Spaces of Meanings and Translators’ Identities
Spaces of Meanings and Translators’ Identities

Summary/Abstract: The focus of the paper is the analysis of translators’ identities as expressed in Polish-to-English and English-to-Polish translations understood in terms of informed choices from spaces of meanings. The first part of the paper deals with the relation of approximate correspondences between thought and reality on the one hand and between thought, image, linguistic system and cultural emotionality type on the other. The concept of semantic approximation in communication, introduced in Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk (2010, 2012) is shown to be conditioned by cognitive categorization problems of the language user, as well as a conscious choice of the syntactic structure and meanings in discourse. The conscious choices from meaning spaces are motivated by the translator’s subjective intentions on the one hand as well as constraints imposed by the Target Language systems (displaced equivalence patterns), limitation on the translator’s linguistic repertory and by Source Culture and Target Culture models and conventions. In the second part of the study an interpretation is proposed of semantic and cultural SL and TL similarities, meaning displacement and reconceptualization in monolingual and intercultural communication and translation to account for the translator’s linguistic and cultural identity dynamics, with a varying emotionality message. It is illustrated by examples of Polish-to-English and English-to-Polish translations.

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