Kipling in Polish: The Ironic Face of the Poet of the Empire
Kipling in Polish: The Ironic Face of the Poet of the Empire

Summary/Abstract: This article looks at Polish translations of three short stories by Rudyard Kipling in order to examine how translation affects the ironic tropes found in those texts. Mateo’s typology of techniques for handling irony in translation (1995) is used to show how this rhetorical device works within the broader cultural and historical context. It appears that the way Polish translators in the early 1900s interpreted irony in contemporary colonial fiction depended on their ability to recognize social problems in the British Empire, to identify the distinctive British sense of humour, and to understand the realities of colonial life. The short stories under discussion are “Georgie Porgie,” 1888 (translated by Feliks Chwalibóg, 1909), “The Limitations of Pambe Serang,” 1889 (Feliks Chwalibóg, 1910) and “The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes,” 1885 (unknown translator, 1900).

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