Praktyka translatorska Stanisława Barańczaka w świetle teorii analogii Douglasa R. Hofstadtera

Abstract

Translatological thesis Stanislaw Baranczak’s Translational Practice in Relation to Douglas R. Hofstadter’s Theory of Analogy has two main goals. The first one is a systematic presentation of translatological thought of Douglas Hofstadter, American cognitive scientist, mathematician and translator. This perspective makes it possible to achieve the second goal, which is to conduct an analysis of American poetry translations by Stanislaw Baranczak. In the theoretical part of the thesis Hostadter’s concepts included in his paper Analogy as the Core of Cognition and book Le Ton Beau de Marot are presented, focusing on the analogy as the central category connecting all Hofstadter’s ideas. Moreover, main translation problems (such as transculturation, untranslatability, translator’s “invisibility”) are discussed in terms of Hofstadter’s “cognitive translatology”. The crucial concept of “semantic dominant”, introduced by Baranczak, is compared to the theory of analogy and the similarities between both are indicated. Also an attempt was made to find links between Hofstadter’s thought and modern translation studies. The concept of equivalence proved to be of utmost importance here, since it is the essential issue raised by academic translatology, but also a category closely related to the analogy as defined by Hofstadter. The practical part of the thesis contains the analyses of Robert Frost’s and Ogden Nash’s poetry translations by Stanislaw Baranczak. Those analyses are conducted with the emphasis on analogy and equivalence using the terminology taken from the cognitive works of Douglas Hofstadter. In chapter about Frost, the impact of Baranczak’s poetic individuality on translation process is discussed as well as the strategies adopted by Polish poet to translate intonation rules applied by Robert Frost in his poetry (sound of sense). As far as Nash’s poetry is concerned, analysis oscillates between two main problems: translation of poetic humour (nonsensical, particularly) and rhymes. The goal of analyses is to demonstrate that to translate poetry means to make creative analogies transferring the whole of the meaning between two languages and, at the same time, to use formal means equivalent to the ones present in the original text.