing from is being called translation strategies, translation procedures, techniques or methods of translation. However, these expressions are by no means synonymous. As for the term procedure, it is used to refer to ‘particular steps’ or ‘experientially established stages in the process of translating’ (Burkhanov 2003: 184), while strategy and technique are the terms employed to denote the actual ‘acts of selecting target-language units’, the ‘manipulations with the linguistic material’ (ibid.).

In contrast, the term method is rather applied in reference to the general approach which characterizes the translators’ treatment of the text and which influences the choice of particular strategies. To introduce yet another terminology, Chesterman ( 1997: 90 – 91) actually calls such an approach global strategy, while individual translation strategies contributing to it are named local strategies.

As examples of such global strategy could serve the previously mentioned opposites of ‘word-for-word’ versus ‘sense-for-sense’ translating, which equals striving for formal or dynamic equivalence. A yet another set of opposing global strategies, having a lot in common with the aforementioned distinctions, but more specifically concerned with handling the cultural dissimilarities has been extensively dealt with by Lawrence Venuti. He spoke of domestication and foreignisation (Venuti 1995). 44 Although it was Venuti who introduced this terminology to translation studies, the idea itself has existed long before. In 1913 a German philosopher and theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher captured the essence of the two opposites in an often-cited statement about translation methods, asserting that ‘there are only two. Either the translator leaves the author in peace, as much as possible, and moves the reader towards him. Or he leaves the reader in peace, as much as possible, and moves the author

44

Polish corresponding terms are egzotyzacja and adaptacja (see, for instance, Lewicki 2000 and Fordoński 2000) or udomowienie (Hejwowski 2006: 94).

34

towards him’ (Lefevere 1992: 149). This descripition might in fact be applied to the ‘word-for-word’ / ‘sense-for-sense’ dichotomy as well.

Venuti defines domestication as ‘the domestic assimilation of a foreign text’ (Venuti 1998: 80, as quoted in Bałuk-Ulewiczowa 2000: 174). However, it needs to be stressed that, as he believes, every translation ‘inevitably domesticates foreign texts, inscribing them with linguistic and cultural values that are intelligible to specific linguistic constituencies’ (ibid.). According to him this process ‘is initiated by the very choice of a foreign text to translate, always an exclusion of other foreign texts and literatures, which answers to particular domestic interests’ (ibid.). However, there are translations which can be labeled as ‘deliberately domesticating in their handling of a foreign text’ (Venuti 2001: 240), while others can rather be described as foreignising, bent on preserving the linguistic and cultural values of the original instead of adjusting them to target language canons. The foreignising global strategy was for the first time propagated in Germany during the classical and romantic periods, among others by the above-cited Schleiermacher. It aimed to enrich the German language and liberate the German culture from the French influence which was then ruling over it (Venuti 2001: 242). In contrast, the translation method of domestication has already been in use among ancient Romans, namely Latin translators who transplanted Greek texts into Roman culture, making them pass off as ones originally written in Latin.

Although domestication is, according to Venuti, a generally prevalent feature of translations, he claims there are countries in which it is more dominant than in others.

He means specifically the Anglo-Saxon countries, especially the United States.

According to him, American publishers ‘have profited from successfully imposing American cultural values on a vast foreign readership’ (Venuti 2001: 310), while at the same time they created ‘a domestic culture that is aggressively monolingual and receptive to the foreign only when it meets American expectations’ (ibid.). This ‘worldwide presence of English and the Anglo-American culture’ is known as ‘hegemony’ and is often placed in a wider framework, according to which ‘stronger’ cultures generally dominate over the ‘weaker’ ones (Kwieciński 2001: 98–99). A visible sign of such dominance is the so-called ‘export-import imbalance’ (Kwieciński 2001: 101) between two languages, with respect to the amount of linguistic borrowing as well as texts translated from that languages. When it comes to Poland, both these factors clearly point to its membership in the ‘weaker culture’ group (Kwieciński 2001: 101).

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In Venuti’s opinion a most valued feature of translations in the Anglo-Saxon culture is ‘fluency’. The scholar perceives it in a very negative light, not simply as a factor which ensures readability, but as one which in pursuit of this objective seeks to remove any trace of ‘foreignness’ from the translations, treating it as potentially distracting and upsetting the smooth flow of the text. Such practices apparently ‘invisibly inscribe foreign texts with English-language values and provide readers with the narcissistic experience of recognizing their own culture in a cultural other’ (Venuti 1998: 15). One of the main motives behind them is supposedly economic gain (Venuti 2001: 310–312). Nevertheless, the scholar also expresses some optimism with respect to the problem. He remarks that ’the 1990s brought signs that the dominance of fluency is weakening, at least in the case of certain languages and literatures whose peculiarities resist it’ (Venuti 2001: 312).

1.7.2 Local Strategies Applicable For Realia

Let us now proceed to presenting local translation strategies. Probably one of the most frequently cited classification of these has been presented by Vinay and Darbelnet in their ‘classic’ 45 Stylistique comparee du français et l’anglais in 1958. They invented their own dichotomy of global translation strategies, or rather their new terminology for it; namely, they spoke of direct or literal and oblique translation. (Vinay and Darbelnet 2000).46 The first type of translation is employed when parallel categories occur in the SL and the TL with respect to structures as well as concepts, and therefore relatively straightforward strategies are sufficient in the process of translating. The second one, in turn, is used when no such parallelism exists and more complex techniques have to be implemented, involving something more than just simple transcoding of signs from one language into another.

As Vinay and Darbelnet (2000: 84) inform, the first three strategies on their list can be classified as direct and the remaining four as oblique translating. While 45

See Louw (2007: 59), and Kwieciński (2001: 123).

In fact, a proliferation of terms naming the phenomenon can be observed. For instance Florin (1993: 125) speaks of transcription and substitution and Balcerzan (2000: 19) of translation proper and interpretation.

46

36

reviewing them we are going to focus more on those which might be applied with respect to realia. The strategies are: (1) Borrowing – quite rightly described as ‘the simplest of all translation methods’ (Vinay and Darbelnet 2000: 85) since its underlying concept is not translating at all. The only procedure a translator might need to perform here is transliteration, that is rewriting the word using the phonetic principles or the alphabet of the TL (e.g. Rus. cамовар > Pol. samowar). Still, when it comes to deciding on the use of this strategy, things become more complicated, since borrowing might in an obvious way entail the reader simply not understanding the word when its meaning is not evident enough from the context. Therefore translators often decide to additionally append it with an explanation.47 The most frequent reason to use borrowing, beside the lack of other strategies that might be sensibly implemented in a particular case, is ‘to introduce the flavour of the source language’ (Vinay and Darbelnet 2000: 85) and thus convey the atmosphere of otherness of which we have already spoken. For instance, in the process of translating a text from Arabic there seems to have been no better alternative than to simply preserve such terms as mullah, mirzah or imam.

(2) Calque – described as ‘a special kind of borrowing’ consisting in literally translating each element of the borrowed expression (Vinay and Darbelnet 2000: 85). Calques can be lexical (e.g. Eng. skyscraper > Fr. gratte-ciel) or structural (e.g. Eng. Compliments of the season > Fr. Compliments de la saison).

(3) , (4) , (5) , (6) – Literal translation, transposition, modulation, equivalence – these methods may find less use with respect to realia, yet they are worth presenting in order to show the gradual transition leading to the last strategy, adaptation, which is again more applicable to such language items. o Literal translation – is understood as a direct transfer of a SL text into the TL (e.g. Eng. She looked at the map > Fr. Il regarda la carte). This definition also fits calque, however. An assumption we might make judging from the provided example is that the term literal translation tends to be used with regard to longer utterances. Such a way of differentiation between calque and literal translation also finds its

47

This will be discussed later as a separate translation strategy.

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confirmation in the words of Fawcett (1997: 35) who called calque ‘literal translation at the level of the phrase’. o Transposition – a strategy in which one word class is replaced with another but the meaning of the message is left unchanged (e.g. Eng. As soon as he gets up > Fr. Dés son lever – ‘On his getting up’). o Modulation – an alteration caused by a change in the point of view, employed to avoid the expression sounding unsuitable, unidiomatic or just plain awkward (e.g. Eng. It is not difficult to show > Fr. Il est facile de demonstrer – ‘It is easy to show’). o Equivalence – an ‘unfortunately named term’ (Newmark 1988: 90) denoting the rendering of the same situation by use of completely different means (e.g. different structures) which still hold equivalent messages. Among others, it is said to be in use in translation of proverbs and onomatopoeic sounds (e.g.Eng. Ouch! > Fr.Aïe!).

(7) Adaptation – termed ‘the extreme limit of translation’ (Vinay and Darbelnet 2000: 90), it is domestication at its fullest. Translators resort to it when the situation being referred to in the SL does not exist in the TL culture. In such a case a new situation must be created, which might at least to some extent be considered equivalent to the original one, having a similar effect on the reader.48 Therefore it could be termed a special kind of equivalence, namely a situational one. An example of this strategy might be replacing cricket with Tour de France in a context referring to a particular sport. The strategy of adaptation can also be applied to the entire text, not just separate language items; it may then lead to serious changes of its features, the scope of which will depend on the prospective reader. 49 As Vinay and Darbelnet (2000: 90) assure, ‘all the great literary translations were carried out with the implicit knowledge of (…) [these] methods’. They further add that, as a matter of course, they can be combined within the same sentence and even expression, sometimes to the point where it is impossible to distinguish them.

48

Florin (1993: 126) speaks of using ‘functional equivalents’ or ‘analogues’. However, we have already mentioned the fact that the notion of the ‘equivalent effect’ (Nida 1964a: 129, Rieu and Phillips 1955: 155) is a highly controversial one.

49 See footnote 7.

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Nevertheless, these are not all techniques that can be implemented when it comes to realia. Other important ones are: - Generalisation – use of a term with a more general meaning than the SL term (Pedersen 2005: 6).

50

By use of this strategy a glass of Vichy might be

translated as szklanka wody mineralnej. Apparently it is the most common translation technique in the case of lexical discrepancies between the SL and the TL (Baker 1992, as referred to in Burkhanov 1993: 174).

- Concretisation – an opposite strategy, through which ‘the narrowing of SL meaning is achieved by distinguishing the various meanings of the SL word (…) and then by selecting one of them’ (Klaudy 2010: 85).

51

This is the

strategy that has to be used when deciding whether to render nephew as bratanek or siostrzeniec. 52 - Synonym – described as a ‘near TL equivalent to a SL word’ (Newmark 1988: 84), whose meaning, as Burkhanov (1993: 176) reminds, ‘does not seem to be exactly the same as the scope of meaning and usage of the source-language unit’. An example might be the rendering of zawadiaka as troublemaker – the TL item does reproduce some, but not all semantic components of the SL word.

Kwieciński (2001: 153) makes a similar remark; commenting on Newmark’s (1988: 84) nomenclature, he notices that a better name for this translation procedure would in fact be ‘semantic reduction’. Another proposal has been made by Aixelá (1996: 63 as quoted by Kwieciński 2011: 153), who offered the name absolute universalization. Making use of this strategy while dealing with culture-bound items, the translators ‘delete any foreign connotations and choose a neutral reference for their readers’ (ibid.), but the TL item is not a hyperonym of the SL one. The example might be En. corned beef > Es. lonchas de jamon [slices of ham].

53

Newmark (1988: 59) also speaks of

referential synonyms, in other words familiar alternative referents of lexical items, as in Ireland > The Green Isle or Napoleon > The Emperor.

- Metonymic translation – this ‘useful translation tool’ (Omazić and Šoštarić 2005) utilizes metonymy, that is ‘the use of the name of one object for that of

50

Pedersen (2005) spells it generalization.

Klaudy (2010) also calls this strategy specification.

52 Example from Burkhanov (1993: 175).

53 Kwieciński (2001: 153).

51

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another to which it is related, or of which it is part, as [in] scepter for sovereignity or the bottle for strong drink’. 54 - Neutralisation – Künzli (2004) understands it as ‘rendering the tone of the translation more impersonal and sober’, while in Burkhanov’s terms (1993: 181) this strategy is called ‘translating by means of an interlingual equivalent with different expressive and/or social meaning’. As he asserts, it may be used particularly often in ‘artistic translation’, in which translators very often have to cope with the problem of ‘accounting for local and social dialects, slang, socalled ‘colloquialisms’ and other socially and stylistically relevant aspects of the source text.’ (ibid.). 55 This strategy has a lot in common with synonym.

- Official equivalent – a ‘standard translation’, in other words ‘a performed TL version’ (Leppihalme 1994: 94, as quoted in Pedersen 2005: 3). An example is Kalle Anka which is the official equivalent of Donald Duck in Sweden (Pedersen 2005: 3); translating the name of the character in any other way would no doubt cause confusion. As Pedersen (2005: 3) concludes, in case of this strategy, since we have a ‘pre-fabricated solution’ to a potential translation problem, ‘the process is bureaucratic rather than linguistic’. This statement is all the more appropriate considering that official equivalents are very often used in translating official documents. Borrowings who have permanently entered a TL (such as pizza, Comanche or igloo) can also be classified as belonging to this category.

- Paraphrase – also known as definition, understood as replacing a term with a description of the reality to which it refers.

56

As an example could serve the

translation of zajazd as une expedition judiciaire [judiciary expedition], zaścianek as la bourgade noble [a village inhabited by nobles] or węgrzyn as le vin de Hongrie [Hungarian wine].

57

Definitions can also be longer, for

54

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/metonymy. In fact, Vinay and Darbelnet (1958/1995: 249, as quoted in Kwieciński 2001: 124) include metonymy under the label of modulation.

55 Newmark (1988: 103) uses the term ‘neutralisation’ in a bit different sense, namely with reference to paraphrase (which he calls ‘descriptive equivalent’), since as a result of paraphrasing the culture-specific ‘flavour’ of a word disappears.

56 Pisarska and Tomaszkiewicz (1996: 128, as quoted in Sypnicki and Szeflińska-Karkowska 2000: 2006).

57 Mickiewicz 1992, as quoted in Sypnicki and Szeflińska-Karkowska 2000: 205. Translation mine.

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instance sukmana has been once translated as casaque de drap de coupe Cracovienne [a long cloth shirt in Cracovian style]. 58 - Explanation – the difference between this technique and definition is that explanation only accompanies the word, it does not replace it. Explanations contain information necessary for the full understanding of the text by the TL reader. They take the form of footnotes at the bottom of the page or at the end of the text; their intention is to make the reader realize the difficulty involved in the translation of a particular language item. The use of this strategy is often equated with the failure of the translator, who did not manage to make the translation an integral part of the text. An example from Paul Cazin’s translation of ‘Pan Tadeusz’ might be quoted here: [L]e joupan était in justaucorps, serré à la taille, mi parement et dépassant les genoux; le kontouch; un větement de dessus, à longues manches fendues qui se rejetaient ordinairement en arrière.

[[Z]hupan was a kind of an overcoat, pinched at the waist, with narrow lapels and reaching below the knee; kontush; an outer garment with long, slashed sleeves, usually thrown back over the shoulders.]

59

Such explanations are most numerous in philological translations, or, as Nida (1964a: 129) called them, gloss translations, aiming to convey as fully as possible the picture of the world depicted in the original. In other kinds of translation they are usually avoided, as they would unnecessarily overload the text with data, transferring the reader ‘from the atmosphere of literature into the realm of ethnographic descriptions’ (Ilek 1975: 105, translation mine). This, according to Ilek (2000: 105), ‘has been long abandoned by both theory and practice of translation.’

60

However, if someone decided to use the

strategy of borrowing (like Cazin did), adding an explanation might prove indispensable.

58

(ibid.) Translation from French into Polish by pilar11 from http://www.francuski.ang.pl/forum/pomocjezykowa; translation from Polish into English mine.

59 Mickiewicz (1954, as quoted by Sypnicki and Szeflińska-Karkowska 2000: 205). It is also an example of the strategy of borrowing involving phonetic transcription. Translation from French into Polish by pilar11 from http://www.francuski.ang.pl/forum/pomoc-jezykowa; translation from Polish into English mine.

60 Translation mine.

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- Explicitation – might be considered a form of short explanation. Its essence lies in providing in an explicit way some information implicitly included in the name of the term (such as some elements of context, denotation or connotation) so as to aid the reader’s reception of it. For instance, when a poet writes about a tree of jacaranda, it is a good idea to translate it as the violet tree of jacaranda since for the author the colour of the tree is obvious while for the reader it might not be so (Iwaszkiewicz 1954: 7, as quoted in Balcerzan 2000: 19). As the given example shows, explicitation always accompanies other translation techniques instead of being an independent one.

- Omission – a translation strategy which may very well challenge Vinay and Darbelnet’s (2000: 85) statement about borrowing being the ‘simplest of all translation methods’. Even though borrowing does not involve translation, it still may entail actions like transliteration or some other kind of adapting the word to the target language system. Omission, on the other hand, seems to stand for the abandonment of any action whatsoever. Still, this strategy, too, involves conscious decision of the translator, regardless of whether the motive behind it is the lack of other adequate solutions or simply laziness (Leppihalme 1994: 93 as referred to in Pedersen 2005: 9). However, the consequences of such a decision are in most cases not very serious, as, the strategy is most of the time applied to words “which are not vital to the development of the text” (Baker 1992: 40 as referred to in Aguado-Giménez and Pérez-Paredes 2005: 298).

One must remember that, as Chesterman (1997: 87, as quoted in Bergen 2001: 111) put it, in the area of translation strategies we are confronted with ‘considerable terminological confusion’. Kwieciński (2001: 120–161) has presented some major categorizations of translation strategies offered by various researchers and has compiled his own ‘consolidated taxonomy of translation procedures’, assembling the labels under which certain strategies are known. We can learn from it that, to give just a couple of examples, borrowing has also been called importation, cultural borrowing or transference, whereas, for instance, calque has received such names as throughtranslation, translation label and loan-based neologism. Similar examples could be quoted regarding every single translation strategy there is.

Terminological matters aside, it has to be said that sometimes one strategy is not enough to deal with a translation problem. Two, three, or four translation strategies 42

combined are known as a couplet, triplet and quadruplet, respectively (Newmark 1988: 91). These are ‘particularly common for cultural words’, as Newmark (1988: 91) notices.

Kwieciński (2001: 123), referring to Vinay and Darbelnet’s (2000) listing of translation strategies, classifies only borrowing and calque as foreignisig (or, using his term, exotic) strategies. Following his line of thought, the remaining strategies discerned by the French scholars – literal translation, transposition, modulation and, obviously, adaptation – can be classified as domesticating. This shows that the dichotomy of literal and free (or word-for-word / sense-for sense, as well as source language oriented / target language oriented) translation cannot be considered synonymous with the notions of foreignisation and domestication. Kwieciński clarifies things with regard to literal translation, reminding that it is only considered ‘valid procedure if it fits squarely into (…) domestic usage norms’ (Kwieciński 2001: 123). Yet, it should be admitted that, even if this statement does not pertain to calques, they can also fit into those norms sometimes. One cannot also deny the fact that although it persists to preserve foreign ways of expressing things, it still domesticates the transferred phrases by the sole fact of expressing them in the target language. Nevertheless, calqued items, analogously to borrowing but to a lesser extent, still contain the element incomprehensible for the target reader, a link to the source text which is the only place where those items are fully understandable. Therefore, calque will also, together with borrowing, be considered a foreignising strategy. Speaking of the subsequently enumerated strategies of generalization, concretization, synonym, metonymic translation, neutralization and paraphrase do not cause such doubts and all logically fall into the category of domesticating strategies.

When it comes to explanation and explicitation, they might be called foreignising only when considered as a whole with the strategies which they accompany, of course when those, too, may be classified as such.

61

This is how

Kwieciński (2001: 159–160) treats the subject as well, placing combinations of strategies and not just separate strategies on his continuum. After all, explanation and explicitation in themselves are evidently domesticating in nature, as they attempt to make the unknown, foreign item more understandable to the reader.

61

This is most often the case, since these strategies are mostly used together with borrowing.

43

Speaking of official equivalent, Kwieciński (2001: 163), in whose terminology it is recognized exoticism, calls it ‘an intermediate borderline case on the scale of exoticism and assimilation’ (that is, foreignisation and domestication). The reason for it is that ‘it consists in reusing and confirming the established TC conventions’ (ibid.) and as a result, does not demand the translator to decide in favour of one global strategy or the other. A similar stance is taken by Pedersen (2005: 4), with the difference that he completely excludes official equivalent from his own categorization, instead of placing it right in the middle of it like Kwieciński did. Interestingly, when it comes to omission, the Swedish scholar placed it together with “target-oriented items” in his diagram, but in a white box instead of a coloured one (as is the case with all the others), as if to indicate that it is a more neutral strategy than the rest (Pedersen 2005: 4). It seems justified. Even though the translator using omission simply gives up any decision regarding the item in question, the result of his action is inevitably domesticating as it simply removes the problematic language item from sight. Also Kwieciński (2001: 163) places omission (or deletion) closer to the ‘domesticating’ end of his scale.

