Przekład biesiadny
Translator’s Feast

Summary/Abstract: To the stock conceptualizations of translation Elżbieta Skibińska offers a delicious novelty: translation as a culinary art, and the translator as an expert chef who loves to serve foreign foods, at times replacing exotic spices with local ingredients, but always with flair and finesse. This conceptualization organizes the author’s thoughts on translation as the dynamics of intercultural relations, collected in The Translator’s Cuisine. Studies of Polish-French Translatory Relations (Kuchnia tłumacza. Studia o polsko-francuskich relacjach przekładowych). She brings into her discussion particularly Itamar Even-Zohar, Antoine Berman, Laurence Venuti, Richard Jacquemond and Marie-Hélène Catherine Torres. Her essays on Polish and French literature, translations created in the two countries and their reception profi t also from the statistical analysis: the number of specifi c translations which appeared over a chosen period. Skibińska concludes that Polish literature in France is at stand-by, eagerly used when the need for its symbolic resources appears. In Poland, French literature has been claimed by political regimes and establishments to meet their ideological needs. The analysis clearly shows Polish literature and culture as “peripheral” and the French as “semi-central”. This overview and general discussion is supported by case studies which concentrate on translation questions prompted by culinary issues: its lexicon and anthropology. Not surprisingly, Claude Lévi-Strauss and his 1965 seminal essay Le triangle culinaire make an important appearance in Skibińska’s argument.

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