„Upiory dawnych czasów”. Kilka uwag o przekładach dramatów Ibsena na język polski
“Ghosts of Old Days”. Some Remarks on Translating Ibsen’s Plays into Polish

Summary/Abstract: Although Ibsen’s plays are frequently staged in Polish theatres, the performances rarely become successful and Ibsen’s works are watched and read by very few. The fact that in post war Poland Ibsen was translated very rarely seems to be essential for finding the reason why his reception in Poland is so difficult. Ever since the first premiere of Ibsen’s play in Polish most of his works have been translated not from the original language – A Doll’s House was translated directly from Norwegian only in 2006 and Peer Gynt has never been translated from Norwegian. The problem of a small number of translations evokes another difficulty: the fewer texts we have, the quicker they become out-of-date and not playable. The dated language of the texts was a serious problem for Polish theatres already in the interwar time. After the war most of the newly published translations (1956 and 1958) were not from Norwegian, which is why until the late nineteen sixties Krogstad was Günther in Polish and Thorvald was called Robert. In the second part of the 20th century no more translations were produced, so theatres used the versions from the nineteen fifties while cutting the texts heavily to deal with archaic language. Surprisingly enough, after the first premiere based on the new translation of A Doll’s House in 2006, theatres returned to the old version. The most important questions to be asked in such situation are about the quality of the new texts and about the significance of translating in the process of theatre reception.

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