The last thing that might be mentioned here is not linked to the division of strategies into domesticating and foreignising, but rather to the effects they may have on the target text. Of course, this is an immensely broad subject. Generally speaking, as we all know, foreignisation produces an effect of exoticism or simply ‘otherness’. It may or may not go along with the reader’s understanding of what the language item in question actually means. Therefore, even though foreignisation is intent on preserving the source language message in a more or less unchanged form, its reception will inevitably differ anyway. This difference is even more understandable when it comes to domestication.

A large number of the changes occurring as a result of the use of domesticating strategies could be classified as additions 62 to or substractions from the ST (Burkhanov 1993: 173). This can pertain to the form as well as to the content of the text. Especially prone to alterations is the vulnerable sphere of connotation. For instance, as a result of the translator Robert Burgeois’ use of justaucorps in place of żupan, la redignote instead of kontusz and toque as an equivalent of konfederatka, the French readers of ‘Pan Tadeusz’ received the image of figures more reminiscent of their native musketeers rather than Polish noblemen (Sypnicki and Szeflińska-Karkowska 2000:

62

A more professional term for this kind of change is amplification. See Sypnicki and SzeflińskaKarkowska (2000) or Balcerzan (2000: 19).

44

207–208). However, there seems to have been no other alternative if the translator did not wish to burden the text with excessive commentary.

1.7.3 Factors Influencing Translators’ Decisions

The previous discussion brings us on to the last issue we are going to examine in this chapter, namely the considerations translators take into account while choosing one strategy over the other. According to Florin (1993: 126–7), these are: (1) The character of the text; for instance, in texts of scientific nature realia are in fact considered terms and should be translated as such, while in literature semantic exactness is not a necessary condition if it would somehow hinder the message, making it too convoluted or oblique (Ilek 2000). Likewise, in scientific writings detailed glossaries and footnotes are fully acceptable, whereas in children’s books any explanations should definitely be included in the text itself and in adventure books exotic-sounding borrowing is a welcome element.

(2) The importance of the realia in the context; deciding whether the realia are close to the reader’s attention or whether they could rather be considered details influences the translator’s decision in an obvious way. Importantly, Florin (1993: 127) reminds that even if a certain piece of realia might be considered a detail, the reader’s attention will be drawn to it if its meaning is obscure.

(3) The nature of the realia; for instance, their characteristics as lexical units in the SL and the TL system, the realia’s relative familiarity when it comes to the reader (or the lack thereof), the register and the temporal, geographical and thematic categories to which they belong.

(4) The peculiar characteristics of the source and the target language; for example grammar, combinatorial possibilities ruling word formation, collocations or the degree of ‘tolerance’ of calques.

(5) The reader of the text; this factor is actually closely linked to the character of the text. In fact, Newmark (1988: 102) believes that the expected reader is the single most important element in the translators’ decision process, of much greater significance than other considerations mentioned here. He discerns three types of 45

readership: expert, educated and uninformed, of which each type will require a different translation of a text. Florin (1993: 127) also stresses that translators must realize who the readers of the source text were/are, and who the ‘average’ target readers will be. In other words, they should remember that they always translate for someone and that their primary objective is establishing communication. This is not achieved when the readers fail to understand the borrowing or when the historical or local color of a term is completely lost on them. What follows is that translators should aim to ‘ensure minimum loss combined with maximum communication’ (Florin 1993: 126). 63 Despite giving this meaningful general advice, Florin (1993: 128) states he does not try to ‘prescribe any rules that the translators should feel obliged to follow.’ This is because, as he believes, ‘the final decision is always theirs, and nobody else’s.’ (ibid.)

1.8 Conclusions

To conclude, the present chapter has tried to show that translation in general, and translation of realia in particular is a complicated issue, and that there is no one uniform approach with respect to these two phenomena. As it has been argued, theoreticians have handled translation either from a strictly linguistic point of view, or as a wider concept, taking into account its different aspects. For instance, some innovation in translation studies was the fact that the transfer of messages which is the essence of translation must be seen in a broader context, as communication between cultures, not just between languages. This finds particular application when it comes to literary translation, where cultures meet especially often.

As the closing parts of the chapter have indicated, translation of realia cannot be taken for granted: very often they are actually perfect examples of the notorious phenomenon of untranslatability. However, different translators approach the subject in different ways, and not all resign from communicating the notions represented by realia through actual translation. Still, ‘not translating’ cannot only be considered a sign of 63

Levý (1967: 156) has formulated it in a similar way, claiming that translators try to utilize a ‘minimax strategy’.

46

some kind of a failure or impossibility. Sometimes it is part of a conscious strategy of foreignisation, employed for specific purposes. At the other end of the scale there is domestication, consisting in ‘adjusting’ foreign notions to the domestic concepts of the target culture. In between these extremes one will find a whole continuum of strategies which the final part of this chapter endeavoured to present.

The analytical part of this thesis will concern itself with the application of those strategies in practice, taking as a subject of study a literary work which teems with culturally-bounds elements of all kinds, including realia – namely, the national Polish epic With Fire and Sword by Henryk Sienkiewicz.

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CHAPTER 2 Background for the Analysis of Translation of With Fire and Sword 2.1 Introduction This short chapter first aims to provide some background information about the novel With Fire and Sword, its special place in the Polish culture and the challenges which its translators inevitably had to face. Secondly, it presents the profiles of those who decided to undertake this demanding task, providing information about their methods of work and the reception these met with among the readers and critics.

2.2. The Novel With Fire and Sword started to be published in the Warsaw newspaper Słowo and the Cracow newspaper Czas in the form of installments on May 2, 1883. Its author, 36-year-old Henryk Sienkiewicz, was the editor of the newspaper at the time. He was already known to readers through his short stories and reportages from his journey to America, but he could by no means be counted among Poland’s leading literary figures then (Krzyżanowski 1991a: 33). However, With Fire and Sword made him an ‘on-the spot celebrity’ (Krzyżanowski 1991a: 33), while the novel itself and the two sequels which eventually formed the famous Trilogy became ‘instant classics’ (ibid). The readers’ interest and enthusiasm for the work was so great that it caused some of them to either perceive the novels’ characters in a near-mythological dimension or treat them as if they were real people (Krzyżanowski 1991a: 33, 38). Moreover, the series, aiming ‘to uplift the hearts’ of the distressed Poles put under the ruthless rule of the neighbouring empires, has come to be treated by many as in a way sacred books and a primary source of the sense of Polish national and historical identity (Sosnowski 2000: 36). It has also won international acclaim, having been published in more than 30 languages since then (Krzyżanowski 1991a: 33).

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With Fire and Sword is set in the times when the Cossacks, an East Slavic people forming democratic, semi-military communities in the area of the PolishLithuanian Commonwealth which is now Ukraine, rebelled against the Polish landlords in the 1640s. The rebellion which turned into a bloody civil war serves as a background for ‘an adventure story full of love and murder, friendship and betrayal, cold-blooded treason and passionate devotion (…)’.64 Jerzy Krzyżanowski (1991a: 33) very enthusiastically remarked that the international success of the novel and its two sequels ‘testifies to their vitality and importance which ignore national and cultural boundaries’.

Still, those boundaries have proved a considerable difficulty when it comes to the problem of translating Trilogy, to such an extent that Rybicki (2005: 123) called it ‘the most untranslatable‘ of Sienkiewicz’s works.

One of the translators of the Trilogy into English, W. S. Kuniczak (1991: 62), speaking of the challenges he knew awaited him, admitted that he was not so much troubled by the obvious obstacles resulting from the work’s specific style and language as by the simple fact that ‘for today’s English-speaking reader (…) 17th century Poland is a puzzling and confusing mystery’ (Kuniczak 1991: 61). The situation was by no means different over a century earlier, when those works were created (Rybicki 2005: 102). That might have been one of the reasons the reception of Sienkiewicz’s work in the English-speaking countries, in comparison with many most European countries, was about ten years delayed (Giergielewicz 1966: 260, as referred to in Rybicki 2005: 103).

2.3 The Translators As Rybicki (2005: 21) remarked, despite the fact that over twenty translators have been involved in it, ‘the history of English translations of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s works is in fact the story of only the two of them: (…) Jeremiah Curtin (1835–1900) and his major rival (over a century later), Wiesław Stanisław Kuniczak (1930–2000)’.65 As the researcher asserts, this history is quite fascinating, not only because both translators were original personalities, but also since their concepts of translation and translator’s tasks were in fact as different as one might imagine. They only thing those 64 65

Krzyżanowski (1991: 37).

Translation mine.

49

concepts have in common is that they meet with criticism much more often than with praise (ibid.).

Jeremiah Curtin graduated from Harvard. A secretary of the embassy in St. Petersburg, a polyglot and an ethnographer, he was also a keen traveler and a translator of Irish folk tales as well as Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and Gogol. 66 Most importantly, though, he was the first translator and successful promoter of Sienkiewicz’s works in the English speaking world. Beside the Trilogy (With Fire and Sword, The Deluge, Pan Michael), his other versions of Sienkiewicz’s novels, all brought out by the publishing house Little, Brown and Company, include Ouo Vadis?, Children of the Soil (Rodzina Połanieckich) and On The Field of Glory (Rybicki 2005: 101–121).

In fact, such an impressive output was possible thanks to Curtin’s wife. They were usually tackling the translations together, having developed a special, very efficient system of work.67 This efficiency was no doubt spurred by the profits which the translations were bringing, especially after the publication of the best-selling Ouo Vadis?. Eventually Curtin, who frequently visited Sienkiewicz, convinced him to grant him the exclusive right to translate his works into English (Curtin 1940: 691, as referred to in Rybicki 2005: 110).

As Rybicki (2005: 106) claims, what led Curtin to Sienkiewicz was, ironically, the fact that the American was an ‘avid Russophile’ (Krzyżanowski 1991b: 23); Sienkiewicz, after all, was formally a Russian writer. Moreover, Julian Krzyżanowski (1973: 137, as referred to in Rybicki 2005: 106) asserts that the translator used the Russian version of With Fire and Sword while working on his own one.68 However, much more controversial was the outcome of Curtin work itself. Critics pointed out that his translations were ‘lacking in style and taste’, ‘of overall poor quality’ 69 or

66

Later he also translated Orzeszkowa (The Argonauts) and Prus (The Pharaoh and the Priest) (Rybicki 2000: 101).

67 As the translator’s wife herself described it, her husband was usually walking around a room (often in a hotel) with the original text in his hand, dictating the translation to her. Later, when he had gone to sleep, she would revise the draft and rewrite it till late at night. In the morning they started the work again.

(Mikoś 1994, as referred to in Rybicki 2005: 105-106). They could produce as many as 60 pages of translation a day (Rybicki 2005: 106).

68 Only later did he got to know Polish well enough to translate other novels from the original (Krzyżanowski 1973: 137 as referred to in Rybicki 2005: 106). As a hint of the Russian source text serve many proper names in the book, evidently transliterated from Russian, e.g. Chigrin, Belaya Tserkoff, Joltiye Vodi, Vishnyevetski or Borzobogata (Mikoś 1994: 24, as quoted in Rybicki 2005: 106).

69 Segel (1968: 464, as quoted in Rybicki 2005: 111). Translation mine.

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‘grotesquely inelegant’.70 Undoubtedly the main reason for it was that he opted for ‘word-for-word’ translating, being extremely faithful to the original.71 Consequently, he disregarded such matters as collocations, idioms or cultural distance (trying to lessen it only by his ‘clumsy’72 forewords to translated works). Giergielewicz (1966: 332, as quoted in Rybicki 2005: 113) believed that the ‘imperfect’ translation was one of the reasons why the writer’s popularity in the English-speaking countries lasted relatively short.

On May 1991 Copernicus Society of America began publishing Sienkiewicz’s Trilogy translated by W.S. Kuniczak (With Fire and Sword, The Deluge, Fire in the Steppe).73 Seemingly, this Polish-born American novelist and an enthusiast of Sienkiewicz’s series (Kuniczak 1991: 60) had everything that was needed to restore the Polish writer’s reputation tarnished by the previous translator (Rybicki 2005: 113).

After over a century, the assumptions he worked on were entirely different from Curtin’s. In line with modern translation theory, he believed it was vital to transpose ‘both the meaning and effect desired by the author into another culture’,74 in this case the Western one (especially American). In addition, Kuniczak (1991: 64) declared himself a firm believer in ‘sense-for-sense’ rather than ‘word-for word’ translating, stating that his aim was to recreate ‘the spirit of the Trilogy’ for the modern readers so that they could move about Sienkiewicz’s work ‘without confusion or distraction’ (Kuniczak 1991: 62–63).

Accordingly, Kuniczak’s work has been promoted as Sienkiewicz’s ‘modern translation’. However, a number of critics did not agree to call it so, claiming that it is really an adaptation of Sienkiewicz’s novel’. 75 Among other things, they objected to the fact that he had deleted fragments of the original text in favour of his own,76 introduced

70

Gosse (1897: 524, as quoted in Rybicki 2005: 113).

Rybicki (2005: 107) cites such ‘famous Curtin’s literarities’ as masz babo pociechę rendered as here, old woman, is fun for you, masz babo placek as here is a cake for you, grandmother or masz diable kubrak as well, devil, there is an overcoat for you. Kuniczak (1991: 58), in turn, expressed his dismay at Curtin’s rendering of Czołem! as With the forehead!

72 Rybicki (2005: 122).

73 Rybicki (2005: 113).

74 Kuniczak (1991: 59).

75 See for instance Segel (1991: 488), Rybicki (200: 113-120), Mikoś (1992: 253) or Leśniewska (2000).

Segel (1991: 489, as quoted in Rybicki 2005: 118) even adds that Kuniczak should really be treated as a co-author of the book. In fact Kuniczak himself disclosed that, rather than a translator, he considered himself a ‘collaborator with the author’s spirit’ (Kuniczak 1991: 64).

76 Segel (1991: 489, as quoted in Rybicki 2005: 119).

71

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‘arbitrary’ changes to the work’s structure,77 extensively supplied narration with his own commentary

78

as well as ‘beautified’ many fragments in stylistic terms.79

Understandably, a lot of readers and critics who had not known the original Polish text reacted enthusiastically to this version of the novel. Still, as Leśniewska (2000: 438) concluded, it was not exactly the Trilogy they got acquainted with but ‘a new product’ created on the basis of it. She also suggested that ‘such a translation method, allowing for omission and all kinds of paraphrase’ at the same time ‘discharges the translator from the duty of racking his brains to find equivalents for most of problematic lexical items in the source text’ (Leśniewska 2000: 437). 80 There has been yet another translator of With Fire and Sword – Dr. Samuel A. Binion, whose version of the novel was published in 1898 to compete with that of Curtin (Rybicki 2005: 120). As Rybicki (2005: 120) notices, Curtin feared this rival most, since Binion had also been the second English translator to tackle Quo Vadis? (together with S. Malevsky). Importantly, no one really questioned the quality of his work. Juszczak (1991: 27) quotes Kuniczak’s remark that ‘[Binion’s] use of language would have pleased almost any author’ and concludes that if his version of the novel had gained bigger popularity among the readers than Curtin’s, the Polish-American novelist ‘might not have felt compelled’ to prepare his own one (ibid). Binion also translated Pan Michael and Kings of the Cross. However, after Curtin gained the exclusive right to translate the Polish writer’s works, he ‘retired from the contest’ (Juszczak 1991: 27). Interestingly, Binion, too, was born in Poland, in a Jewish family in Suwalki, where he received a sound Hebrew and Talmudic education. Later he went to England, where he converted to Protestantism and where he studied at King’s College, and later to Spain, in order to work as a superintendent of Protestant schools.

He then left for the United States, where he contributed to current encyclopedias and published Ancient Egypt or Mizraim, a monumental work on the art and architecture of

77

Mikoś (1992: 254-255, as quoted in Rybicki 2005: 120).

Ibid.

79 Leśniewska (2000: 436). The researcher quotes the following example, quite symptomatic of Kuniczak’s way of dealing with the text: ‘Nastała chwila ciszy’ (Sienkiewicz 1989: 10).

‘Then he was silent (…) and the stillness seemed so endless and profound (…) that even the darkened steppe seemed to hold its breath like something that was both alive and crouched with expectation’ (Sienkiewicz 1991: 18).

80 Translation mine.

78

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Egypt, considered a great achievement both in terms of content and execution.

81

Still,

today he remains much more obscure than Curtin and Kuniczak and much less information is available on him than on the remaining two translators.

2.4 Conclusions Hopefully, the above section has managed to confirm that the translation of With Fire and Sword can easily be called a formidable task and that its translators were not only interesting but also intrepid individuals. The upcoming chapter shall check how their methods of work are reflected in the translation of one of the most problematic elements of the work they have tackled, the realia items.

81

Bernstein (1909) and http://www.baumanrarebooks.com/catalogues/sept-new-acquisitions.pdf.

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CHAPTER 3 Analysis of Translation of Realia in With Fire and Sword

3.1 Introduction

This chapter contains the practical analysis of how the three translators, J. Curtin, S. Binion and W. Kuniczak handled realia in their versions of With Fire and Sword by Henryk Sienkiewicz. For a start, the chapter presents the research material, that is the selection of chapters from the book that have been examined and the unit which has been used in statistical analysis. Then it proceeds to demonstrate the results of the conducted research. Firstly, it proposes an overview of the realia found in the discussed chapters, based mainly on their division into categories proposed by Florin (1993: 123). Secondly, it discusses the identified translation strategies, paying special attention to those which had not been listed in the theoretical part of the thesis, as well as clarifying the used terminology. Thirdly, an overview of tendencies prevailing in the use of these strategies is offered, based on the statistical results of the data analysis.

Next section showcases instances of use of each discussed translation strategy, comparing solutions employed by the three translators. In some cases, it also discusses the possible reasons for their decisions and the effects of these decisions when it comes to the reception of the texts by the readers. Next, some attention is devoted to the errors the translators happened to commit. A certain amount of speculation concerning the possible reasons and effects of these is included as well. Finally, the chapter summarizes the discerned factors influencing realia translation and the observed trends regarding global translation strategies in the analysed texts.

3.2 Research Material The research material for the present study comes from the Polish original With Fire and Sword by Henryk Sienkiewicz, as well as from its translations into English by

54

Jeremiah Curtin, Samuel A. Binion and Wiesław S. Kuniczak (published in 1898, 1898 and 1991, respectively).

With Fire and Sword consists of 64 chapters (including the Epilogue). I have chosen to analyse 11 of them, which amounts to around one sixth of the entire number of chapters. I have gathered data from chapter 1, 7, 12, 18, 24 and 30 from the first volume as well as chapter 2, 6, 12, 18 and 25 from the second volume. I have selected every sixth chapter in each volume (with the exception of choosing chapter 2 over chapter 1 in the second volume due to the scarcity of realia in the second one in comparison to the first). My aim was to obtain results that would be as random as possible.

I have identified a total of 129 realia items in the source language text (meaning types, not tokens). Matching SL items with the corresponding TL items, I have received what Toury (1995: 77) called ‘coupled pairs of replacing and replaced segments’. These will be the unit employed in this study. Of course, many SL items have been translated in more than just one way, thus forming a number of coupled pairs with their TL renditions. There were 162 different coupled pairs in Curtin’s translation, 176 in Binion’s and 162 in Kuniczak’s version.

Even though Kuniczak’s version of the Trilogy has not been considered a translation but an adaptation by some researchers (see Section 2.2), I decided to include it in the analysis. I will also call it a translation for the sake of simplicity, and because of the fact that, despite numerous objections, that is what a vast number of readers consider it to be. Admittedly, in the analysed chapters there were 20 instances when Kuniczak skipped an entire fragment containing a realia item, to some extent proving Leśniewska’s (2000: 437) claim about adaptation allowing for omission of difficult lexical items. Still, he retained the remaining 109 items, often translating them in more numerous ways than his predecessors. Thus, he managed to produce the amount of coupled pairs which is comparable to the amount their versions contained. He also used combinations of strategies much more frequently, and, generally speaking, often employed unconventional solutions providing an interesting research material (as it will be demonstrated later in more detail).

If the instances when Kuniczak left out a fragment were to be considered a legitimate translation strategy (and the resulting ‘vacant slots’ were to be regarded as forming coupled pairs with SL items), this ‘strategy’ could be said to have appeared in 11% of all coupled pairs. Yet, they are not included in the analysis at all, in contrast to 55

cases which can be labeled as ‘ordinary’ omission (i.e. the ones in which not an entire fragment, but only a realia item has been deleted from the TL text).

3.3 Research Results

3.3.1 Identified Realia Despite the fact that Florin’s (1993: 123) categorization is not always perfectly logical, it has proved very useful as almost all realia items discovered in the analysed texts matched the categories he has provided. It has been, therefore, considered helpful in presenting the wide array of realia which were found in the text. The only item that did not fit those categories was fantazja, a special feature especially highly valued in the 16th century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which could be said to denote daring as well as ingenuity.

