The book is a Way to Yourself

On the occasion of Translator’s Day, Polish teachers from 2SLO invited Dorota Konowrocka-Sawa, author of over sixty literary translations from English, to a meeting. The translator talked about her professional path from the world of journalism to the world of translation and introduced the listeners to the secrets of the art of translation. 

Being an economist by education, after graduating from the Warsaw School of Economics, she worked as a journalist for some time and then tried her hand at translation. It all started with translating a book about home education. Then came youth literature, historical literature, novels and others. The translator began the meeting about the art of translation with its basic principles, such as: translation strategies: domestication and foreignization, the distinction between formal and functional translation, and the phenomenon of untranslatability of certain texts. She illustrated untranslatability with the example of a poem titled “No” by Thomas Hood. She then revealed the secret of the so-called translation dominant, i.e. the need to maintain meaning, rhythm and word play in a good translation. She gave further examples of successful translation efforts: a manifesto from the film titled “Trainspotting”, in which the most important thing was to convey the growing dynamics of the eruption of condensed anger, or the repeated lyrics of the refrain of a prison song from a musical entitled “Chicago”, which the authors from Studio Akantus translated with different, but semantically identical words.

The translator also talked about other authors and their achievements: about Piotr Holewa and his translation of Therry Pratchett’s “Discworld”, about Grzegorz Wasowski and his unfaithful translation of the classic under the new title “The Adventures of Alice in Charytorium”, about Jacek Dukaj, who in “The Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad, presented history in a modern language, or about Antoni Libera, who transcribed “The Dismissal of the Greek Envoys” by Jan Kochanowski into modern Polish. As an example of translation that allows you to learn a different type of language, the translator read a fragment of Nicol Hochholczerova’s book entitled “You can’t Eat this Room” translated by Rafał Bukowicz. The author also raised the issue of modernizing old literature by the translator, or the culturally different meanings of linguistically identical words.

At the end of the meeting, Konowrocka-Sawa returned to her school fascination with reading “The Master and Margarita” by Michał Bułgakov and read several different translations of the scene with Pontius Pilate and the description of the Master’s beloved, Margaret, paying attention to translation nuances. She also mentioned another aspect of her work, namely the need to add footnotes that allow the reader to orientate her/himself in the historical and cultural context.

Finally, the author recalled Pierre Bayard’s book entitled “How to Talk about Books You Haven’t Read” and his valuable thoughts about the world of books.

Reading is not subject to the logic of truth and falsehood, and is often a way to find yourself and to supplement the missing elements of your personality. The author admitted that this was what happened in her case and wished everyone a similar experience.

(text: Beata Ciacek; photos: Beata Ciacek)