Spotkania : czasoprzestrzeń przekładu artystycznego

Abstract

In her book Time-Space of Artistic Translation (Polish: Spotkania. Czasoprzestrzeń przekładu artystycznego), the author presents artistic translation as a communicative and hermeneutical issue with a specific place taken among other texts. Functioning in culturally different spaces and times, translation establishes dialogue relations with them and creates intellectual, emotional and sensual tensions (e.g. in the sphere of experiences of the translators and the recipients) within its own time-space. The research reflection was concentrated mainly on translations of Polish literature into the Slovene language and of Slovene literature into the Polish language. Translations of French literature into the Polish language were included in the research in the amount which can signal the comparative and communicative aspects of translation present in the linguistic triangle, which occurs among different language groups, Slovene and Romance. This significant and important problem deserves a separate research from the point of the intercultural dialogue, in which it takes place. Properties of translation such as intertextuality, intersubjectivity and pragmatism make it the foundation for the intercultural communication, which can be confirmed through the demand for that sort of translation. Expecting translation by a reader, an editor and a translator expresses the need for confronting oneself and one’s own culture with a foreign culture. Therefore, translation should contain signals of strangeness by being a surprise and an opportunity for a reader of the target foreign culture to follow it. The necessity of a dialogue motivates the existence of translation. A dialogue may occur in intratextual and extratextual space, initiating the forms of experiencing, of communicating and the ways of perceiving the world that are unknown yet in the receiving culture. For there is “light” between languages (the sphere of sense, sensation, expression and agreement), in the form of different categorization and conceptualization of an experience. A dictionary, the grammar and usage are the testimonies. The dialogue beyond the destination text is multidirectional (artistic, aesthetic, ethical and cognitively-emotional) and it acts culturally and psychologically. Due to the dialogue capacities, artistic translation enables self-understanding through comparison; it enriches and inspires the recipient. It may also be used for self confirming oneself in the corporate and individual areas. Exact translation is dynamic because it opens different horizons than those present in the receiving culture. Belated translation does not have such efficiency, it occurs too late to participate actively in the second culture. It usually confirms what is already known but may not be appreciated. A translator makes the decision about the communicative role of the translation. By transferring the original, a translator takes into account the expectations of the recipient and his or her mental aptitude formed by native culture and background knowledge, by the need of the reader to be surprised and ravished by the text; and by the sense of the original version or the model of the world included in it. A translator crosses over the border of his or her own culture remaining in it mentally and languagedly, in order to surprise, arouse interest, ravish and remain “faithful” to the original. Translation opens new horizons only when the translator, existing between two texts and two cultures, maintains balance between what is unknown, strange and what is homely or already domesticated. By creating mirrored worlds, a translator does his or her duty of enriching his or her own culture. At the same time, a translator is guided by cognitive curiosity and eagerness to experience a literary adventure. That adventure is based on overcoming language barriers which result from mental barriers, different sensual and mental experiences of the translator and the recipients (from the perspective of the model of the world found in the original) and which also result from the objective of the translation. A hermeneutical encounter, taking place sometimes between extreme subjectivities and cultures, occurs in translation due to empathy, above all of the translator. Being between texts and cultures, a translator has the possibility to make the translation a place of an encounter between contradictions without eradicating them, or has the possibility to cause extratextual reflection in the recipients. That is the “phenomenality” of translation and the “fusion of horizons” of the author, the translator, the target reader, and the cultures, all of which take place in the translation and through it. Therefore, translation is not only a creation and a process, but also an outlook on life that means openness and agreement, and this issue is usually not raised by books in translation theory.