In fact, it was not obvious whether to consider it a realia item at all. This was a problem with regard to many lexical items found in the text. The main issue was making sure that they did not have ready-made equivalents in the target language, thus being in fact ordinary lexical items and not realia. All items which proved doubtful in this respect where excluded from the list below. However, this does not apply to instances when the equivalents were only approximate, as is the case with buława and baton. Both are symbol of power used by military leaders; in the SL culture by hetmans, in the TL culture by field marshals.

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Yet, they look different, as the SL item has an

ornamented knob, whereas the TL item does not. Besides, the SL item additionally denotes an ordinary warfare element, used, for instance, by Cossack lieutenants, and is then translated as mace. As we can see, this lexical item perfectly matches Florin’s (1993: 122) motto concerning cultural specificity quoted in section 1.5.1.

The subcategory of ‘Purely ethnic realia’ is marked with an asterisk, as it contains a lexical item which in not quite ‘purely ethnic’. This item is Lach, which, though routinely denoting Pole, at least in some cases had a negative charge. Under the label of ‘Art and culture’ I also included folk customs. The subcategory of ‘Social and 82

The meanings of all identified realia items as well as the sources of that information are provided in Appendix 2.

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political realia’ is marked with an asterisk as well, as it is the category that seems quite comprehensive and coincident with the name of its main category. Yet, it provided a place for all realia items which did not match any other subcategory. Finally, Florin’s (1993: 122) category of geographical realia might better be labeled with Newmark’s (1988: 103) term ‘Ecology’, since beside geographical phenomena it also contains elements belonging to the semantic field of fauna. Florin’s subcategories (1993: 122) of the geographic category (national realia, microlocal realia etc.) were not taken into account into the analysis; it was simply considered too complicated a task to determine the exact ‘identity’ of the lexical items.

One more issue that should be addresses here is Florin’s (1993: 122) category of historical realia. Obviously, most of identified realia (though not all of them) could be classified as such; the time lapse between the present and the moment the novel was created is over 100 years, after all. Still, additional differentiation between lexical items which are now considered obsolete and between those which are not (in this group we might, for instance, count kozak which is Ukrainian national folk dance) was not undertaken in this study. The same may be said of attempts to decide whether the translators rendered them with items which matched them in this respect. Still, such research might doubtless yield very interesting results.

Table 3.1 presents realia found in the researched corpus according to Florin’s (1993: 123) categories.

CATEGORY

1 a

N

%

Ethnographic realia

52

41,1%

Everyday life

35

27,1 %

3

2,3 %

6

4,7 %

alkierz, bajdak, braha, burka, cerkiew, chutor / futor, fraucymer, giezło, gorzałka, hajdawery, jasyr, kaganek, kolet, kontusz, kopieniak, kusztyk, łuczywo, łyka, nahaj, opończa, osypka, piernacz, piław, pludry, podwoda, polewka piwna, półgarncówka, półkwaterka, salamy, szaraban, trójniak, tyftyk, winna polewka, wódka, żupan b

Work cyrulik, czaban, rakarz

c

Art and culture (* also customs) kołomyjka, kozak, korowaj, mięsopust, teorban, teorbanista

57

d

* Purely ethnic realia

4

3,1%

3

2,3%

1

0,1 %

69

53,5

Kozak, Mazur, Lach, Tatar e

Measurements and money stajanie, taler, złoty

f

* Unclassified (concept) fantazja

2

Social and political realia

% a

Regional administrative agencies

2

1,5 %

11

8,5 %

11

8,5 %

kurzeń, starostwo b

Organisms and offices chan, łowczy, murza, podkomorzy, prezydium, rękodajny, sejmik, starosta, strażnik koronny, wojewoda, wójt

c

Social and political life *

basarunek, bojar, boćwinkowie, czerń, kniahini, kniaź, kniaziówna, 13

10,1 %

konwokacja, mołojec, pop, * stawszczyzny, suchomielszczyzny, oczkowe, rogowe 83 zimowniki, złota wolność d

Military realia

32

24,8 %

8

6,6 %

ataman, ataman koszowy, ataman buńczuczny, bandolet, beluarda, buława, buńczuk, buzdygan, czambuł, handżar, harce, harcownik, hetman, hetman wielki, hulaj-horodyny, husaria, husarze, janczar, karwasz, Kozacy regestrowi, oberszter, ordyniec, petyhorzec, piechota kwarciana, samopał, semen, stanica, tabor, towarzysz pancerny, watażka

3

Geographical realia / Ecology berkut, burzany, Kurki, liman, poroh, raróg, suhak, ulęgałka

Table 3.1 Realia found in the texts according to category.

As we can observe, the category of ‘Social and political realia’ prevailed in the text, and its subcategory that decidedly predominated was the one of ‘Military realia’. Yet, this category was closely followed by the one of ‘Ethnographical realia’ with the leading 83

These were considered one, ‘collective’ lexical item’, as they have been, to some extent, treated as such by the translators (see Appendix 2).

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subcategory of ‘Everyday life’. In this category, words referring to food and drink prevail.

It has been underscored here earlier that only types, and not tokens of realia elements were counted in the analysis. Counting the tokens proved too daunting a task.

Yet, it would certainly offer one advantage – the information about the density of realia in the analysed text. Speaking in a very general terms, it was observed that there was a small group of realia which appeared very frequently in the corpus. These were predominantly realia signifying people reappearing through the story (certain, concrete people as well as certain types of people), such as hetman, ataman, kniahini and mołojec. We can also count names of members of ethnic groups (i.e. Cossack or Tartar) in this category. Next, there was a larger group of realia which appeared quite frequently throughout the text. These were also names signifying people (more precisely, functions fulfilled by these people), such as semen or esauł, as well as words connected with war and warfare (husaria, samopał, buława, tabor) and everyday life in general (among these words related to drinking stood out, such as gorzałka or półgarncówka). Another group was composed of realia which have appeared a couple of times in the text (e.g. hulay-horodyny or piernacz), often in connection with one, certain motive or topic. Still, a group similar or even larger than all previous groups taken together was formed by realia which appeared only once in the text (such as kopieniak, korowaj or bajdak). The realia item which was without doubt the most frequent one was Cossack.

In fact, the number of identified types of realia items can also be considered quite good an indicator of their density in the text. With the analysed corpus consisting of 118 pages, the result is the average of 1.07 realia item type per page.

3.3.2 Identified Strategies

In the analysed corpus I have found instances of all strategies listed in section 1.7.2 except Vinay and Darbelnet’s (2000: 90) equivalence. Next to being rather disputable, this strategy mainly finds its use with respect to proverbs or onomatopoeic sounds.

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Yet another divergence from that list concerns paraphrase. As Pisarska and Tomaszkiewicz (1996: 128, as quoted in Sypnicki and Szeflińska-Karkowska 2000: 2006) assert, the term can be used synonymously with definition. Sypnicki and Szeflińska-Karkowska (2000: 2006) give examples of shorter and longer paraphrases (such as węgrzyn > Hungarian wine and sukmana > a long cloth shirt in Cracovian style). In the corpus short paraphrases were prevalent (e.g. beluarda > mobile siege tower, burka > traveling robe). However, Wiesław Kuniczak sometimes used quite long ones (e.g. buńczuk > the traditional insignia of an eastern warlord borrowed four centuries earlier from Mongol invaders). To discriminate between these two practices, in this study such longer paraphrase goes by name of definition.

On top of that, among the many techniques performed by the translators I have found one which did not have an exact match with any of the strategies described in Chapter 1. Moreover, I have not noticed it in any of the numerous categorizations presented by Kwieciński (2001: 120–161). However, there are descriptions of it in the literature. For instance, Burkhanov (2003: 177) mentioned it while explaining a strategy he termed translating by means of substituting a culture-specific term (which in this thesis is called adaptation). He wrote that it consists in using ‘a target-language lexical unit that does not refer to exactly the same denotatum’ as the source language unit, yet ‘is supposed to refer to a very similar class of objects, processes etc. or at least to invoke a similar frame.’ When it comes to artefacts, ‘it is usually an object that performs a similar function’ (ibid.).

Yet, data analysis proves that such items are not always ‘culture specific’ in any visible way, although they certainly are more familiar to the target culture than the SL items. As an example may serve Curtin’s rendering of suhak as wild goat. The used strategy, it has to be stressed, cannot be considered generalization or paraphrase, as suhak is not a goat, but a species of antelope. Next, burzany, lush thickets once common in the Ukrainian

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steppes, have in one instance been translated by Curtin as reeds, by

Binion as meadows and by Kuniczak as the undergrowth. Considering these two examples, it must be concluded that the chosen TL items simply ‘fulfill the function’ of the SL items. In the first case, it is clearly the ‘function’ of a wild animal of the steppe.

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Although, to be precise, there was no state of Ukraine at the time, this word will nevertheless be often used here instead of a perhaps more correct Ruthenian for the sake of convenience. It might be said it will be used in a geographical rather than political sense (unless it will be used in a present-time context, in which case it will be both).

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In the second case translators identify it differently, as for Curtin and Kuniczak it is the function of something that grows in the wilderness, whereas Binion uses the name of the place in which something may grow instead.

Still, an affiliation of those two lexical items with the TL culture is by no means something important or immediately visible. Consequently, it would not feel entirely right to consider this strategy adaptation or, as Newmark (1988: 83) calls it, cultural equivalent. Therefore, in this study it is going to be called functional equivalent. This term, too, is taken from Newmark (1988: 83), although he uses it differently, referring to ‘cultural componential analysis’, which is essentially paraphrase. 85 Yet, the notion of functional equivalence has already existed in mid-eighties (de Blois and Mewe 2004: 214). It is often used as a synonym of dynamic equivalence (cf.

Neufeld 2004: 98), although, according to de Blois and Mewe (2004: 214), it should be seen as a ‘conceptual adjustment in terminology’, since at that time translators began paying more attention to meaning of translated messages and tried to preserve them so far as possible. Functional (or communicative) approaches dominated translation studies in that period (one of the ‘strand of thinking’ within those approaches being skopos theory).

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Speaking specifically of word function, Ilek (2000: 102–103) wrote about it,

claiming that ‘the choice of equivalents depends on the role played by certain translation units in the description of a situation’ and that ‘the degree of specificity in translating literature is determined by the function of a word in a given text.’

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Additionally, he, too, mentions ‘a functionalist point of view’ (Ilek 2000: 102) referring the reader to Liudskanow’s (1969) article ‘Princypat na funkcyonalnite ekwiwalenti – osnowa na teorijata na prewoda.’ The mentioned strategy could also be considered close to Vinay and Darbelnet’s (2000: 90) equivalence as it, too, aims to render the same situation ‘using completely different (…) methods’.

Of course, the products of most mentioned strategies could be considered functional equivalents of their corresponding SL items. Yet, I apply this term with respect to those instances in which no other strategy could be discerned in the employed solution. Speaking of the strategy which is especially related to this one, namely adaptation, I have decided to label a given solution as such only when the affiliation of the TL item with the TL culture was more or less evident and significant. This can be 85

He gives such examples as Sejm > Polish parlament or baccalauriat > French secondary school leaving exam (Newmark 1988: 83).

86 Mason (2001: 209). See also Snell-Hornby (2006).

87 Translation mine.

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said, for example, of the rendition of alkierz as parlor. The name of a small side-room, which in 16th century Polish nobles’ houses fulfilled a number of various roles, including a guest-room, has been translated here with a likewise antiquated word which, however, can only be associated with an American living room. Yet another, somewhat extreme example of adaptation is Binion’s translation of taler as dollar.

Additionally, it should be stressed that the said functional equivalence, just as function itself, must be understood very broadly, as illustrated by the following example: (1) Ci do bandoletów! (Sienkiewicz 1989: 140) They seized their daggers (Sienkiewicz 1898a: 377).

Bandolet was a type of a rifle. Therefore here the ‘function’ of the word could be identified simply as ‘warfare element.’ Yet, another important component is the notion of urgency, in the first utterance conveyed by means of an exclamation mark. It is retained in the collocation seize one’s dagger. This might explain why the translator has not used a simple rifle or pistol instead (naturally, if we rule out the possibility that he identified the meaning of the source language item wrongly).

As well as that, in the combinations I found a couple of instances of something that might best be called not a strategy, but an effect. I labeled it overtranslation;

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it

denotes a situation in which the TL item carries additional meaning not present in the original. The example of it might be Curtin’s rendering of mołojcy as heroes. Mołojec, beside simply signifying a young Cossack, could also be used to refer to a Cossack swashbuckler or blade; yet, a hero is definitely a somewhat more semantically loaded item. Therefore, I regarded it an example of synonym combined with overtranslation.

Finally, it should be underscored here that sometimes it was hard to decide which strategy was used. In some cases the decision was inevitably rather subjective, and therefore there is always a possibility that its results might be considered disputable.

There was also a couple of cases in which I did not take the final decision. They have been grouped under the label ‘Ambiguous’.

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A term Burkhanov (2003: 175) attributed to Newmark.

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3.3.3 Tendencies in Strategy Use Figures 3.1, 3.2, and 3.3 present tendencies in local strategy use for each of the three translators.

Figure 3.1 Curtin’s local strategy use.

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Figure 3.2 Binion’s local strategy use.

Figure 3.3 Kuniczak’s local strategy use.

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As we can see in Figure 1, 2, and 3., the undisputed leader among single local strategies in case of all three translators is generalisation, which proves Baker’s (1992, as referred to in Burkhanov 1993: 174) claim that it is the most often used strategy in case of lexical discrepancies between languages. It has been over three times as frequent as the second most frequent strategy in Curtin’s translation and nearly twice as frequent in Binion’s translation, amounting to 32,1 % and 22,7 %, respectively. Only in Kuniczak’s version its dominance is not so evident, as it occurs in 16,6 % of couple pairs, preceding the second most frequent strategy by a margin of only 3,5 %. This second most common strategy in case of both Cutrin and Binion is synonym, whereas in Kuniczak’s translation it is borrowing together with paraphrase. Borrowing also occupies the third position in Curtin’s translation, only less frequent than synonym by 0,6 %. In Binion’s translation this position is occupied by paraphrase and adaptation.

Finally, in Kuniczak’s version synonym comes third.

In fact, the position of adaptation is unusually high in Binion’s translation, reaching 9,7 % of frequency whereas in Curtin’s and Kuniczak’s version it only amounted to 3,7 % and 4,1 %, respectively. Conversely, Curtin used paraphrase comparably rarely, in just 3,1 % of coupled pairs, as opposed to Binions 9,7 % and Kuniczak’s 13,1 %.

Speaking of other strategies, the frequency rate of functional equivalent is at 8 % in case of both Curtin and Binion; Kuniczak used it a bit more rarely, in 6 % of coupled pairs. Official equivalent has been employed similarly often by all three translators, with a frequency rate of around 6 % in case of all of them. It is not very surprising, as it is very probable that the SL items rendered by use of that strategy were the same in each translation.

Also omission has been utilized with a relatively coincident frequency, which in all three versions amounted to 5 – 6 %. To be precise, though, Kuniczak used it most often, in 6,6 % of cases as opposed to 5 % and 5,1 % in the translations by Curtin and Binion. However, not all instances of omission should be treated in the same way. In fact, there appears to be a need to discriminate between two types of it; ‘complete’ omission, and instances when a translator has left the realia item out, but at the same time tried to render a given situation in some other way. Those are indicated with a red colour in the graphs. This ‘substrategy’, which might be called ‘creative omission’, is discussed further in Section 3.3, in which examples of usage of all strategies are provided and interpreted. Returning to Kuniczak, he used it more often than ‘ordinary’ 65

omission, the frequency rate of both types of this strategy being 3,6 % and 3 %, respectively.

Heading towards conclusion, we shall now summarise the frequency of occurrence of local strategies in the entire analysed corpus. Combined results for local strategies can be seen in Figure 3.4.

Figure 3.4 Combined results for local strategy use.

Without doubt, generalisation and borrowing can be called most frequent strategies if we take all translations into account When it comes to further categorization, though, it is hard to draw clear boundaries. Yet, such strategies as synonym and paraphrase can be easily deemed very common, whereas functional equivalent, official equivalent, omission and adaptation might well be called relatively common. Next, there come modulation and metonymic translation which can be best described as rare, although, naturally, their usage differs among the translators. In all translations considered together, their presence amounts to 2,8 % of all coupled pairs.

The last category belongs to strategies which are very rare; the proportion of each of them does not exceed 1,2 % in the entire corpus. These are calque, concretization, definition and neutralization. Here, again, differences can be noticed. Namely, Kuniczak, does not make use of any of these strategies except definition and concretization, while definition is only used by him and nobody else. In Curtin’s

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version, on the other hand, calque and concretization appear with a relatively high proportions of 3,7 % and 2,5 %, respectively.

Let it suffice of a summary of tendencies in local single strategy use. However, what still remains without a comment is the proportions of combinations of strategies in the analysed texts. Especially in Kuniczak’s version it is set at the unprecedented level of 21 %, which means it even exceeds the predominating strategy of generalisation in frequency. In Curtin’s and Binion’s translation it is not so high, amounting to 6,2 in the first and 6,8 % in the second one. Still, were combination to be considered a legitimate translation strategy, such frequency would earn it the fifth place among all strategies in Curtin’s version on a par with functional equivalent and the sixth place in Binion’s version.

According to the received outcome in Curtin’s combinations metonymic translation was prevalent, while Binion and Kuniczak most often availed themselves of borrowing and explicitation. In case of Kuniczak’s translation such a proportion of borrowing contributes to the general strong position of this strategy in his text.

Interestingly, if one were to count all his coupled pairs containing borrowing, whether as a single strategy or in a combination, they would prove more numerous than those containing generalisation by 0,8 %. We will not discuss the frequencies in detail, however. They are all listed in the legend in each graph (the legends pertain to combinations only). Instead, let us look at the actual combinations of strategies that were used by the translators. They are presented in Table 3.2. The order of the two strategies in the combination reflects the way in which they appeared in the text (the second mentioned one accompanied the first one and so on).

COMBINATIONS OF STRATEGIES

Curtin N

89

Binion

Kuniczak

All

%

N

%

N

%

N

%

100 % 87,9 % 2,9 % 6% 0% 15,2 %

57

100 % 91,2 % 1,7 % 3, 5 % 3, 5 % 8, 7 %

ALL

13

100 %

14

100 %

33

COUPLETS

13

100 %

14

100 %

29

BORROWING + CALQUE BORROWING + DEFINITION BORROWING + EXPLANATION BORROWING + EXPLICITATION

0 0 1 0

0% 0% 8 % 0%

0 0 1 2

0% 0% 7,3 % 15, 6 %

1 2 0 5

89

52 1 2 2 5

The letter N signifies the number of coupled pairs which contained a given combination.

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BORROWING + OFFICIAL EQUIVALENT BORROWING + SYNONYM BORROWING + TRANSPOSITION CALQUE + DEFINITION CALQUE + TRANSPOSITION

0 0 0 0 0

0% 0% 0% 0% 0%

1 0 0 0 2

0 1 1 1 0

0% 2,9 % 3% 2,9 % 0%

1 1 1 1 2

1,7% 1,7 % 1,7 % 1,7 % 3, 5 %

2 1 2 2

6 % 2,9 % 6% 6%

3 1 2 5

5,3 % 1,7 % 3, 5 % 8,7 %

2 0

7,3 % 0% 0% 0% 15,6 % 7,3 % 0% 0% 15,6 % 15,6% 0%

CONCRETISATION + EXPLICITATION FUNCTIONAL EQUIVALENT + BORROWING FUNCTIONAL EQUIVALENT + EXPLICITATION GENERALISATION + EXPLICITATION

0 0 0 1

0% 0% 0% 8 %

1 0 0 2

METONYMIC TRANSLATION + ADAPTATION METONYMIC TRANSLATION + FUNCTIONAL EQUIVALENT OFFICIAL EQUIVALENT + EXPLICITATION OFFICIAL EQUIVALENT + PARAPHRASE OFFICIAL EQUIVALENT + TRANSPOSITION PARAPHRASE + ADAPTATION PARAPHRASE + CALQUE PARAPHRASE + FUNCTIONAL EQUIVALENT PARAPHRASE + METONYMIC TRANSLATION PARAPHRASE + MODULATION PARAPHRASE + OVERTRANSLATION SYNONYM + EXPLICITATION SYNONYM + CALQUE SYNONYM + OVERTRANSLATION TRANSPOSITION + MODULATION TRIPLETS BORROWING + PARAPHRASE + FUNCTIONAL EQUIVALENT FUNCTIONAL EQUIVALENT + BORROWING + EXPLICITATION OFFICIAL EQUIVALENT + EXPLICITATION + DEFINITION QUADRUPLETS TRANSPOSITION + ADAPTATION + BORROWING + DEFINITION AMBIGUOUS BORROWING/OFFICIAL EQUIVALENT + OFFICIAL EQUIVALENT

2 1

15,4 % 8 %

0 0

0% 0%

4 1

7% 1,7 %

0 0 2 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 0

0% 0% 8% 0%

0% 0% 7,3 % 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0%

2 2 0 1 0 2 0 2 1 1 0 0 1 3 1

6% 6% 0% 2,9 % 6% 0% 6% 2,9 % 2,9 % 0% 0% 2,9 % 9% 2,9 %

2 2 2 1 1 2 1 3 1 1 1 1 1 3 1

3, 5 % 3, 5 % 3, 5 % 1,7 %

0% 8% 8% 0% 0% 8 % 8 % 0% 0% 0%

0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

0

0%

0

0%

1

2,9 %

1

1,7 %

0 0 0

0% 0% 0%

0 0 0

0% 0% 0%

1 1 1

2,9 % 2,9 % 3%

1 1 1

1,7 % 1,7% 1,7%

1 1

8% 8%

0 1

0% 7,3 %

0 0

0% 0%

1 2

1,7 % 3, 5 %

3, 5 % 1,7 % 5,3 % 1,7 % 1,7 % 1,7 % 1,7 % 1,7 % 5,3 % 1,7 %

Table 3.2 Combinations of strategies – proportions.

As we can see, in the text there were 31 different strategy combinations employed in 54 coupled pairs. 27 of the combinations were couplets. The remaining types were only used by Kuniczak – 3 triplets and 1 quadruplet appeared in his portion of the text. He also availed himself of a much greater number of combinations in

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general, making use of 23 of them in contrast to only 9 employed by Curtin and 8 by Binion.

The most frequent combinations in the entire corpus were borrowing with explicitation and generalisation with explicitation, which both appeared in 5 coupled pairs. However, the outcomes for individual translators do not always reflect that. For instance, in Curtin’s text it was metonymic translation with adaptation which prevailed over others by 1 occurrence. This combination was also the most frequent one in Binion’s part of corpus along with generalisation with explicitation as well as borrowing with explicitation. The last mentioned combination also decidedly dominated in Kuniczak’s translation.

It seems this short summary is enough when it comes to the discussion concerning proportions of combinations. The last thing that demands consideration when it comes to statistics is the summary of tendencies in global strategy use. In calculating these, proportions of single strategies as well as strategies found in combinations have been taken into account. As it could have been expected, domesticating strategies decidedly prevail in the analysed fragments of translations with regard to the treatment of realia. Curtin resorted to them in 86,7 % of cases, Binion in 83 % and Kuniczak in 76,1 % of cases. Acknowledging that they have used official equivalent – the ‘neutral’ strategy – in 6,2 %, 5,7 % and 6 % of coupled pairs, respectively, we receive the information that foreignising strategies are present in 13,3 % of coupled pairs in Curtin’s translation, in 11,3 % in Binion’s and in 17,9 % in Kuniczak’s. Notably, in Kuniczak’s case such a result can only be attributed to borrowing, as the translator did not make use of calque. All in all, it appears that Kuniczak’s version of the novel was the least domesticating and most foreignising with regard to realia, whereas Binion’s was the one which domesticated realia items most eagerly and foreignised them most rarely. Curtin’s translation situated itself very close to Binion’s in this respect, being for the most part domesticating while dealing with such items.

Instead of examining the statistical data, though, it should be much more informative to see how the application of these combinations looked in practice Yet, before it is done, there is one more thing we must consider before proceeding to the more practical part of this thesis. Namely, we should pay some attention to the way in which Kuniczak tackles borrowing, which was the sole strategy contributing to the strong foreignising tendencies his work exhibited. In fact, ‘[s]pecial terms and foreign 69

words used in the W. S. Kuniczak translation of the Trilogy are always translated on their first occurrence, in the first English sentence’ (Krzyżanowski 1991: 72). That is what we can read in The Trilogy Companion, a separate volume accompanying Kuniczak’s translation. This same volume actually contains his own text in which he exhaustively explains his chosen translation method. The above explanation is taken from the Glossary, and what follows is the list of such ‘special terms’ together with their explanation and the language from which they come. It contains 59 items and is evidently not complete, as it does not contain several items that occurred in the text. The point, however, is that in such a study as this one, which analyses only a number of chapters and not the entire novel, it was not possible to take such an approach to borrowing into account. It is simply not feasible to ascertain whether each borrowed item was really for the first time introduced together with its definition. Besides, such a treatment of realia items does not in fact automatically ensure their understanding by the reader each time they occur in the text, as he or she will not necessarily remember what the item denotes. This assumption is confirmed by the words of one of the book’s readers, P. Krog, who on the website of the world’s biggest online bookstore, Amazon, in a review submitted on 9 December 2010 complained that Kuniczak is ‘weighing down the tale with neologisms.’ 90 All in all, even though the statistics presented in the earlier part of this study cannot reflect the entire truth behind Kuniczak’s use of borrowing, what they do show is how the use of this strategy looks like in the text. In other words, they present the frequency of instances when borrowings appear with a definition or some other strategy and of those when they appear alone – and when there is always the risk that they will be treated as such (i.e. as items which the reader, despite an explanation provided earlier in the text, perceives as foreign and does not understand).

Speaking of ‘reflecting the truth’, it should be stressed here that it is by no means certain whether the presented results would be reflected in the entire text of the novel. Yet, one is tempted to believe that some most prominent tendencies would be found to be the same.

90

http://www.amazon.com/With-Fire-Sword-Henryk-Sienkiewicz/productreviews/0020820445/ref=cm_cr_pr_hist_4?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&filterBy=addFourStar

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3.3.4 Examples of Strategy Use This section will demonstrate some examples of use of particular translation strategies. At times it will also attempt to analyse various aspects of usage of the mentioned strategies and to speculate about the factors which might have played a role in the translators’ choice of strategy, sometimes also trying to assess the effects of their decisions. However, it will not be the main focus of this subchapter, whose main aim is to simply show the ways in which translators employed certain strategies. The order of presented single strategies will be based on the frequency of appearance in the entire analysed corpus. After them, two strategies will be covered whose inherent feature is that they always accompany other translation techniques and thus have no possibility to occur individually; these will be explanation and explicitation. Lastly, the section will discuss instances of strategy combinations.

3.3.4.1 Generalisation

As the most frequently used strategy, generalisation appears on a regular basis in all three translations. For instance, Curtin and Binion translate hajdawery, wide-legged trousers being an element of traditional Ukrainian costume as well as Cossack military uniform, as simply trousers. Similarly, półkwaterka, a cup with a capacity of a half of kwarta, which could be more or less equaled with a gallon, was rendered by them as cup. Kopieniak, a sleeveless mantle which in fact was a kind of a cloak, was translated

by Cutrin as mantle and by Binion as cloak.

Beside hyperonyms to which the translators assign the SL items, another thing that may differentiate their usage of generalisation is the degree of it. For example, Curtin translated handżary, crooked Turkish daggers which decorated the walls of a borderland noble house described in the book as daggers, and Binion as just arms.

When it comes to Kuniczak, he rendered gorzałka as spirits and liquor, among others.

Items which he generalized also include bandolet, kusztyk or pop, which he reproduced as pistol, goblet and priest, respectively. Konwokacja, a Sejm (General Assembly) summoned to elect a new king of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was translated by him as convention, meaning a mass meeting. Yet, another sense of this word is a 71

meeting of political party leaders with their supporters during an election campaign.

This allows the TL item to retain associations with elections even though the exact meaning of the lexical item is different. This is not a problem, as this meaning is made clear in the text.

As numerous examples demonstrated, the most outstanding feature of the strategy of generalisation is that it makes the translated item devoid of its specific meaning and sometimes also its special ‘flavour’ of a foreign or dated item. Yet, it should be reminded here that semantic exactness is by no means always desirable in a literary work, as concluded by Ilek (2000), whose opinion on this matter was quoted in the theoretical part of this thesis in Section 1.7.2. As it has already been mentioned, he believed that the degree of this exactness is usually determined by the function which the word fulfills in the description of a given situation. Not infrequently a general item is perfectly sufficient in it. This is the case when a given item has, for instance, already appeared in text before. This can be said of beluarda, a mobile siege tower. Sienkiewicz used it in his work as a synonym of hulay-horodyna, whose meaning he explained upon its introduction through a vivid description. 91 As a result, the translation of beluarda as machine or tower, as was done by Curtin, is completely justified and in fact resembles the common practice whereby writers use concise referents with respect to items they have already introduced.

92

Interestingly, though, the other two translators have opted

for more conscientious renderings, Binion paraphrasing the item as war machine and Kuniczak as mobile siege tower.

Lastly, an interesting case of generalisation can be found in the following fragment of Kuniczak’s translation:

(2) Gdzie twoje zamki i bojary, i wojska? (Sienkiewicz 1989: 166).

Where’re your lands and castles and gentlemen and armies? (Sienkiewicz 1991: 558).

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‘Jednocześnie w dali ukazało się kilkadziesiąt straszliwych machin, podobnych do wież, które toczyły się z wolna ku okopowi. Po bokach ich wznosiły się na kształt potwornych skrzydeł mosty, które przez fosy miano przerzucać - a szczyty dymiły, świeciły i huczały wystrzałami lekkich działek, rusznic i samopałów. (…) . Żołnierze ukazywali je sobie z daleka, szepcąc: - To hulaj-horodyny!’ (Sienkiewicz 1989: 270).

92 In the same vein, Kuniczak sometimes renders kniahini, a wife of a Ruthenian prince (kniaź) as the woman, and Curtin reproduces kniaziowie – sons of kniaź and kniahini – as the men.

72

In the cited SL context, bojar meant specifically a Ukrainian gentleman fulfilling the role of a courtier on a powerful magnate’s court. At first glance, it appeared as an instance of modulation as the translator seemingly brings out a character trait (or ‘behaviour trait’) not conveyed by the SL word. Yet, in his translation Kuniczak often employs gentlemen as a term of address referring to a group of nobles, and so the word may be assumed to simply denote nobleman in the above-cited context.

3.3.4.2 Borrowing

The second most popular strategy is a complete opposite of the first discussed one. Although its use does not eradicate the characteristic features of a lexical item, it reduces its understandability to the reader, unless, of course, someone supplies this strategy with other techniques, as Kuniczak did. Still, he was the only one in the trio who resorted to appending borrowings with definitions. In case of the remaining two translators just two instances of explanations (glosses) were discerned in the corpus.

And yet, they did sometimes employ borrowings which must have remained rather opaque to their readers. For instance, Curtin rendered ataman koszowy as koshevoi, and Binion as Koshov ataman, 93 sometimes also referring to this item as ataman or Koshov.

Another example of a SL item translated in the way which may make the reader think it was a proper name was semen, a Cossack soldier from a noble’s or Cossack leader’s troop, rendered as Semenov. Binion at times also translates this item as soldier, yet there is little to indicate that these two in fact have the same referents. Curtin’s rendering from the same category is the translation of boćwinkowie, a derogatory or facetious term used by Polish nobles to talk of Lithuanians (coming from boćwina, meaning beet and beet soup, which was popular in Lithuania) as Botvinians. An alternative solution was employed by Binion, who paraphrased the word as beet-soup eaters. Of course, over hundred years ago this knowledge was not available to anyone at the click of a button as it is today. Therefore we cannot be sure what motifs stood behind the translator’s decision to choose one item and not the other, and so this decision should not be too easily judged.

93

To be precise, this item was classified as a combination of borrowing and official equivalent (ataman).

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Another aspect of detected instances of this strategy might be highlighted here is the varied spelling of borrowings of the same SL item, as demonstrated by Curtin’s gorailka, Binion’s gorzalka and Kuniczak’s gojhalka or Curtin’s kuren, Binion’s kurzen and Kuniczak kujhen, for instance. As we can see, Kuniczak adjusts the spelling to make the pronunciation of the TL item resemble the original one.

In truth, Kuniczak’s use of borrowing is a subject in itself. As it has been pointed out before, he was the one who used this strategy the most often of all three translators. It has also already been said before that he frequently used it in combination with other strategies, for instance with explicitation and definition. Examples of such usage will be presented in subsections devoted to these strategies, and other combinations containing borrowing – in the subsection devoted to combinations; here we will only speak of borrowing occurring as a single strategy in the corpus.

Instances which can be classified as such, next to those quoted in an earlier paragraph, include kniahini translated as Knahina, kniaź as Knaz or esauł as esaul.

Interestingly, Kuniczak also borrows plural items, for example translating mołojcy as moloytzy.

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Of course, it is quite understandable that he wished to retain such items as

they greatly contribute to the ‘exotic feel’ of the book. Yet, he also seems to be bent on borrowing items which do not carry such a feel. For instance, he reproduces piechota kwarciana, a regular infantry established to protect the borderlands of the Commonwealth and financed by a quarter of the income from the king’s estates, as ‘Kwarta’ infantry. Still, the exact meaning of this item is not indispensable for the reader and what is more, this meaning many not even be remembered even though it had been introduced at the first occurrence of the item. Therefore, a more domesticating item, like Binion’s regular infantry, would greatly enhance understandability.

Yet, to be fair with respect to Kuniczak, an example should be quoted which shows that his predilection for borrowings is in fact accompanied by a desire for them to be correctly identified.

(3) Jeden z semenów zaczerpnął z beczki trojniaku w garncową blaszankę i podał ją na czapce panu Zagłobie. (…)

- O! wcale niezły (…). Szkoda takiego miodu na wasze chamskie gardła.

(Sienkiewicz 1989: 89)

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Admittedly, he also rendered this item as Cossacks or young Cossack warriors.

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One of the Cossacks carefully filled a two-quart copper mug with mead, placed it in his own crumpled cap and and brought it to the fat knight in both hands. (…)

“Hmm… Not bad. Not bad at all. (…) It’s a shame to waste such a good Troyniak on a peasant throat, my lads (…).

(Sienkiewicz 1991: 272-273)

As we can see, in the second fragment the borrowing was used after it was clear what trojniak was. Numerous combinations of borrowing with other strategies also testify that clarity was not at all a negligible issue for Kuniczak.

The translator’s enthusiasm for borrowing is also well illustrated by the following fragment: (4) (…) za nimi jechała księżna z fraucymerem i (…) za nimi wołoska chorągiew pana Bychowca i wreszcie komput wojska, górne pułki ciężkiej jazdy, chorągwie pancerne i usarskie (…) (Sienkiewicz 1989: 114). (…) next came the princess with her ladies (…); after them the Wallachian regiment of Pan Bykhovets; finally, the body of the army, the picked regiments of heavy artillery, the armored regiments, the hussars (…) (Sienkiewicz 1898b: 287). (…) then followed the princess with all the ladies of her court (…), then the Wallachian squadron under Bikhovets and, finally, the main body of the army. The regiments of heavy cavalry, the cuirassiers, the hussars (…) (Sienkiewicz 1898a: 303–304).

Behind them rolled the coaches of Princess Grizelda and her household (…), and (…) the Valachian mounted archers of Byhovietz. Next came the main body of the Princes’ army – the heavy armored regiments of steel-clad pantzerni and the winged husaria (…) (Sienkiewicz 1991: 360).

Yet, we should not be surprised by such translation choices considering that Kuniczak in fact retains even items which are not at all culture specific, for instance rendering wataha (band) as vataha and banita (outlaw) as banita. Interestingly, Aixelà (1996:64, as quoted in Kwieciński 2001: 153) mentioned a similar phenomenon, which he called ‘autonomous creation’, consisting in adding extra cultural references in the text.

Another translation strategy he distinguished is compensation, which is a deletion of a cultural reference at one point combined with an autonomous creation inserted in 75

another. Such a category seems to fit some of Kuniczak’s decision quite well, taking into account his omission of entire parts of the text. Yet, in general, such keenness on this strategy also points to his exceptional sensitiveness to cultural specificity. It is undoubtedly a result of his national origin which allows him to ‘feel’ the unique ‘flavour’ of certain items to a much greater extent than Curtin and Binion do. Yet, a somewhat too liberal use of borrowing must have caused the effect of the story being burdened with ‘neologisms’, as one previously quoted reader put it.

3.3.4.3 Synonym Some of the examples of synonyms include the translation of mołojcy as boys (Binion), of watażka as chief or chieftain (Binion), of futor as farm (Curtin and Binion) or homestead (Kuniczak) and of piernacz as a safe conduct (Binion and Kuniczak). The meaning of all those TL items is similar, but not the same as the meaning of their corresponding SL items. For instance, watażka in the context of the book is precisely a Cossack chief or leader (in fact Binion employed such renderings as well), and futor is a secluded small farm in the Ukrainian steppe.

In the process of identifying the strategies used by the translators the biggest problem concerning synonym was its affinity with generalisation. Very frequently deciding between these two strategies was quite a dilemma and the outcomes of these decisions might often prove disputable. For example, the abovementioned words might as well be classified as instances of generalisation; watażka might after all be considered a kind of a chief, futor a kind of a farm and mołojec a kind of a boy. Still, unlike in case of most items which have been classified as generalized, the difference between the SL and TL items is chiefly that of ethnicity. That is, watażka is a Cossack chief, futor a Cossack farm and mołojec a Cossack youngster or boy, although this last term was also used with reference to ‘normal’ Cossacks, especially by their leaders (in truth, those Cossacks were in most cases not particularly old, although they were not necessarily always very young, either). In a very large amount of cases it does not extend to more tangible features. As a result, it simply does not ‘feel right’ to call one such item a hyperonym of the other (for instance watażka a hyperonym of chieftain). In a language game or exercise we would rather be inclined to list them as synonyms (and 76

one internet thesaurus actually does

95

). However, it cannot be stated with all certainty

that this rule found its application in all cases of discriminating between synonym and generalisation.

Additionally, in the translations there appeared several instances of referential synonyms – Curtin sometimes reproduced watażka as Bogun and Kuniczak as Bohun.

They also referred to starosta as Sobieski and Pan Sobieski, respectively. Kuniczak also rendered kniaziówna as Helen (having referred to her as Princess Helen before).

3.3.4.4 Paraphrase

The fourth frequent strategy, paraphrase, is a much less controversial one. In fact, the only ‘controversy’ may rest in its differentiation from compound-word synonyms.

This problem occurred in the case of the translation of zimowniki, which were essentially Cossack winter quarters. All three translators rendered it so, but Curtin and Binion put a hyphen in between the two words, reproducing the item as winter-quarters.

Therefore, their translations have been classified as one word, a synonym, in contrast to Kuniczak’s Winter quarters which were placed in the category of paraphrase.

Other examples of paraphrase are Binion’s translation of esaul as Cossack sergeant and hulaj-grody as towers of the Cossacks or Kuniczak’s rendering of burka as traveling robe or jasyr as Tartar slavery. Binion also translated mołojec as young Cossack and Kuniczak as young man. Semeni were translated by Kuniczak as loyal Cossacks. Curtin’s paraphrases include rephrasing mięsopust as carnival time and sejmik, somewhat too literally, as petty Diet.

Actually, two of the mentioned items have also been paraphrased in a quite interesting way, which might even be classified as a combination of paraphrase and a separate category opposite to neutralization. Namely, Binion once rendered hulaj-grody (which in the text were used interchangeably with hulaj-horodyny) as infernal machines. Similarly, he also in one instance translated jasyr with an expressive phrase the yoke of the Heathen. Both phrases are much more vivid than their corresponding SL items and contain a strong negative semantic load which is not present at all in case of hulaj-grody and present to a lesser extent in case of jasyr.

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http://synonim.net/synonim/watażka

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3.3.4.5 Functional equivalent An example of the use of functional equivalent is Kuniczak’s translation of kaganek as burning torch and of półgarncówka as copper kettle. In the corpus there has also occurred one example in which functional equivalent was forced by collocation. In the phrase blady był jak giezło, the word giezło, meaning a loose linen gown, was replaced with sheet by Curtin and Binion and with winding-sheet by Kuniczak.

Also Binion’s translation of złota wolność, a term denoting the special status which Polish nobles enjoyed due to various rights and privileges, as gold and freedom has been classified as functional equivalent. Even if, by any chance, Binion had mistakenly modified Curtin’s calqued rendering (golden freedom), it still manages to convey the notion of an advantaged position.

In addition, interesting instances of functional equivalents can be found in the following fragment: (5) Na niebie już Kurki – rzekł koszowy (Sienkiewicz 1989: 58). ”It is cockrow already”, said the koshevoi (Sienkiewicz 1898b: 136).

“There are already streaks in the sky”, said the Koshov (Sienkiewicz 1898a: 145).

“Not long now ‘til sunup, Hetman”, the old man sighed and said (Sienkiewicz 1991: 149).

Kurki refer to the star cluster of Pleiades, whose visibility in the night sky in the northern hemisphere heralds the vicinity of dawn (among Polish country people the cluster was known as ‘the hen with chickens’). As we can see, Curtin and Binion utilized other indications of it, in contrast to Kuniczak, who paraphrased the expression.

Yet, it was he who used the strategy of functional equivalent in the most unconventional way. It can be observed in this fragment: (6) (…) Rzeczpospolitą wstrząśniesz, na majestat rękę podniesiesz (…), a wszystko dlatego, że Czapliński futor ci zabrał, że ci po pijanemu wygrażał! (Sienkiewicz 1989: 58) (…) you will shake the Commonwealth, you will raise your hand against majesty (…); and all this because Czaplinski took some land from you, and threatened you when he was drunk! (Sienkiewicz 1898b: 137)

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(…) you will shatter the Commonwealth; you will raise your hand against the majesty of the throne (…), and all for what? Because Czaplinski robbed you of your country-seat and, in his drunkenness, threatened you! (Sienkiewicz 1989a: 147) You’ll tear the Commonwealth apart. You’ll raise your hand against your King (…). And for what? Just because Tschaplinski stole a woman from you and spat in your face while drunk? (Sienkiewicz 1991: 151)

Here Kuniczak used his knowledge of historical events 96 to use a TL item which carries much more emotion than the SL expression.

3.3.4.6 Official equivalent Examples of official equivalents from the corpus include Cossack, Tartar, ataman, Khan, hetman or hussars used as a translation of Kozak, Tatar, ataman, chan, hetman, husaria. As we can see, these are mostly names of ethnic groups and of various kinds of leaders. The main problem regarding official equivalent is linked to the time lapse between the present moment and the moment in which the first two translations were created. For instance, now bunchuk which the translators used to refer to buńczuk, a symbol of power which Polish hetmans and Ukrainian atamans borrowed from the East, can be regarded an official equivalent of the SL item, as we will come across it quite often after typing the word into a computer search engine. Yet, we cannot be sure whether one hundred years ago it was not simply a borrowing, introduced into the target language as a result of the activity of such translators as Curtin and Binion.

It might be added that sometimes in the process of turning from borrowing into official equivalent language items undergo minor changes in spelling. It is illustrated by piław, a traditional Eastern dish, which Curtin and Binion rendered as pilav and Kuniczak as pilaf, which is the official equivalent of this language item nowadays.

This discussion is also relevant to the instance of kozak, a Ukrainian folk dance, which was reproduced by Curtin as Cosachka. Today this dance is being referred to as kozachok, yet the word used by Curtin sounds as if it was the official equivalent used with reference to this item at the time (formed in a similar way as, for example, 96

During the conflict with Bohdan Chmielnicki, the leader of the Cossack rebellion of 1648, Daniel Czapliński both seduced his woman and took away his estate (Orgelbrand 1899: 110).

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mazurka which refers to a Polish traditional dance – mazur). However, we cannot rule out that it was created by the translator himself and so this item was classified as ambiguous.

3.3.4.7 Omission As it has been said before, instances of omission have been grouped into ‘complete’ and ‘creative’ omission. One might say that the second type should then not be labeled omission at all, but should be given the label of the strategy which, after all, has been used there. Yet, the majority of realia items in the analysed fragments have been rendered in ways which, whether by generalization, synonym or other strategies, still retained them. Therefore it somehow seemed ‘fair’ to label all those strategies which did omit lexical items as omission. As a sample of such ‘creative omission’ may serve the following rendering of an already introduced SL item: (7) Ci do bandoletów! (Sienkiewicz 1989: 140) The others rushed on me (Sienkiewicz 1898b: 357).

Despite dropping the realia item, Curtin retained the sense of what happened (including the urgency characterizing the action). In fact, omission is one of the best strategies to prove the link between the importance of a realia item in the context and a translator’s decision regarding it. In case of this specific strategy it decides whether its use will be will be ‘complete’ or ‘creative’. Namely, when a phrase containing a realia item carries meaning important to the course of action, this meaning must, quite logically, be reproduced even if the item itself is omitted. In contrast, when such a problematic item is not vital to the plot’s development, it is up to the translator whether to render its meaning in some alternative way or to drop it completely.

The situation where a realia item is in a way redundant is represented in the following fragment: ( 8) (…) gdy jego żołnierze przynieśli panu Abdankowi pas i szablę, i krótki buzdygan z których go rozpasano dla cucenia, podali mu zarazem i krótką buławę o osadzie z kości (…) (Sienkiewicz 1989: 9).

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(…) when his soldiers brought Pan Abdank the belt and sabre which were taken from his person to revive him, they brought at the same time a short staff with a bone shaft (…) (Sienkiewicz 1898b: 8).

Binion and Kuniczak behaved in the same way as Curtin and omitted the item as well.

An additional reason here was probably that buzdygan is in fact quite similar to buława and would most likely have to be translated in a similar way.

Sometimes, a realia item happens to be even more negligible, as its meaning is repeated in a phrase accompanying it. This is the case in this part of the text: (9) - A czemu waść nie bajdakiem, 97 wodą? (Sienkiewicz 1989: 10) “And why don’t you go by water?” (Sienkiewicz 1898b: 9).

“And why do you not go by water?” (Sienkiewicz 1898a: 13).

“So why didn’t you go by water?” (Sienkiewicz 1991: 13).

An instance in which translators’ decisions differed with regard to an item which was not vital in the story is the case of kołomyjki, which Binion omitted while Curtin generalized it as dance-music and Kuniczak borrowed it, reproducing the item as ‘kolomyika dances’. He omitted kozak, however, whereas Curtin used a rendering cited before and Binion calqued the word as ‘Cossack’. Both items denote Ukrainian folk dances and appeared in the same moment of the book, in the context of a peasant wedding. Apparently, two of the translators decided that one such item was sufficient to reconstruct the SL situation.

Omitted items also often included titular positions when these were treated as an additional element in the introduction of a character. For instance, Curtin omitted łowczy, and Binion and Kuniczak dropped the word rękodajny, denoting a courtier who had the right to offer his hand to his lord or lady while they were getting out of a carriage. Still, the information that the described person fulfilled the role of a courtier was placed in the SL text anyway, contributing to the negligibility of the word. Next, the item strażnik koronny, which Curtin meticulously rendered as commander of a royal vanguard, an officer of the king and Binion as royal cavalry regiment commander, was replaced in Kuniczak’s version with a vague remark informing that ‘he was well 97

Bajdak was a type of a boat.

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connected at the court in Warsaw’. One might describe this instance as a replacement of omission with a combination of generalisation and modulation, as it brings up a new aspect of the position in question.

3.3.4.8 Adaptation

Official posts were also sometimes adapted. For instance, Binion translated łowczy as The Master Of The Hounds which in the English-speaking countries also signified a court official responsible for organizing hunts and taking care of the hunting dogs. Yet, in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth this position later came to be just titular, unlike its TL counterpart. A similar situation occurred in the case of his rendering of podkomorzy as chamberlain. Here, the meaning of the TL item is coincident with only one sense of the SL item. Podkomorzy was indeed a high court official in personal service of the monarch who also performed the duties of a chamberlain and was in charge of the treasury. Still, later this term simply came to mean a state official acting as a judge in property disputes, and in the text, in which the term referred to some ‘ordinary’ nobleman, it was rather used in the second sense and not he first.

As it has been mentioned before, Binion was the one who was most keen on adaptation of all three translators. His uses of this strategy, beside the instances listed before, as well as the likewise aforementioned striking example of taler rendered as dollar, include the translation of gorzałka as brandy or żupan, a long narrow-sleeved buttoned dress constituting the Polish nobles’ daily attire, as doublet, a quite similar, albeit shorter buttoned jacket. He also reproduced podwody as carriage and pair, which is a phrase used in the Anglo-Saxon context.

Several interesting adaptations have also been utilized by Kuniczak. They include hajdawery, wide-legged linen trousers worn, among others, by Cossacks, rendered as breeches, which are leather horse-riding pants, wide in the upper part and narrow in the lower or completely narrow from top to bottom. He also translated polewka piwna, a beer-based soup once common in Polish noble houses, as ale soup, which is a bit different from the SL with regard to ingredients but nevertheless much closer to its meaning than Curtin and Binion’s beer.

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Lastly, a group of realia items which were in fact for the most part adapted were measurements. For instance, stajanie, an old Polish length measure of varying value at various times and in various places, was by Curtin and Binion rendered with a furlong, which is just as obsolete English measure.

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In contrast, Kuniczak employs mile. Yet,

all three translators agree that the amount of liquid półgarncówka contains is half a gallon. To be precise, the fact that, with the exception of Kuniczak, they refer to the liquid the container holds and not the container itself, makes these renderings examples of adaptation combined with metonymy. Their colleague for a change combines adaptation with paraphrase and functional equivalent, translating półgarncówka as halfgallon copper kettle.

3.3.4.9 Metonymic translation

Next to the already mentioned examples of polewka piwna rendered as beer, also polewka winna has been metonymically translated by Curtin and Binion as wine (i.e. they have used the basic component of the dish as an equivalent for the entire dish).

In addition, Binion reproduced ordyńcy, Tartars belonging to an orda (horde) as hordes, and porohy, the cataracts on the Dnieper, as rapids, which denote turbulent waters occurring near such cataracts. Added to that, Curtin and Binion once translated tabor, wagons with food, property etc. which followed the army, as army. Braha, a decotion remaining after the production of vodka, was rendered by them as dregs, which could be found in that liquid. Lastly, among Kuniczak’s scarce metonymic renditions we can find samopał, a type of musket, once rendered as muzzle.

3.3.4.10 Modulation The only examples of modulation when used as a single strategy in the Curtin’s part of the corpus include kniahini having been translated as the mother, kniaź (in a utterance directed at Princess Helena) as your father and kniaziowie as the sons. All

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Although, in truth, Curtin used it just once, two times choosing a more general phrase some distance.

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these renderings underline a different role of the characters in question than the SL items. In fact, modulation resembles referential synonymy in those cases.

The remaining three coupled pairs involving modulation as a single strategy are Binion’s and Kuniczak’s uses of followers in place of mołojcy, as well as Kuniczak’s translation of

Chmielnicki’s utterance informing that ‘Jutro mołojcy ruszą’ as

‘Tomorrow we go’. As we can see, a change of perspective is involved in these cases.

3.3.4.11 Calque Several instances of calque have already been mentioned before. 99 Beside these, Curtin has used this strategy to render piechota kwarciana as quarter infantry and Kozacy regestrowi as registered Cossacks. What all these examples have in common is that their meaning in the TL is either vague or altogether obscure for the reader.

A yet another case is represented by Binion’s translation of starostwo as starostship. In fact, it should be considered a ‘mixed calque’ or, according to Haugen’s (1972: 85) classification of loans, a loanblend, as it contains a borrowed as well as a native morpheme. It also proves that calques can also occur at the level of morphemes and not just phrases or words. Still, such calques have rather been analysed by researchers interested precisely in the processes of borrowing (like the above-mentioned Haugen) rather than in translation strategies.

3.3.4.12 Concretisation

The three instances of concretization found in the corpus concern the word Mazurzy, which may mean either inhabitants of Masuria or Masovia (the first group is actually descended from settlers belonging to the second mentioned group). The translators had to choose one of the two senses of the word and so Curtin and Binion rendered Mazurzy as Masovians, whereas Kuniczak reproduced them as Mazurians.

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That is, Binion’s translation of kozak as ‘Cossack’, as well as Curtin’s translation of złota wolność as golden freedom.

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3.3.4.13 Neutralisation

Speaking of neutralisation, only two examples observed in the corpus had to be classified as such; namely, the already mentioned translation of Lach as Pole employed

by Curtin and Binion. It seems a natural an obvious rendering of the SL item, yet it does eradicate the negative connotations of the original. Also, it was not the only possible solution, as Kuniczak customarily used a borrowing, frequently reproducing the item as Lah. 100

3.3.4.14 Definition As it has been mentioned in Section 3.3.2, in which reasons for differentiation between paraphrase and definition were provided, the latter only occurred twice as a single strategy in Kuniczak’s part of the corpus. Ataman buńczuczny was translated by him as Zaporohjan army ataman with a horsetail standard carried over him, while tabor was defined by him as wagons of the gentry that followed the army (beside, of course, having been rendered in many other ways, such as great cavalcade, siege train, wagons or tabor). As we shall see later, this strategy much more often accompanied other strategies, mostly borrowing.

3.3.4.15 Explanation Only two coupled pairs appended with explanations appeared in the analysed texts. Curtin employed it in the following fragment: (10) (…) Hmielnitski looked with gloomy eyes into the bottle of vudka 1 (…).

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For the sake of accuracy, Lah is for the first time introduced by Kuniczak as a translation of the diminutive form Laszek, which is also paraphrased in the same sentence as little Polack. Moreover, the very item Lah was in that sentence additionally accompanied by an interesting explanation that it was a word which ‘carried as much respect as derision’ (Sienkiewicz 1991: 15). The sense of respect carried by the word can of course be a subject of dispute and, if indeed present there, would probably depend on the context. If it could really be found there, though, neutralization would naturally have to be considered as depriving the item of a complex mix of connotations instead of just negative ones.

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1

The author uses sometimes the word vudka and sometimes gorailka. The first is Polish; the

second little Russian. Both mean a liquor distilled generally from rye. When vudka is used it might mean the liquor was from Poland, and when gorailka that it was of Ukraine origin; but here the words are used indifferently (Sienkiewicz 1989b: 139).

One is tempted to conclude that, ironically, the offered explanation appears a bit doubtful and rather arbitrary. 101 The second case of explanation is Binion’s glossing of chambul as a division of Tartar horseman.

3.3.4.16 Explicitation

Explicitation was only used by Binion and Kuniczak. It most often assisted borrowing. For example, Kuniczak sometimes translated kniahini as old Knahina (Binion a couple of times reproduced this lexical item as old princess, combining generalisation and explicitation). He also once translated żupan as ‘zhupan’ undercoat, and made use of explicitation in an interesting way while translating jasyr:

(11) (…) on zaś nie będzie dłużej czekał, bo jasyr by mu wymarł (Sienkiewicz 1989: 115). (…) he would not wait longer, for his captives would die (Sienkiewicz 1898b: 291). (…) his yassyr was dying out in hundreds every day and he wanted to get it to the auction blocks while the captives lasted (Sienkiewicz 1991: 364).

As we can see, the word captives is used in Kuniczak’s rendering an explicitative way to aid the understanding of the borrowed yassyr. One might also argue that a relatively elaborate and literal description of a situation has been employed by Kuniczak, as many others have, to give vent to his storytelling abilities. Yet, the entire fragment may as 101

There was yet another instance of explanation employed by Curtin in the analysed corpus. Even though it did not concern a realia item, it was treated as such and therefore one is tempted to quote it here.

An insult Szlachcic hołota!, used by a Cossack chieftain with reference to a Polish noble who had taken his beloved woman from him, in this context meaning nothing more than rascally noble, was translated

by Curtin as Nakedness the noble!, nakedness appended with a gloss explaining that Hołota (Nakedness) was often given as a nickname to a poor noble.

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well easily be perceived as an attempt to explicitate the impatient Tartar Khan’s intentions. Readers not very familiar with the goings-on of the historical period in which the novel takes place might after all have believed that the reason for his haste was mere pity.

Another instance form the category of explicitation mixed with borrowing is Binion’s translation of kontusz as Kontush, with the slashed sleeves. This brings us on to yet another unconventional solution implemented by Kuniczak, who translated opończa as long, outspread >kontush< coat,

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combining borrowing and explicitation with

functional equivalent.

The combination of borrowing and explicitation was also two times joined by a definition, although it would rather be fair to say that it was explicitation which fulfilled the role of an addition in such sets. One of those cases is the already mentioned buńczuk, which Kuniczak reproduced as horsetail >bunchuk<, the traditional insignia of an eastern warlord borrowed four centuries earlier from Mongol invaders.103 The second one is stanica, translated as walled >stanitza<, one of those lonely outposts that guarded these borders. Explicitation in these combinations takes the form of the adjectives horsetail and walled. This is one of the two prevalent types of explicitation; beside an adjective, it can occur as an ‘ordinary’ synonym of the realia item (as demonstrated by undercoat and captives).

Sometimes these two may combine, as in the translation of berkut as great Berkut eagle. Another instance of an explicitated official equivalent is chan rendered as Tartar khan. Further translation strategies that mingled with explicitation include synonym and adaptation, resulting in the rendering of ataman koszowy as old Chief Ataman and of kolet as open leather jerkins, respectively.

3.3.4.17 Combination

Although previous sections have in principle been devoted to exhibiting instances of single strategy use, several combinations displaying affinity with the demonstrated examples have also been presented there. This subsection will discuss the 102

The symbols used in the cited example stand for italics which Kuniczak used.

This example has already been cited without the explicitating part, as an illustrative example of definition in the section justifying differentiation between definition and paraphrase.

103

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remaining noteworthy combinations which did not find their way into the previous part of this thesis. Incidentally, almost all of them have been employed by Wiesław Kuniczak.

Let us start with combinations involving borrowing, the second most frequently combined strategy (preceded only by previously discussed explicitation). As it has already been stated before, Kuniczak excelled in the use of such solutions. To start with, in his version of the book we learn that one of the characters, dressed in a red kontusz, wore ‘kontush’ – the long, flared satin coat of a Polish noble with the sleeves split open to the shoulders and pinned back behind him like the wings of a splendid bird of prey.

Interestingly, a long definition is additionally accompanied here by a picturesque simile.

Secondly, the translator at one point rendered piernacz as ‘pyernatch’ a safe-conduct medallion that every Cossack and Tartar leader would recognize at once. Here borrowing and explicitation is joined by functional equivalent, as piernacz in the book took the form of a baton and not a medallion. Moreover, what is intriguing about this solution is that it was only employed after piernacz had already been translated by Kuniczak as personal medallion and, later, safe-conduct. This looks almost as if, while translating a realia item which occurs several times in the novel, he cannot resist to eventually use a borrowing. Yet, it must be noted that context has also played a role here, as the two non-borrowed renderings both appeared in a character’s statement, which excluded the possibility of inserting ethnographic explanations there.

Nevertheless, the most impressive example of a combination, the only quadruplet in the corpus and a very good illustration of an aspect of Kuniczak’s work, can be observed in the following fragment: (12) - To harcownik - rzecze pan Skrzetuski. - Zaraz nasi ku nim wyjadą (Sienkiewicz 1989: 142).

“That is a skirmishing-party”, said Skshetuski. “Our men will go out to meet them directly” (Sienkiewicz 1898b: 360).

“That is the artillery”, said Skshetuski. “Soon our men will go to meet them” (Sienkiewcz 1898a: 380).

“Skirmishers,” Pan Yan said. “What we call ‘hartzovnitzy.’ They’re coming out for a bit of single combat before the main battle. Our own people will go out to

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meet them in a moment.”

“Ah, skirmishers …”

“An ancient custom,” Pan Yan explained. “Comes to us from the East. . . Persia and the Mogul empire, and so on. . . where armies used to pick champions to decide the issue. And to read the omens for the battle to come” (Sienkiewicz 1991: 464).

As we can see, Kuniczak combined borrowing, synonym and an ethnographic definition with transposition (by changing the number from singular to plural).

The remaining combinations are far less effective than this one, yet also worthy of consideration. They include Binion’s mix of calque and transposition in the rendering of czerń (Ukrainian peasant mob) as ‘blacks’ (or simply blacks), as well as Kuniczak’s amalgamation of official equivalent and paraphrase (or even two paraphrases) in the translation of hetman as royal general – or ‘Hetman’ as Crown commanders were known in those days. The last translator also co-used transposition and modulation whilst reproducing wójt as local elders. The final example to be considered in this subsection is the translation of ulęgałka, which referres to a small fruit from a wild pear tree, edible only after some time had passes since its picking from the tree. Other translators omitted the item, whereas Kuniczak rendered it in the below-cited way:

(13)

Dlatego też i do bitwy skorszy jestem od dzisiejszych młodzików piecuchów, co to niecułki ulęgałek nie zje, żeby się zaraz za żywot nie trzymał (Sienkiewicz 1989: 268).

That’s also why I’m fonder of a good fight than some of these young snot- noses we’ve got in the army nowadays who’ll grab their guts and groan the moment they’ve eaten something a little bit greasy (Sienkiewicz 1991: 982).

The employed solution has been classified as a combination of paraphrase and functional equivalent.

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3.3.5 Translation Errors Around 2 % of all coupled pairs contained a translation error, with 4 instances of it in Curtin’s translation, 5 in Binion’s and 2 in Kuniczak’s. Yet, in the predominant number of cases it was still possible to ascertain what strategy has been used by a translator and therefore these cases were also included in the statistical results. Of course, the cited amount is in fact very low, and this subsection is by no means meant to stigmatize the errors. It will simply attempt to present some instances when the translators happened to trip over a realia item and to speculate about the reasons and effects of some of those cases.

Starting with Curtin, he rendered teorbanista as flute-player. Knowing that teorban was a type of lute, it is not hard to realize how the translated item should look like. It is likewise easy to hypothesise why it contains an unneeded letter, considering the way in which Curtin’s translation was produced; the word must simply have been misheard by Ms Curtin, his assistant. Naturally, such a mistake is of no great consequence to the depicted situation (a peasant wedding).

This is how we might also classify Binion’s translation of karwasz, an iron sleeve with horns serving as an armour element meant for protection as well as fighting, as carbine. In the described context of a battle the exact type of weapon did not matter.

Again, it is also easy to explain the error since, admittedly, karwasz does sound like an item belonging to the semantic field of firearms.

The same category covers the mistake from the fragment below:

(14) My z weselem, z korowajem... (Sienkiewicz 1989: 179).

We have come with a wedding and with a dance (Sienkiewicz 1898b: 450).

We were just going to the wedding feast with the dancers (Sienkiewicz 1898a: 476).

Korowaj is, in fact, a traditional Ukrainian wedding cake. Yet, again, it closely resembles korowód, whose one meaning is musical procession, which might be one of the explanations why the translators associated the item with dancing. This is also another mistake which does not breach the picture of the situation presented in the book.

Curiously, the next demonstrated example might also partially be included in that group. The discussion concerns rakarz, which literally denoted a person catching 90

homeless dogs, and which could also be used as an insult, meaning torturer or butcher, which resulted from the way in which those people treated the dogs they caught. It is employed in this second sense in the book, when a character is addressed by his companion after he had killed all inhabitants of a noble house, in the example cited below: (15) Szukaj ty sobie kompanii między rakarzami, bo widzę, że lubisz dusić, ale ja nie będę z tobą po nocach dworów szlacheckich napadał (Sienkiewicz 1989: 88).

You may seek companions for yourself among crawfish-dealers, for I see that you like to kill people, but I will not fall upon noble houses with you (Sienkiewicz 1898b: 217).

Look for your company among the crabfishers, for I see you like to kill; but it is not to my fancy to attack the houses of the nobility at night with you as my companion.

(Sienkiewicz 1898a: 232).

Look for company among your own cut-throat kind because murdering young boys and strangling old women just isn’t my trade (Sienkiewicz 1991: 269).

Evidently, Curtin and Binion translated the item, in their belief, literally. However, the impact of their mistake will by no means always be uniform and obvious. In contrast, it can in this case been considered from various dimensions and, as in most cases, will also depend largely on the reader’s degree of expertise concerning the subject matter in question. Perhaps over a century ago this would have been different, but one is tempted to conclude that, speaking of present-day Polish readers for a start, rakarz makes no more sense to them than crawfisher to their foreign counterparts. Being one of these readers myself, I believe it will not be out of place to share my own way of reception of this fragment here and, to be more precise, admit, that I have made the above conclusion on the basis of my own experience. In truth, I have only learned about the exact meaning of the discussed term when I checked it for the purpose of this thesis. On the first reading of the above text it was not completely clear to me. While I did not necessarily expect that it had something to do with crawfish, I just assumed it was the name of some shady murderous profession whose exact kind I did not need to know, since, as far as I was concerned, it conveyed the appropriate connotations anyway.

Presuming that it was also the case for other readers, we might thus risk a statement that, although Curtin’s and Binion’s translations failed to convey the actual meaning of 91

the expression, unlike Kuniczak (who, too, did not render its exact denotation but chose a general expression), they may in fact have managed to retain the ‘equivalent effect’ as far as present-day Polish- and English-language inexpert readers are concerned.

Of course, when it comes to Curtin’s rendering, he went a bit too far in explicitating a wrongly understood word, which makes his solution more prone to causing surprise and confusion than Binion’s. Yet, while crabfishers quite easily convey the sense of a shadowy occupation, crawfish-dealers also stand a solid chance of being considered the name of a weird old Polish criminal or even professional group with a predilection for gore.

Next Curtin’s error, present in the following fragment, is a little more serious: (16) (…) wszystkie oczy zwracały się (…) na wieże kościołów i na kopuły cerkwi (…)

(Sienkiewicz 1989: 114). (…) all turned their eyes (…) on the towers of the Polish churches, on the domes of the Russian (…) (Sienkiewicz 1898b: 288).

Of course, it is not hard for a layman to call an Orthodox church a Russian one, as Russia is the country in which these most often appear. Similarly, Ruś (the historical name of the area where the action of the novel takes place), nowadays translated as Ruthenia, can be easily mistaken with Russia. Admittedly, for an uninformed reader such a mistake will be of about the same consequence as the previously mentioned ones. Yet, for someone a bit better versed in the ethnography of this part of Europe, it will no doubt introduce a note of discord into the text. What is surprising is that Curtin did know a lot about this area, especially about its history, which he demonstrates in a lengthy foreword to With Fire and Sword. However, his knowledge was not necessarily consistent or complete, and he was definitely not very sensitive towards ethnographical matters, as in the said foreword he consequently and consciously uses Russia with reference to both the above-mentioned entities.104 One factor which might be of significance here is the translator’s

104

This even met with a reaction from Sienkiewicz, who objected to Curtin’s way of presenting the reality in the ‘mildest manner possible’ (Krzyżanowski 1991: 23), by pointing out that ‘[o]ne should have, perhaps, underscored the difference between the Ruthenians and the Russians’ and reminding that ‘Russians were called Muscovites in those days and had their own country, while the Ruthenians were a part of the Polish Commonwealth’ (Krzyżanowski 1991: 23).

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Russophilism, which did not really make him especially sensitive to the viewpoints of less influential Slavic nations. 105 In fact, Binion did not translate the item truthfully either, as he used functional equivalent by replacing cerkiew with the cathedral. Kuniczak omitted it altogether. To be fair to the translators, however, the phrase ‘Orthodox churches’ would not probably have blended in with the rest of the sentence so well.

The remaining blunders are again of a lesser caliber. One of them – namely, Binion’s singular translation of hetman wielki as Hetman W. – may, of course, raise a reader’s eyebrow (at no other point in the book a person’s initials are used, except maybe in letters). Still, his rendering of mięsopust as Lent, is yet another example which falls into the category of mistakes which most probably have not proved significant in the readers’ reception of the text. Naturally, we must remember that this reception, as usual, depended on their background knowledge. In fact, mięsopust traditionally referred to carnival, (that is a period between Christmas and Lent), especially its last three days, traditionally devoted to revelry and feasting.

106

When presented in the translation of a

sentence A waść to patrzysz jakby na teatrum w mięsopust! („And you are looking at it just as if it was a theatre in Lent”), the theatre in question is meant as an entertainment.

Yet, there will be no significant clash in the TL situation as long as the reader manages to associate Lent with passion plays, also a tradition of Catholic countries. Moreover, there is no tremendous conflict with the writer intentions. The above-cited utterance was actually directed by a cowardly knight at his friend who observed an ongoing battle with relish. Although Lent instead of mięsopust excludes the possibility of conveying the relish, it still manages to convey the observer’s indifference towards the beheld dangerous events, which so impressed the fearful noble.

Lastly, two Kuniczak’s mistakes might be mentioned for a change. First, he translated czaban, in earlier times a herdsman of sheep and oxen, as >tschaban< horseherder. Next, he rendered towarzysze pancerni, medium cavalrymen in the sixteenth and seventeenth-century Poland, named for their armor and forming the second most important cavalry units in the Polish army after the hussars, as soldiers who served in the elite regiments of heavy cavalry, the armored >Husaria< who charged into battle with long, curved frames of eagle wings fastened to their shoulders.

105

A very telling fact is that Curtin entitled his translation With Fire and Sword. An Historical Novel of Poland and Russia.

106 Curtin translated the item as carnival time, and Kuniczak as feast day.

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These errors smoothly join the group of those practically undiscoverable for the uninformed reader.

Naturally, it is very easy to point out translators’ lapses having instant access to plentiful sources of online information. Yet, judging from the examples presented above, it appears that the most frequent mistakes were those regarding such realia items, about which translators seem to have been sure that they knew what they meant.

Therefore, such items did not alarm them and did not spur them to consult appropriate sources. What redeems them to some extent is that fact that, as it has been stated before, the readers’ reception of these items in most cases was probably the same; the majority of them could not have spotted the mistake.

3.3.6. Factors Influencing the Translation of Realia – Summary

Let us now summarize the factors which turned out to have influenced the translation of realia in the analysed texts. To start with, a significant one among them proved to be the importance of realia in the context. Not surprisingly, it was especially visible in case of realia items posing problems for the translators. Quite simply, when items were classified as not very important or plain needless for the course of action, they were omitted, whereas if they played a part in it, their meaning had to be conveyed somehow even if an item itself has been dropped. The position of realia items in the context also decided about the inclusion of additional explanations in Kuniczak’s translation; he took care not to add them in dialogues. Also, the presence of a realia item in several places in a fragment allowed for the eventual use of very generalized forms, which is, after all, common practice in literary texts. Needless to say, the nature of the realia also influenced their translation in an obvious way. One of the most evident examples here might be their belonging to certain semantic fields which aided the translators’ use of appropriate generalized, generic words or ‘neutral’ synonyms. When it comes to the characteristics of realia as lexical units in the SL and the TL system, as well as the influence of the peculiarities of those systems themselves, this subject has not been gone into, leaving the field open for further research. What might be said to

94

belong to this sphere were only occasional instances of SL items which in the TL were replaced with those which fitted the appropriate collocation.

The remaining two factors enlisted in the theoretical part of this thesis, the ones which Florin (1993: 127) labeled as closely related, are the character of the text and the expected reader. The second mentioned one was, in turn, declared by Newmark (1988: 102) to be the single most important of all the factors. In fact, the outcome of the analysis pertaining to these two happens to be quite interesting. For one, it has turned out that the two factors do not really have to be so closely affiliated at all. The text in the three analysed translations did not, after all, differ, yet the translators evidently envisaged their readers in a different way. An even more appropriate conclusion would be that it was not so much the objective character of the text that mattered in their case, but rather the way in which they perceived it and identified its functions. One is tempted to speculate that Curtin and Binion saw the novel as a sweeping historical tale whose course need not be interrupted by any additional explanations nor altered in any way. In contrast, Kuniczak evidently treated it as an adventure story which should be attractive and easily understandable for the readers who, as he assumed, had very little knowledge of the place and time the book is concerned with. Of the three translators’ output, his work alone can be said to fit Florin’s (1993: 126) maxim about ‘ensuring minimum loss combined with maximum communication’. Naturally, the numerous borrowings he inserted, not always being assisted with an explanation, did not necessarily at all times help to advance that goal. Yet, another important role they fulfilled was that of exotic elements which are most desirable in adventure stories. One more factor that comes into play here is Kuniczak’s ‘sensitivity’ towards cultural distinctiveness of the novel and of the Polish cultural heritage, which he apparently felt obliged to properly represent no matter if it was entirely to the fancy of his American readers or not. It would probably not be a great exaggeration if one even called it a manifestation of patriotism.

Of course, considering influences over translators’ work, we cannot overlook the general theoretical and practical tendencies and inclinations particular to this profession at a given period of time. When Curtin and Binion lived and worked, at the edge of the 19th century, faithfulness and accuracy were the guidelines for translation practice.

Conversely, the 1990s – Kuniczak’s time – are the period when the skopos theory and culturally-oriented approaches had already for a long time been occupying that place.

Still, current trends cannot explain all translators’ decisions, as the above-discussed discussion concerning Kuniczak’s work has shown. Yet another, very telling example is 95

the difference between Curtin’s and Binion’s translation. The first one was rather insensitive to ethnographical diversity, yet what characterized him was a great reverence for his authors’ – in this case, Sienkiewicz’s – style of writing, which resulted in scrupulous adherence to each written word and thus, numerous calques. Binion did not exhibit such tendencies, although he, too, sometimes used unexplained borrowings, which, though sporadically, could even seem much weirder and more obscure than that of his colleague. The last case in point, this time more general-reaching, is Kuniczak’s developed storytelling ability linked to his profession of a writer, which took over in his translation work. This resulted in the turning of the translation of Sienkiewicz’s novel into an adaptation, a literary work in its own right, which, though perfectly embodying Jakobson’s (1959: 118) maxim of ‘creative transposition’ and still consistent with the skopos theory, seriously exceeds modern translation standards. Summing up, it all goes to prove that the translation process, and consequently also the translation of realia, may often, among other things, also depend on a translator’s individuality – his or her abilities, background knowledge, ambitions, convictions. This, as it has been demonstrated, has both advantages and disadvantages. Many would probably claim that translators should strive to limit the influence of the last two factors on their work. Yet, there is one determinant which could not ever be avoided – namely, the way in which they interpret their role as a translator.

3.3.7 Global Strategies in the Analysed Texts – Summary

It has already been ascertained that the global strategy of domestication has distinctly prevailed with respect to the translation of realia items in the analysed corpus.

What still demands a comment, though, is the fact that, interestingly, tendencies particular to realia translation do not seem to be entirely consistent with the general tendencies characteristic of the work of the translators, especially Curtin and Kuniczak.

This also serves as a proof that that the dichotomy of foreignisation and domestication cannot be considered the same as the dichotomy of literal and free translation. For one, Curtin’s translation has been shown to be overall very source-text oriented and literal.

In contrast, Kuniczak’s translation has been openly hailed as an adaptation by critics, 96

such as Leśniewska (2000), who pointed out the numerous changes he had introduced to the text, aimed at making his translation maximally fluent and entertaining for the American reader. Yet, at the same time, as if to compensate the readers for that, he preserved lots of realia items in the target text in the form of borrowings, which, though explained, often quite extensively, upon their first occurrence, do anything but enhance fluency. Compared to him, Curtin resorts to borrowing relatively rarely and much more often chooses generalized espressions and synonyms which sound natural in the context and do not obstruct the fluent ‘flow’ of the story. Therefore his translation method in this respect certainly cannot be called foreignising. It all proves that foreignisation and domestication operate at various levels and can very easily merge in one translation, even of the same item, as numerous combinations of strategies have shown. This excludes the possibility of a clear-cut, effortless classification.

It needs to be stated at this point that the criticism of solutions employed by Curtin, Binion or Kuniczak which appeared several times throughout this thesis was in no way meant to undermine their work as a whole. Of course, neither of them has produced a translation which could be called perfect. Yet it is undeniable that, translating such a voluminous work as With Fire and Sword (or adapting it, for that matter), each of them has accomplished quite a feat. Therefore, each of them deserves a great amount of respect for it. The feat itself is unquestionable, and its effects, especially in case of Curtin and Kuniczak, are not to be disregarded as well. For one, we have to remember that, however flawed, Curtin’s translation made Sienkiewicz’s novel immensely popular in the United States, even if that popularity did not last particularly long. Kuniczak, in turn, enabled thousands of new readers to discover the Polish writer’s story, even if in this case it is to a large extent Kuniczak’s story as well.

Curiously, Binion’s version, situated in between those two controversial opposites and the most ‘correct’ one of the three, seems to have met with least reception. The reasons for this might be a subject of an interesting further research, as is the case with countless other issues linked to the translation of With Fire and Sword, including realia translation.

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3.3.8 Conclusions

As the above analysis has shown, the three translators have made use of a multitude of solutions to render the realia items found in the pages of With Fire and Sword. In fact, it was far from easy to categorize all the employed strategies. Still, the most popular ones among these were clearly proved to belong to the category of generalisation and borrowing, followed by synonym, paraphrase, official equivalent, omission and adaptation. Next in line were modulation, metonymic translation, calque, concretization, definition and neutralization, classified as strategies employed rarely or very rarely.

Importantly, the translators displayed considerable flexibility and in search of an optimal effect not infrequently combined various strategies with one another.

Wiesław Kuniczak was the one who excelled in this discipline. An American of a Polish origin, he was also the translator who could be called the most ‘sensitive’ one with regard to realia items in comparison with his American colleagues, as he attempted to retain these items through borrowing much more often than Curtin and Binion did. Yet he often took care to merge them with other strategies to make their meaning clear to the reader, proving that resorting to borrowing does not have to be equaled with ‘not translating’. This differentiates him from the two remaining translators, who only sporadically added explanations to borrowed items. Of them, the least ‘sensitive’ towards realia and cultural distinctiveness would have to be Curtin, who also used calque quite frequently, also displaying selective and somewhat biased knowledge of the novel’s background. It follows from the above account that the greatest amount of foreignized realia elements could be found in Kuniczak’s translation, the second place being occupied by Curtin. Nevertheless, domestication has in general decidedly prevailed with respect to these items.

Additionally, the conducted analysis confirmed the influence of such factors as importance of realia in the context or nature of realia on the way in which the said realia are translated. Yet, it also allowed to conclude that the objective character of the text does not have to be quite as significant in the decision process as the way in which the translators perceives this text and his or her role in translating it. This, in turn, is of course influenced by the expected reader, but also the current translation ‘trends’ as well as by the translator’s own inclinations.

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CONCLUSIONS

The present thesis has concerned itself with the analysis of translation of realia in With Fire and Sword, first presenting it in a wider context of theoretical approaches to the problem of cultural differences in translation. Its practical chapter is based on the presentation of instances of application of various translation strategies in realia translation as well as a certain amount of speculation about the factors which may have influenced this application and the effects it may have on the readers.

The two leading strategies in the treatment of realia proved to be the contrasting techniques of generalisation and borrowing, generalisation being by and far the most popular one. Still, all translators used a wide array of translation strategies, from synonym and paraphrase, through metonymy and modulation, to calque, concretization or neutralization, often combining them with one another. Overall, though, the domesticating strategies decidedly prevailed over the foreignising ones in case of all three translators.

This dominance of domesticating strategies in the translation of realia is in accord with common sense, which above all demands that a story be understandable.

Yet, it might also be considered to confirm the popular theory about domestication being the established strategy in case of the translation from ‘weaker’ cultures into the ‘stronger’ ones (in this case the Anglo-Saxon, or, more precisely, American culture).

The case of Kuniczak, who used the foreignising strategies much more frequently than his colleagues, could of course be regarded as an attempt to breach this convention. It might even be interpreted as a sign that the attitudes and tendencies in this respect are beginning to change, with ethnic diversity and cultural differences receiving much more attention than in earlier days.

Yet, we must remember than the translator’s fondness for foreignising is a direct result of him partly being the representative of the ‘weaker’ Polish culture, to the peculiarities of which he had been thus much more ‘sensitive’ than Curtin and Binion.

Moreover, his general aim to reproduce the ‘spirit’ of the original in the form easily understandable for modern American readers, combined with his writer’s ambitions, at the same time make the work excessively ‘fluent’, to the point where it is not easily acceptable even in the light of modern translation trends. This also proves how difficult the classification of translations can sometimes be. The analysed texts might also be 99

considered a proof of the trickiness of the issue of ‘faithfulness’ in literary translation, where neither too strict nor too loose confinement to the original is of merit. Last but not least, the conducted analysis has shown that the translator’s convictions concerning his role and the envisaged readers, combined his or her general ambitions and ‘sensitivity’ to cultural differences can bear upon the translation of the realia items as well as of the entire text no less significantly than this text’s and the realia items’ objective properties or the current tendencies.

Of course, much more interesting conclusions would no doubt be drawn as a result of further investigation of the subject of the translation of With Fire and Sword.

The very field of realia translation in the novel also leaves a lot of room for further research. In the present dissertation it has not been, admittedly, examined in too great a depth, as, except for Florin’s (1993) statements, no specific theories regarding realia translation have been employed. Nevertheless, even this scant realia analysis has, hopefully, managed to show that the translators have in fact, despite occasional blunders, tackled them reasonably well. In the prevailing number of discussed instances their background knowledge proved quite sufficient for the demands of the narration.

Moreover, it can be easily observed that, by use of all kinds of single and combined, foreignising and domesticating strategies they have managed to produce texts which make Sienkiewicz’s story for the most part understandable for the readers. The occasional obscurities which the text contains of course often ask for patience on the part of the reader. Still, at the same time, they bring back to the tale the element of otherness and even exoticity, lost in the course of the ‘correct’ translation which, in order to establish communication, in most cases has to deprive the realia items of their culturally-specific flavour. Of course, Florin’s (1993: 126) maxim about ‘ensuring minimum loss combined with maximum communication’ is very hard to implement while translating texts such as With Fire and Sword. Yet, the conducted analysis goes to show that the translators of such texts are in fact in a position to secure a sufficient amount of communication while preventing too extensive a loss.

All in all, the work of Curtin, Binion and Kuniczak proves that cultural gaps are there to be bridged and even though there still be a large amount of empty place left in the gap separating two cultures, what matters is the tiny bridge which allows the readers from one country follow the story created by the writer from another, no matter how far- away one. Speaking in less elevated terms, they have proven that realia translation, though complicated and challenging, can certainly not be considered impossible. As a 100

result, it should not be regarded as an obstacle to introducing authors to new, foreign audiences.

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APPENDIX 1 Compiled Results for Local Strategy Use by Curtin, Binion and Kuniczak

Table A1.1 Compiled results for local strategy use by Curtin, Binion and Kuniczak.

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APPENDIX 2 Realia Items Found in the Corpus, Their Meanings and Translations Tab.A2.1 Realia items found in the corpus, their meanings and translations.

Sienkiewicz alkierz

ataman

ataman koszowy

ataman buńczuczny

MEANING in the manors of nobles, a little corner room often situated in a tower, serving as a guestroom, a bedroom or a wardrobe; in country buildings, a little side room situated behind a bigger one (Gloger 1900-1903) Cossack military commander (Słownik języka polskiego XVII i 1. połowy XVIII wieku, henceforth SXVII: s.v. ataman)

commander of a Cossack military camp (kosz) in Zaporizhian Sich (Gloger 19001903)

an ataman whose military power was symbolized by being entitled to having a bunchuk, i.e. a piece of horse or yak tail hair attached to the top of a pole

Curtin side-room

Strat.

(Generalis ation, henceforth Gen)

Binion parlor

Strat.

(Adapt ation, hencefo rth Ad)

Kuniczak -

Strat.

-

ataman

(Official equivalent, henceforth Oe)

ataman

(Oe)

ataman

(Oe)

koshevoi

(Borrowin g, henceforth Bor)

ataman

(Oe)

colonel

(Gen)

Koshov ataman

(Bor+ Oe)

old Chief Ataman

Koshov

(Bor)

(Synon ym, hencefo rth Syn +Expli citation , hencefo rth Explicit )

Ataman

(Oe)

old man

(Modul ation, hencefo rth Mod)

“I’m a Zaporohja n Army ataman (…), with a horsetail

(Definit ion, hencefo rth Def)

bunchuk ataman

(Bor/Oe+O e)

bunchuk ataman

(Bor/O e+Oe)

103

bajdak

bandolet

decorated with a trident, a ball or a crescent 107carried 108 near him (see buńczuk) an open, large and fast Cossack boat (SXVII: s.v. bajdak)

-

(Omission, henceforth Om)

-

(Om)

-

(Om)

pistol

(Gen)

-

(Om)

pistol

(Gen)

‘The others rushed on me.’

(Om)/(Mo d)

‘They seized their daggers’.

-

-

compensation for a battery or an assault; damages (SXVII: s.v. basarunek) mobile siege tower (SXVII: s.v. beluarda)

fine

(Gen)

indemnity

(Functi onal equival ent, hencefo rth Fe) (Syn)

compensati on

(Syn)

machine

(Gen)

war machine

mobile siege tower

(Par)

tower

(Gen)

Ukrainian and Russian name of the 109 Golden Eagle, one of the largest birds of prey, present in Eurasia, North America and 110 parts of Africa a derogatory/ facetious term used

by Polish nobles to talk of Lithuanians, coming from boćwina, meaning beet as well as a soup made from its leaves and roots, popular in Lithuania and known as cold

great eagle

(Par)

great hawk

(Paraph rase, hencefo rth Par) (Fe)

great Berkut eagle

(Oe+E xplict)

Botvinians

(Bor)

Beet-soup eaters

(Par)

-

-

a type of small arms, a short-barreled rifle used by the cavalry (SXVII: s.v.:bandolet)

‘Ci do bandoletów! ’

basarunek

beluarda

berkut

boćwinkowie

standard carried over me”

107

Pidkovy and Shust (1993) as quoted by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunchuk. http://portalwiedzy.onet.pl/64518,,,,bunczuk,haslo.html 109 http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkut. In most cases I have used various dictionaries or other respectable sources (such as Gloger’s [1900-1903] Encyklopedia staropolska [Encyclopedia of Old Poland]) as reference works in ascertaining the meaning of the analysed realia items. Yet, in 21 cases altogether I have used the meaning provided by the somewhat less respected (and in some cases even notorious) Wikipedia. Those were the cases when other sources either did not explain a given lexical item or explained it too briefly, while a corresponding Wikipedia illustrated a lexical item’s meaning more extensively, which was found to be of merit for the conducted analysis. Also, the time constraints did not allow for the attempts to search for more specialized reference works which would help determine the meaning of particular realia items. Added to that, an absolute correctness of the provided meanings was not considered crucial, as this thesis is predominantly concerned with translation and not ethnography.

Besides, the Wikipedia entries in question appeared trustworthy and there was nothing to suggest they were incorrect.

110 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Eagle 108

104

bojar

braha

buława

buńczuk

burka

burzany

borsch (Gloger 1901-1903) a Russian, Ukrainian or Lithuanian nobleman (SXVII: s.v. bojar)

a decotion remaining after the production of vodka (Słownik języka polskiego PWN, henceforth SJPP: s.v. braha) a short mace ending with an ornamented knob, a symbol of the military power of the hetman; a more casual version of it was also used as a weapon

a piece of horse or yak tail hair attached to the top of a pole and decorated with a trident, a ball or a crescent; a symbol of power of Mongolian and C rimean khans, Turkish su ltans and his ministers, and then Polish hetmans and Ukrainian 111 atamans (see ataman buńczuczny) an outer garment originally worn by the Turks and Tartars, made from a thick material and protecting from the cold and the rain (Gloger 1900-1903; SXVII: s.v. burka) high, lush thickets consisting of weeds, thistles and budrock, once common in the Ukrainian steppes

boyar

(Oe)

Boyar

(Oe)

gentleman

(Gen)

dregs

(Metonymi c translation, henceforth Met)

dregs

(Met)

raw spirits

(Gen)

staff

(Gen)

truncheon

(Gen)

(Bor+P ar)

baton

(Ad)

baton

(Ad)

bulava - a miniature mace short, bonehandled mace (-> Dziedziała )

(Par)

iron mace (-> Fedor Visnyak)

(Par)

bulava horsetail bunchuk, the traditional insignia of an eastern warlord borrowed four centuries earlier from Mongol invaders traveling robe

(Bor) (Oe+E xplicit+ Def)

bunczuk

(Oe)

bunczuk

(Oe)

burka

(Bor)

cloak

(Gen)

steppe grass

(Gen)

grass of the plains

(Gen)

-

reeds

(Fe) meadows

(Fe)

the undergrow

112

111

112

(Par)

(Fe)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunchuk http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burzan

105

buzdygan

cerkiew

a short mace ending with a metal knob; first a type of weapon and then a sign of power of military commanders (SXVII: s.v. buzdygan) a church of the Orthodox faith

‘(…) wszystkie oczy zwracały się (…) na wieże kościołów i kopuły cerkwi’

-

(Om)

-

(Om)

th -

(Om)

church

(Gen)

church

(Gen)

church

(Gen)

‘ all turned their eyes (…) on the towers of the Polish churches, on the domes of the Russian’

(Par)(Error , henceforth Err)

‘all eyes were turned upon (the city), on the towers of its churches, on the cupola of the cathedral’

(Ad)

‘as their saddened eyes turned (…) to the spires’

(Om)

the Tartar Khan

(Oe+E xplicit)

the Khan homestead

(Oe) (Syn)

chan

Tartar sovereign

the Khan

(Oe)

church the Khan

(Oe)

chutor / futor

a secluded, small homestead /farm in the Russian or 113 Ukrainian steppe

farm

(Syn)

farm

(Syn)

‘took some land from you’

(Gen)

(Ad)

‘stole a woman from you’

(Fe)

barber

(Fe)

‘robbed you of your countryseat’ doctor

(Gen)

-

-

herdsman

(Gen)

herder

(Gen)

tchaban horseherder

(Bor+E xplicit) (Err)

chambul

(Bor)

chambul *

tschambul

(Bor)

Tartars

(Met)

* Chambul - a division of Tartar horseman

(Bor+E xplanat ion, hencefo rth Expl)

‘futor ci zabrał’

cyrulik

czaban

czambuł

113 114

a common medical practitioner, providing simple medical treatments and also offering the services of a barber (Gloger 1900-1903) formerly a herdsman of sheep and oxen in Romania. Moldova and Hungary as well as parts of the Ukraine, the Caucasus and the Middle East (SJPP: 114 s.v. czaban); a unit of Tartars (SXVII: s.v. czambuł)

http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chutor http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czaban

106

Chambul

czerń

a17th century term for Ruthenian peasantry inhabiting the Transdnieper Country (eastern provinces of the Commonwealth) who were not Cossacks; it was for instance used with reference to peasants taking part in Chmielnicki’s 115 rebellion

the mob

(Syn)

the crowd

(Gen)

the entire people blacks

‘blacks’ esauł

Cossack officer; among Zaporozhian Cossacks, a deputy of the chief ataman (ataman koszowy) (SJPP: s.v. esauł) a mixture of daring and ingenuity; a feature highly valued in the 17th century Commonwealth

(Bor) (Par+G en) (Calcue , hencefo rth Calc+T ranspos ition, hencefo rth Trans) (Calc+ Trans) (Par)

‘all those great nameless masses of people without land or hope that your kind calls the tchernya’

(Bor+D ef)

tchernya

(Bor)

esaul

(Bor)

essaul

(Bor)

Cossack sergeant

‘takiej fantazji kawalera’

‘a man of such daring’

(Syn)

‘a cavalier of your character‘

(Gen)

‘a real man’

(Om; Gen)

‘nabrał fantazji’

‘grew daring’

(Syn)

-

(Om)

‘(the elixir) added fire to the noble’s wits’

(Syn)

‘ladies in waiting’

(Syn)

‘young ladies of the court’

(Syn)

‘young women of her household’

(Met)

‘princess with her ladies’

(Syn) ‘Princess Grizelda and her

(Met)

fantazja

fraucymer

‘panny z fraucymeru’ ‘księżna z fraucymere m’

115

young women of noble descent acting as ladies-in-waiting to a queen, princess or powerful noble lady (Gloger 1901903; SXVII: s.v. fraucymer)

Jakowenko (2000) as quoted by http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czerń(ruskie_chłopstwo).

107

giezło

a loose linen gown worn by men, women and children since Middle Ages until 18th century (KubalskaSzulkiewicz 2003: 146)

‘blady był jak giezło’ gorzałka

hajdawery

handżar handżary harce

harcownik ‘- To harcownik rzecze Pan Skrzetuski. Zaraz nasi ku nim wyjadą’.

116

vodka (SXVII: s.v. gorzałka) (see vodka)

wide-legged trousers, an element of traditional Ukrainian national costume and Cossack military 116 uniform a crooked Turkish dagger (Słownik wyrazów obcych I zwrotów obcojęzycznych, henceforth SWO: s.v. handżar) traditional single duels before a battle; a common custom in 16th century Poland (Gloger 1900-1903) a soldier participating in a single duel before a battle

gown

(Gen)

nightrobe

(Fe)

‘was pale as a sheet’

(Fe)

‘was as white as a sheet’

(Fe)

gorailka

(Bor)

gorzalka

spirits

(Gen)

brandy

household’ linen shift

(Par)

(Fe)

(Bor)

‘as white as a windingsheet’ liquor

(Ad)

raw spirits

(Par)

spirits

(Gen)

gojhalka

(Bor)

(Gen)

trousers

(Gen)

trousers

(Gen)

breeches

(Fe)/(A d)

daggers

(Gen)

arms

(Gen)

-

-

skirmish

(Gen)

earnage

? (carnag e? unclass ified)

-

-

“That is a skirmishingparty”, said Skshetuski.

“Our men will go out to them directly.”

(Par+Met)

“That is the artillery”, Said Skshetuski.

“Soon our men will go to meet them.”

(Fe) (Err)

“Skirmishe rs”, Pan Yan said.

“What we call ‘hartzovnit zy’.

They’re coming out for a bit of single combat before the main battle. Our own

(Trans +Syn+ Bor+D ef)

http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szarawary

108

hetman

hetman wielki

1.commander -inchief of the army of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth 2.commander-inchief of the Cossack army (SJPP: s.v. hetman)

the full title of a commader-in-chief of the army of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth; there were two such commanders: Grand Hetman of the Crown and Grand Hetman of Lithuania

hetman

Grand Hetman

(Oe)

(Oe)

hetman

(Oe)

people will go out to meet them in a moment.”

“Ah, skirmisher s…”

“An ancient custom,” Pan Yan explained.

“Comes to us from the East…

Persia and the Mogul empire, and so on… where armies used to pick champions to decide the issue.

And to read the omens for the battle to come.” royal general or ‘Hetman’ as Crown commande rs were known in those days

(Oe+Pa r)

Hetman

(Gen)

man

(Gen)

Hetman W.

(Err)

Hetman

(Gen)

(Syn)

Grand Hetman

(Oe)

chief hetman

(Syn) Chief Hetman

117

117

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hetmans_of_the_Polish%E2%80%93Lithuanian_Commonwealth

109

hulajhorodyny

„(…) kilkadziesiąt straszliwych machin, podobnych do wież, które toczyły się z wolna ku okopowi. Po bokach ich wznosiły się na kształt potwornych skrzydeł mosty (…) a szczyty dymiły, świeciły i huczały wystrzałami lekkich działek, rusznic i samopałów” (Sienkiewicz 1989: 270)

“To hulaj horodyny!”

“Those are the ‘travelling towers.”

(Literal translation, henceforth Lit)/(Par)

“Those are Tartar moving towers”.

(Par)/( Lit+Ex plicit)( Err)

“That’s what the Cossacks call ‘hulayhorodyny’. ”

(Bor)

hulaj-grody (=hulajhorodyny)

moving towers

(Lit)/(Par)

towers of the Cossacks

(Par)

‘hulay horodyny’

(Bor)

marching towers hussars

(Lit)/(Par)

infernal machines hussars

(Par)

towers

(Gen)

(Oe+Tr ans)

husaria

(Bor)

hussars

(Oe)

hussars

(Oe)

husaria

(Bor+T rans)

‘serving as jannisaries’

(Oe+Trans )

‘serving under the jannisaries ’

(Oe+Tr ans)

-

-

-

(Om)

slavery

(Gen)

Tartar slavery

(Par)

captives

(Concretis ation,

prisoners

(Conc)

slave train

(Par)

husaria

husarze janczar

from the 2nd half of the 16th century, heavy cavalry characterised by having wings attached to their armor (SJPP: s.v. husaria) soldiers belonging to the husaria

(Oe+Trans )

a soldier of the regular Turkish infantry, first recruited from captive Christian boys and then from native Turks (SJPP: s.v. janczar)

janczary ‘w janczarach nie służą’

jasyr

1.slavery as a result of being captured by the Turks or Tartars 2.people captured by Turks or Tartars (SJPP: s.v. jasyr)

110

henceforth Conc) ‘oddawał w jasyr’

‘on zaś nie będzie dłużej czekał, bo jasyr by mu wymarł’

kaganek

karwasz

kniahini

kniaź

a small lamp in the shape of a bowl, with a spout and a handle (SJPP: s.v. kaganek); filled with 118 oil an armour element an iron ‘sleeve’ with horns protecting the hand and wrist and also serving as a weapon (Gloger 1900-1903) wife of a Ruthenian prince (kniaź)

‘gave into captivity’

(Gen)

‘brought under the yoke of the Heathen’

(Par)

‘sold to the Tartar slavers’

(Om+ Mod)

‘he would not wait longer, for his captives would die’

(Syn)

‘he was not going to stay longer, for the prisoners would die’

(Syn)

(Bor+E xplicit)

hanginglamp

(Fe)

firepot

(Fe)

‘his yassyr was dying out in hundreds every day and he wanted to get it to the auction blocks while the captives lasted’ burning torch

horn

(Met)

carbine

(Fe)(Er r)

-

-

princess

(Gen)

old princess

(Gen+E xplicit)

old Knahina

(Bor+E xplicit)

old lady

(Par+Mod) (Gen)

Knahina

(Bor)

the mother

(Mod)

old woman

(Par+M od)

the woman

(Gen)

(Fe)

princess

Ruthenian prince (SXVII: s.v. kniaź)

kniaź (ojciec Heleny)

‘your father’

(Mod)

Prince

(Gen)

Knaz

(Bor)

kniaź Jarema

prince

(Gen)

prince

(Gen)

Yarema

(Om)

Prince

(Gen)

young prince

(Gen+ Explicit

prince kniaź (syn 118

(Gen)

prince

(Gen)

http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaganek

111

kniahini)

) princes

(Gen)

princes

(Gen)

men

(Gen)

the sons

(Mod)

Princess Helena

(Gen+Expl icit)

princess

(Gen)

collar

(Gen)

doublet

(Fe)

open leather jerkins

dance-music

(Gen)

-

(Om)

kolomiyka dances “‘kontush’ – the long, flared satin coat of a Polish noble with the sleeves split open to the shoulders and pinned back behind him like the wings of a splendid bird of prey” convention

(Bor+E xplicit) (Bor+D ef)

kniaziowie

kniaziówna

kolet

kołomyjka

daughter of a Ruthenian prince (kniaź)

1.a tight, usually leather jacket, worn from 16th till 18th century by soldiers or for horse-riding (SJPP: s.v. kolet) 2.a richly embroidered collar (Gloger 1900-1903) a lively Ukrainian 119 folk dance (s.v. kołomyjka)

kołomyjki

young princess

(Gen+E xplicit)

princes

(Gen)

old woman’s sons

(Par+M od)

Princess Helen

(Gen+ Explicit ) (Syn)(= referent ial synony m) (Fe+Ex plicit)

Helen

kontusz

a traditional Old Polish outer garment with slashed sleeves and buttons in the front (SJPP: s.v. kontusz)

kontush

(Bor)

Kontush, with the slashed sleeves

(Bor+E xplicit)

konwokacja

a Sejm (General Assembly) summoned to elect a new king (SJPP: s.v. konwokacja) a sleeves mantle; a kind of a cloak (Gloger 1900-1903)

convocation

(Gen)

-

(Om)

mantle

(Gen)

cloak

(Gen)

ceremonial robes

(Par+M od)

a traditional Ukrainian and Russian wedding

dance

(Gen)(Err)

dancers

(Met)( Err)

-

-

kopieniak

korowaj

119

(Gen)

http://poradnia.pwn.pl/lista.php?id=7738

112

Kozacy

Kozacy regestrowi

cake (SJPP: s.v. korowaj) a group of predomina-ntly East Slavic people, originally members of democratic, semimilitary communities in what is today Ukraine and S 120 outhern Russia Cossack soldiers in service of the Commonwealth, entered in a special register (a nominal roll of Cossacks on the Commonwealth’s pay) (Encyklpedia PWN: s.v. kozacy rejestrowi)

regestrowi kozak

kulbaka

Kurki

120 121

a Ukrainian folk dance involving jumping and leg kicking from a squatting position (SJPP: s.v. kozak) a leather-covered saddle used by soldiers (SJPP: s.v. kulbaka) the Pleiades star cluster, which is among the star clusters nearest to Earth and most obvious to the naked eye in the night sky, and therefore has been recognized by most peoples throughout the world since ancient 121 times; also by Polish country people, among whom the cluster

Cossacks

(Oe)

Cossacks

(Oe)

Cossacks

(Oe)

registered Cossacks

(Calc)

Cossack regulars

(Syn)

the enlisted Cossacks who served for pay in the Crown regiments of the Commonw ealth commande rs or in the private armies of the powerful Polish and Ruthenian magnates of the borderland s

(Calc+ Def)

registered Cossacks Cosachka

(Lit)

regulars

(Syn)

(Par)

(Oe)

‘Cossack’

(Lit)

household troops -

saddle

(Gen)

saddleblanket

(Fe)

horse blanket

(Fe)

(Om)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cossacks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleiades

113

was known as “the hen with chickens”; 122 in spring in the northern hemisphere Pleiades rise shortly 123 before dawn

‘na niebie już Kurki’ kurzeń

kusztyk Lach

liman

łowczy

łuczywo łyka

a unit of Cossacks commanded by an ataman (and the camp of such a unit) (SJPP: s.v. kurzeń) a kind of goblet (SXVII: s.v. kusztyk) a name used with reference to Poles

by Lithuanians, Ruthenians and Russians (SXVII: s.v. Lach) a lake or bay formed at the mouth of a river where flow is blocked by a bar of sediments, found e.g. in the area of the Dniester 124 estuary a court official responsible for organising hunts and being in charge of the animals; later just a titular position (SJPP: s.v. łowczy) a piece of pitchsoaked firewood (SJPP: s.v. łuczywo)

(Fe)

(Fe)

‘Not long now til’sunup’

(Par)

(Bor)

‘There are already streaks in the sky’ kurzen

kuren

(Bor)

kujhen

(Bor)

goblet

(Gen)

goblet

(Gen)

goblet

(Gen)

Pole

(Neutralisa tion, henceforth Neut)

Pole

(Neut)

-

-

Lah

(Bor)

bay

(Syn)

coast lake

(Syn)

-

-

-

(Om)

Master Of The Hounds

(Ad)

-

-

pitch-pine

(Fe)

chips

(Fe)

pitchsoaked firewood

(Par)

‘in fetters’

(Syn)

‘in chains’

(Fe)

(Par)

Mazovians

(Conc)

Mazovian peasants

(Conc+ Explicit ) (Conc)

‘on the end of a rope’ Mazurian peasants

bonds in which Tartars transported 125 their captives

‘w łykach’ Mazurzy

‘It is cockcrow already’

1.inhabitants of Masuria, descendants of settlers from Masovia 2.(‘Masurians proper’) inhabitants

Mazovians

Mazurians

(Conc+ Explicit ) (Conc)

feast day

(Fe)

126

mięsopust

of Masovia carnival (a period between Christmas and Lent), especially

carnival time

(Par)

Lent

(Fe)/(E rr)

122

http://www.astromagia.pl/astrologia/okiem-astrologa/964-zimowe-gwiazdozbiory http://www.pleiade.org/pleiades_02.html 124 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liman_(landform) 125 http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasyr 126 http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazurzy 123

114

mołojec

its three last days, traditionally spent in feasting and revelry (SJPP: s.v. mięsopust; Gloger 1900-1903) 1.young Cossack 2.Cossack soldier 3.swashbuckler, blade (SWO, SJPP: s.v. mołojec)

mołojcy

young hero

men Cossacks heroes

‘Jutro mołojcy ruszą’.

murza

nahaj

a title of a Turkish, Presian or Tartar prince of noble (SJPP: s.v. mirza) a plaited leather whip with a handle

(Par+Overt ranslation, henceforth Overtr)

young Cossack

(Par)

young soldier

(Par)

Cossacks

(Gen)

followers

(Mod)

men

(Gen)

young men

(Par)

soldiers

(Gen)

boys

(Syn)

(Gen) (Gen) (Syn+Over tr)

opończa

ordyniec ordyńcy osypka

petyhorzec

piechota 127 128

in 16th - 18th century Poland, a commander of a foreign regiment (SJPP: s.v. oberszter) a loose sleeveless coat with a hood, protecting from the cold and the rain (SXVII: s.v. opończa) a Tartar belonging to an orda (horde) (SJPP: s.v. ordyniec) thickly ground flour used as food for domestic animals (SJPP: s.v. osypka) Lithuanian light 128 cavalryman regular infantry established in 1562

(Par)

followers

(Mod)

Cossacks

(Gen)

young Cossack warriors

(Par)

moloytzy

(Bor)

‘To-morrow the Cossacks march’

(Gen)

‘(…) tomorrow the Cossacks march’

(Gen)

‘Tomorro w we go’

(Mod)

murza

(Bor)

mirza

(Bor)

murjah

(Bor)

whip

(Gen)

murza whip

(Bor) (Gen)

rawhide whip

(Par)

-

(Om)

Major

(Ad)

Oberst

(Oe)

mantle

(Gen)

cloak

(Gen)

‘long, outspread kontush coat’

(Fe+Bo r+Expli cit)

Tartars bran

(Syn) (Syn)

hordes powder

(Mod) (Gen)

Tartars -

(Syn) -

lighthorseman

(Syn)

(Syn)

(Calc)

Light Horse officer ‘Kwarta’

(Oe)

quarter

lightcavalryma n regular

127

oberszter

young man

(Syn)

(Bor)

http://portalwiedzy.onet.pl/106135,,,,nahaj,haslo.html http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petyhorcy

115

to protect the borderlands of the Commonwealth, financed by a quarter of the income from the king’s estates (Gloger 1900-1903) a kind of mace with feathers at the end; a symbol of power of the Zaporozhian elders, which sometimes also played a role of a 129 safe-conduct

infantry

piław

cooked rice with meat and spices, or sweet rice with raisins, nuts and figs, popular in the Balkans and in the Middle East (SJPP: s.v. pilaw)

pilav

(Bor)

pilav

pludry (in the text used as a synonym of hajdawery) podkomorzy

puff trousers of foreign origin; in Polish the name was used derogatorily (Gloger 1900-1903)

trousers

(Gen)

a high court official in personal service to the monarch, performing the duties of a chamberlain and in charge of the treasury; later, also an official acting as a local judge in property disputes (Gloger 1900-1903) 1.a peasant’s duty to provide means of transport to the state authorities or the army when needed 2. the means of transport provided as a result of fulfilling this duty(SJPP: s.v. podwoda)

chamberlain

wagons

kwarciana

piernacz

podwoda

podwody

129

infantry

baton

(Gen)

staff

(Gen)

safe conduct

infantry

(Syn)

personal medallion

(Fe)

safeconduct

(Syn)

(Bor+P ar+Fe)

(Bor)

‘pyernatch ’, a safeconduct medallion that every Cossack and Tartar leader would recognize at once pilaf

trousers

(Gen)

-

-

(Ad)

subtreasurer

(Ad)

-

-

(Conc)

carriage and pair

(Ad)

-

-

(Oe)

Gradowski and Zygulski (2010: 63) as quoted by http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piernacz.

116

polewka piwna

półgarnców ka

półkwaterka

pop poroh

porohy prezydium

a dish of old Polish cuisine, a beer-based soup with butter, egg yolks, sour cream, bread, sugar or cinnamon added, often eaten for 130 breakfast a cup with the capacity of about half a gallon

a cup with the capacity of about half a quarter of a gallon a priest in the Orthodox church a crosswise threshold in a wide and shallow riverbed (SJPP: s.v. poroh); they are common in the Dnieper and Dniester (Encyklopedia leśna, s.v. poroh)

in the PolishLithuanian Commonwealth, a military staff in a fortress or a castle

beer

(Met)

beer

(Met)

ale soup

(Ad)

half a gallon

(Met+Ad)

half a gallon

(Met+ Ad)

half-gallon copper kettle

(Par+A d+Fe)

half-gallon

(Met+Ad)

half-gallon

(Met+ Ad)

(Fe)

cup

(Gen)

cup

(Gen)

copper kettle quart tin

priest

(Gen)

priest

(Gen)

priest

(Gen)

Cataracts troops

(Syn) (Gen)

rapids garrison

(Met) (Gen)

cataracts -

(Syn) -

crawfishdealer

(Lit)(Err)

crabfisher

(Lit)(Er r)

cut-throat kind

(Gen+P ar)

falcon

(Syn)

falcon

(Syn)

-

-

commander

(Gen)

commande r

(Gen)

Crown general

(Par)

-

(Om)

-

(Om)

-

-

(Par+F e)

131

rakarz

raróg

regimentarz

rękodajny

salamy

130 131

1.a person catching homeless dogs; dogcatcher 2. torturer, butcher (SJPP: s.v. rakarz) a bird of prey from the family Falconidae, with a brown-grey plumage and whitish head (SJPP: s.v. raróg) a commander of the army or a part of it, standing in for the hetman (SXVII: s.v. regimentarz) a courtier who was allowed to offer a hand to his lord or lady while he / she was getting on the horse or into/out of a vehicle (Gloger 1900-1903) a Moslem greting, ‘salam aleykum’ literally means “peace be with you”

http://www.wilanow-palac.pl/polewka_piwna.html http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prezydium

117

132

‘oddając mu wschodnim obyczajem salamy’ samopał

sejmik

semen

a kind of matchlock (SJPP: s.v. samopał); a gun or musket with an obsolete type of gunlock with priming meachanism ignited by sparks, used by Cossacks and 133 Russians in the PolishLithuanian Commonwealth, a convention of nobles of a voivodeship, adopting resolutions and choosing deputies for the Diet (SJPP: s.v. sejmik) a Cossack soldier from a noble’s troop (SXVII: s.v. semen)

semenowie stajanie

‘giving the salaam in Oriental fashion’

(Bor)

‘made him a salaam in Oriental fashion’

(Bor)

(Par)

(Gen)

‘bowing to the ground in the oriental manner’ muzzle (wylot lufy)

musket

(Gen)

fire-arm

(Gen)

musket gun

(Gen)

firelock

(Syn)

(Om;Fe ) -

(Met)

petty Diet

(Par)

diet

(Syn)

- (artillery and powder) -

Cossack

(Gen)

Semenov

(Bor)

Cossack

(Gen)

soldier

(Syn)

esaul

(Fe+Bo r)

the Cossacks

(Gen)

the Semenovs

(Bor)

loyal Cossacks

(Par)

‘some distance’

(Gen)

‘half a furlong’

(Ad)

-

-

‘half a furlong’

(Ad)

‘some furlongs’

(Ad)

‘a quarter of a mile’

(Ad)

‘a good half mile’

(Ad)

a walled stannitza, one of those lonely outposts that guarded these

(Bor+E xplicit+ Def)

an old Polish length measure, of varying value at various times and in various places (Słownik języka polskiego, henceforth SJP: s.v. stajanie)

‘pół stajania’

staja ‘kilka staj’ stanica

132 133

a small fortress fulfilling the role of a watchtower over the borderland (SJPP: s.v. stanica)

‘some distance’ stanitsa

(Gen) (Bor)

military post

(Par)

http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salam_alejkum http://www.thefreedictionary.com/firelock

118

borders

starosta

chief administrator of a county (powiat) (SJPP: s.v. starosta)

stanitza starosta

(Bor) (Bor)

Pan Sobieski

(Syn)(= RefSyn )

Starosta

(Bor)

(Oe)/(C alc)

- (titles and rank and positions)

(Om)/( Gen)

the taxes on water and on land; (…) the tolls on flour and cattle

(Par)

tithes and taxes

(Gen)

(Par)

royal cavalry regiment commande r

(Par)

(Om+G en+Mo d)

wild goat

(Fe)

antelope

(Gen)

‘he was well connected at the court in Warsaw’ deer

-

(Om)

carriage

(Gen)

coach

(Gen)

tabor

(Bor)

army

(Met)

great cavalcade

(Par)

army

(Met)

train

(Syn) siege-train

(Par)

camp

(Syn)

baggagewagons

(Syn) wagons

(Syn)

camp

(Syn)

(Def)

baggage train

(Par)

wagons of the gentry that followed

- (fragment left out)

starosta

(Bor)

Starosta

(Bor)

(Syn)(=Ref erential synonym, henceforth RefSyn) (Fe)

Chief

(Syn)

starostship

meadowtaxes, milltaxes, eye and horn taxes

(Calc;Par)

commander of the royal vanguard, an officer of the king

a critically endangered species of antelope (nearly extinct in Europe) 135 with yellowishgrey fur and a characteristic hump between the nose and the forehead; saiga (SJPP: s.v. suhak) a four-wheeled, open carriage with several crosswise benches (SJPP: s.v. szaraban) 1.wagons with food, amunition, equipment etc. following the army (SXVII: s.v. tabor) 2.a large number of people wandering together; camp (SJPP: s.v. tabor)

Sobieski

starostwo

stawszczyzn y, pojemszczyz ny, suchomielsz czyzy, oczkowe i rogowe strażnik koronny

suhak

szaraban

tabor

134 135

1.the area administrated by a starosta 2. the office, post of starosta (SJPP: s.v. starostwo) taxes, dues and feudal burdens imposed on peasants 134

[ rogowe - tax on cattle (Słownik historyczno – geograficzny ziem polskich w średniowieczu, s.v.

Leśnica)] a high-ranking Crown officer (as opposed to the Lithuanian one) (SXVII: s.v. strażnik; strażnik koronny)

crown estate

-

(Gen)

Sobańska-Bondaruk (2003: 86). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saiga_Antelope

119

the army

taler

Tartar

teorban

teorbanista towarzysz pancerny

a silver coin in circulation in Europe since the 15th century; it circulated in Poland with an unstable value since the 16th century (SXVII: s.v. taler) a member of any of the Turkic and Mongolian peoples of central Asia who invaded western Asia and eastern Europe in the Middle Ages 136 an old music instrument, a kind of a bass lute (SJPP: s.v. teorban) teorban player

wagontrain

(Par)

wagon camp

bivouac

(Syn)

(Par)

tabor

(Bor)

thaler

(Oe)

dollar

(Ad)

camp thaler

(Syn) (Oe)

Tartar

(Oe)

Tartar

(Oe)

Tartar

(Oe)

lute

(Gen)

lute

(Gen)

teorban

(Bor)

flute-player

(Fe)(Err)

-

(Om)

teorban player

(Bor+P ar)

armored officers

(Syn)

heavy cavalry

(Met)( Err)

the soldiers who served in the elite regiments of heavy cavalry, the armored â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Husariaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; who charged into battle with long, curved frames of eagle wings fastened to their

(Def+E rr)

a mediumcavalryman in 16th18th century Poland, named for his armor (pancerz); these units were the second-mostimportant cavalry un it in the Polish army after the hussars 137

towarzysze pancerni

136

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Tartars http://www.tawerna.rpg.pl/dane/trpg/tawerna42/DP/dzikie_pola_2.htm; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towarzysz_pancerny 137

120

trojniak

tyftyk

ulęgałka

wachmistrz

watażka

a kind of mead in which per one measure of mead there are two measures of water (SJPP: s.v. trojniak) an obsolete kind of fabric, originally from Turkey (SJPP: s.v. dyftyk) a wild pear tree with small green fruit; also the fruit themselves,which are edible only after some amount of time has passed since they had been picked from the tree; (SJPP: s.v. ulęgałka) the highest-ranking non-commissioned officer in a regiment (SXVII: s.v. wachmistrz) 1 leader of a robber band 2.Cossack commander (SJPP: s.v. watażka)

mead

(Gen)

mead

(Gen)

shoulders mead

(Gen)

Troyniak

(Bor)

rug

(Met)

taffeta

(Fe)

drapery

(Met)

-

(Om)

-

(Om)

something a little bit greasy

(Fe+Pa r)

Sergeant

(Ad)

Segreant

(Ad)

sergeant

(Ad)

Sergeantmajor

(Ad)

(watahy zbójeckiej)

leader

(Syn)

captain

(Syn)

chief

(Syn)

watażka

Bogun

(Syn)(=Ref Syn)

chief

(Syn)

Cossack

(Gen)

chieftain

(Syn)

Bohun

Cossack leader

(Par)

(Syn)(= RefSyn )

ataman

(Fe)

Cossack chief

(Par) Cossack ataman

(Fe+Ex plicit)

warrior wine

(Mod) (Met)

-

-

vodka

(Oe)

vodka

(Oe)

Cossack (Gen) chief (Syn)

winna polewka

wódka

a dish of old Polish cuisine, a winebased soup with butter, egg yolks, sour cream, bread, sugar or cinnamon added (analogous to 138 polewka piwna) a distilled beverage composed primarily of ethanol and water, produced by the distillation of fermented substances such as grains or 139 potatoes

wine

(Met)

vudka * * The author uses sometimes the word vodka and sometimes

(Bor+Expl )

138

http://kuchnia-polska.wieszjak.pl/kulinaria-polskie/256048,Jak-przygotowac-polewke-winna-najesienne-wieczory.html 139 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vodka

121

gorailka.

The first is Polish; the second Little Russian.

Both mean a liquor distilled generally from rye.

When vudka is used it might mean the liquor was from Poland, and when gorailka that it was of Ukraine origin: but here the words are used indifferently.

“wódka uderzała mu do głowy”

‘vudka was raising to his head’

(Bor)

‘vodka mounted to his head’

(Oe)

‘I’ve … drunk too much’.

(Om;Pa r)

since 14th century until the partitions of Poland, the highest-ranking official, at the same time bearing a title of a senator (SJPP: s.v. wojewoda)

voevoda

(Bor)

Voyevoda

(Bor)

Voyevode

(Bor)

voyevoda

(Bor)

voevode

(Bor)

Palatine

(Ad)

Voyevode

(Bor)

wójt

an official at head of the village

bailiff

(Ad)

Voyevoda bailiff

(Bor) (Ad)

palatine local elders

zimowniki

huts and farms in which the Zaporozhian Cossacks lived during the winter time when they were not in their camp (Gloger1900-1903) a collection of rights and privilegdes of the Polish nobles, such as liberum veto 140 and nihil novi

winterquarters

(Syn)

winterquarters

(Syn)

Winter quarters

(Ad) (Trans +Mod) (Par)

golden freedom

(Calc)

gold and freedom

(Fe)

(omission) (‘They are happy’)

(Om;G en)

a currency appearing in Poland since the Middle Ages, of varying value; ducat

sequin

(Fe)

zlato

(Bor)

ducat

(Syn)

wojewoda

wojewoda (Kisiel)

złota wolność

złoty

140

http://portalwiedzy.onet.pl/5195,,,,zlota_wolnosc,haslo.html

122

żupan

(worn by a woman)

141

(Gloger 1900-1903) Polish nobles’ daily attire; a long, often colorful dress with long narrow sleeves, done up by means of hooks and eyes or buttons and often worn under a 141 kontusz

coat

(Gen)

coat

(Gen)

-

uniform

(Fe)

doublet

(Ad)

‘zhupan’ undercoat

(Bor+E xplicit)

coat

(Gen)

dress

(Gen)

zhupan

(Bor)

jacket

(Gen)

http://portalwiedzy.onet.pl/68210,,,,zupan,haslo.html

123

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SUMMARY The present MA thesis is preoccupied with the problem of the translation of realia, that is words signifying elements of culturally-specific reality. The issue has been researched on the basis of how these lexical items have been handled in the translations of With Fire and Sword by Henryk Sienkiewicz.

This research is based on the analysis of strategies applied with respect to realia in selected chapters of With Fire and Sword by the three translators who confronted the novel.

It compares their solutions, trying to draw some conclusions concerning the factors which influenced their work and the possible reception of certain solutions among the readers. It also attempts to trace the general tendencies particular to realia translation with regard to global, as well as local translation strategies.

The conducted analysis has proved that, on the whole, translators preferred domestication as a global strategy with respect to realia, although there were individual differences among them with regard to its degree. Speaking of local strategies, the two most popular ones were generalisation and borrowing. In fact, the translators have not contented themselves with using only single strategies and quite frequently combined them for better effect.

Speaking of the motivation behind their choices, the analysis confirmed that the properties of realia and the context belong to factors having influence over them. The expected reader and the character of the text were also identified as significant agents in the translators’ decision process. Yet, the three renderings of the same text differed significantly. This allowed for a conclusion that sometimes the current translation tendencies as well as the translator’s convictions concerning his or her role added to his or her ‘sensitivity’ to cultural differences might prove just as, if not more, important.

Overall, it might be concluded that the translators handled realia sufficiently well for the demands of the novel’s narration, sometimes even succeeding in retaining their special local flavour, although most of the time it simply could not have been preserved.

Still, they have certainly proved that these problematic lexical items should not be regarded as a serious obstacle to literary exchange between different cultures.

Key words: realia, literary translation, translation strategies, foreignisation, domestication, cultural specificity, With Fire and Sword

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STRESZCZENIE Niniejsza praca magisterska zajmuje się problemem tłumaczenia realiów, czyli słów używanych do oznaczenia elementów kulturalnie specyficznej rzeczywistości. Kwestię tę zbadano, sprawdzając, jak te elementy leksykalne zostały potraktowane w tłumaczeniach Ogniem i mieczem Henryka Sienkiewicza.

Praca opiera się na analizie strategii zastosowanych wobec realiów w wybranych rozdziałach Ogniem i mieczem przez trzech tłumaczy, którzy zmierzyli się z powieścią.

Porównuje ona użyte przez nich rozwiązania, próbując wyciągnąć wnioski dotyczące czynników, które wpłynęły na efekt ich pracy oraz możliwego sposobu odbioru niektórych zastosowanych rozwiązań przez czytelników. Podejmuje też próbę ustalenia ogólnych tendencji charakterystycznych dla tłumaczenia realiów, biorąc pod uwagę zarówno globalne, jak i lokalne strategie tłumaczeniowe.

Przeprowadzona analiza wykazała, że tłumacze na ogół preferowali udomowienie jako globalną strategię jeżeli chodzi o realia, choć stosowali je w różnym stopniu. Jeżeli chodzi o strategie lokalne, dwoma najpopularniejszymi były generalizacja i zapożyczenie.

Należy zaznaczyć, że tłumacze nie poprzestali na używaniu tylko pojedynczych strategii i często je łączyli, aby uzyskać lepszy efekt.

Co do umotywowania ich wyborów, analiza potwierdziła, że miały na nie wpływ właściwości realiów oraz kontekst. Przewidywany czytelnik oraz charakter tekstu to również czynniki zidentifikowane jako istotne dla decyzji podejmowanych przez tłumaczy.

Trzy omawiane tłumaczenia różniły się jednak między sobą. To pozwoliło wyciągnąć wniosek, że czasami takie czynniki, jak aktualne tendencje w tłumaczeniu, a także przekonania tłumacza dotyczące jego lub jej roli, w połączeniu z określonym stopniem wrażliwości na różnice kulturalne, mogą się okazać tak samo, jeżeli nie bardziej, istotne.

Ogólnie rzecz biorąc, można stwierdzić, że tłumacze poradzili sobie z realiami wystarczająco dobrze, jeżeli chodzi o spełnienie wymogów narracyjnych stawianych przez powieść. Niekiedy udawało im się nawet zachować charakterystyczny lokalny koloryt tych słów, choć przeważnie niestety ginął on w tłumaczeniu. Mimo to, tłumacze Ogniem i mieczem bez wątpienia udowodnili, że owe problematyczne elementy językowe nie powinny być traktowane jako poważna przeszkoda w wymianie literackiej między różnymi kulturami.

Słowa kluczowe: realia, tłumaczenie literackie, strategie tłumaczeniowe, egzotyzacja, udomowienie, specyficzność kulturowa, Ogniem i mieczem 132

Załącznik nr 1 do Regulaminu dyplomowania studentów na Wydziale Filologicznym UR

OŚWIADCZENIE W nawiązaniu do Zarządzenia nr 41/2003 Rektora Uniwersytetu Rzeszowskiego oświadczam, że napisana przeze mnie praca magisterska pt. Analysis of Translation of Realia in ‘With Fire and Sword’ została wykonana samodzielnie.

Rzeszów, dnia ………………..

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Załącznik nr 2 do Regulaminu dyplomowania studentów na Wydziale Filologicznym UR

OŚWIADCZENIE Wyrażam zgodę na udostępnianie mojej pracy magisterskiej, przedstawionej do obrony w roku akademickim …………………… .

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