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Review of the book "Do viđenja i srećno! / Hej da ha det sa bra!" by Kristina Lugn.
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On the one hand, the overview of the Slovene reception of Pan Tadeusz reveals typical cultural barriers which have marked the comprehension of the Polish Romantic Epic by the Slovene public, while on the other hand it also reveals that the tendency of Mickiewicz to distance himself from the style of High Romanticism brought the original, on its very publication, closer to the Slovene cultural tradition. The evaluation of the poem by Matija Čop, Slovene scholar and theoretician, has eliminated the barriers experienced by readers of the original and outlined a framework for the Slovene reception of Polish Romanticism, as well as creating a basis for the formation of a Slovene version of the Polish Romantic literary canon. In the Slovene environment, the awareness of barriers in the translation of Polish Romantic poetry has been focused mainly on the questions of metrics and versification. In her translation of the poem (1974), R. Štefan applied the principle of the substitution of thirteen-syllable verse with the syllabo-tonic iambic structure (with deviations in caesura and sound figures). Pan Tadeusz also constitutes a barrier on the levels of lexis and style; „Old Poland virtue” equivalents are manifest in the use of personal names, rhetorical figures, and in the naming of realia. For the most part, the translator preserved the original names, which, being anthroponyms, are functional but of a limited denotative value (Podkomornik, Vojski, Vozni). In selecting lexical equivalents, one observes in the translation a noticeable tendency towards lowering the status pertaining to the rural-country environment typical of the Slovene rural community. The principle of preserving the specifics of the original is respected to the extent permitted by the lexical and structural features of the Slovene language. The Polish name forms of the central characters acquire distinctive Slovene phonetic features (Tadej, Zosja, Matej, Gervazij), while the names of minor characters retain their original form (Rymsza). As a characteristic translation strategy, neutralisation is adopted in historical expressions related to the cultural model of Sarmatian nobility, having no translation equivalents in the target language. The translator aimed to resolve the cultural barriers in three ways: lexeme replacement, neutralisation of stylistically marked expressions, and preservation of original expressions.
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Barbora Gregorová, translator of Dorota Masłowska’s books to Czech language, presented to Czech readers a novel very complicated to translate — "Paw królowej" (Czech title: "Královnina šavle"). If we compare the text of original with the translation, we can find many groups of problems, which are present in Czech text, among them: unexpected strong rhythmization and vulgarization of the text, incorrect use of contemporary Czech language (obecná čeština), redundancy in translation or mistakes, which are the result of wrong understanding of original text by the translator. These problems do not disqualify Czech translation, because they do not dominate inventive, daring translating ideas of Bára Gregorová.
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The recontextualization of the prose by Gombrowicz occurred within three different interpretational frames in the translation into Slovene, time frames and space frames: in the 70., 90. and in 2000. They are appointed by the strategy of the translators, by the political situation, by the translations and the reception of foreign literature (above all western literature), by the global situation connected with culture and civilization and by the condition of the target literature of the translation. All of them are determined by the system of expectations of the audience and by the „life” of the translations. In the translations of Gombrowicz have evolved cultural barriers and the degree of crossing them from the side of the source culture and also from the side of the target culture: beginning with the political actualization of Polish awareness through its rhetorical over-coding up to hybridization and mutual merging of times, space, cognitive and emotional attitudes. The difficulty of following the intercultural literary dialogue in the Slovene prose is deepened by the fact that the translations of American literatures occurred more or less when the translations of Gombrowicz were done (particularly, beginning in the mid 80.).
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The grotesque is an aesthetic category, which undermines the conventional and acknowledged image of the world, illustrates the complexity of certain phenomena and their other surprising aspects. In Poland the term „grotesque”, being a calque from German, was first used at the threshold of the 19th-century. However, according to the Polish 20th-century literature and art researchers, grotesque becomes prominent in Polish literature on the verge of modernism. The assumption that modernist art had an almost entirely grotesque character cannot however be ruled out. Grotesque manifests itself in the novel Ferdydurke on each level of the work, including language. The grotesque character of the language is shown among other things through neologisms and a mixture of pompous and colloquial style. Body parts (such as bottom and mug), having a symbolic meaning throughout the novel, play an important part in giving the figures their grotesque character. The language of the novel may undoubtedly constitute a problem for the translator, as the writer uses neologisms and disturbs the word order to achieve a grotesque character of events. The translator tried to deliver an identical image of the grotesque character in her translation. Frequently, the translator couldn’t however disturb the correctitude of the Slovenian language. She preserves the sense of the original on the lexical and syntactic level through imitating the syntactic structures of the original or through replacing them with other grammatical categories. Each translator must recreate the model of the world embedded in the source text.
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The article discusses the problem of transculturality that appears in the prototype (that is, the original work), but which partly or completely disappears in its translation. It occurs when a text is translated from a transcultural area (i.e. Bosnia and Herzegovina) into a monocultural area (i.e. Poland). Transculturality of Meša Selimović’s novel Derviš i smrt appears mostly in the language that is characterized by borrowings from Arabic, Persian and Turkish. The borrowings can be divided into 3 categories: words with cultural features, words connected with Islam and words connected with the place (Bosnia and Herzegovina). Since every language comprises the history and culture of the nation, the Serbian language is marked with the 500-year-long Ottoman occupation. It is impossible to find equivalents for those borrowings in the Polish language as there are no words with such emotional and historical features. The translator can use either reduction or amplification in these situations, but it will definitely distort the understanding of the novel as the primary and secondary receivers have different cognitive structures and some words will trigger different idealized cognitive models in their minds. In conclusion, the transculturality makes the novel difficult to translate because of the impossibility to find equivalents and because of the differences in the primary and secondary receivers’ cognitive structures.
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Predstava “Hamleta” u selu Mrduša Donja is the most popular Croatian and former Yugoslav drama and play in Poland. The Polish translation of Predstva… was published in the magazine Dialog (nr. 1/1975) and then in 1988 in the book Antologia współczesnego dramatu jugosłowiańskiego. The first play was realised in Zielona Góra in 1975, the last one in Krakow in 2009. In total, Brešan’s text was played in 16 Polish theatres. The subject of the analisys is the reception and translation which oscillates between two opposite poles: universal interpetation which emphasises human, timeless meaning of the drama and political interpretation which emphasises political and social context presented in the drama.
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Idioms are often used in polish poetry. Due to their expressiveness and vulnerability for linguistic operations they are subject to different language games. Szymborska often uses transformation of idioms such as: contamination, removing of element, substitution. In her poetry idioms and their modifications are carriers of irony and jokes, they allow to preserve the intellectual and emotional distance restraint. Translation of idioms is problematic because of their expressiveness, symbolic recognition of world and ambiguity. In idioms is hidden a linguistic picture of world, which requires discovery and interpretation by an translator. Vast majority of idioms and their transformations occurring in the poems of Wislawa Szymborska has its own equivalents. In the case they doesn’t have their own equivalents, translators uses following techniques: free combination of words, tracing, amplification. These techniques causes changes in vocabulary and style, but they doesn’t affect the quality of translation. These changes are related to collision of Polish and Slovenian culture, which causes language and cultural Barriers. Language barriers relate to systemic differences between the languages, are especially noticeable in vocabulary and syntax. Cultural barriers are associated with different degree of influence of German and French culture into Poland and Slovenia, and the expression of irony. The role of the interpreter is to mediate between two cultures, and establish methods to overcome cultural and linguistic barriers.
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In this article poetic dialogues between the women poets and translators are represented as a conversation about the mother who is an inspiration for their artistic creativity. From this point of view the translation practice of Dora Gabe is described as palimpsest, because it gives the opportunity for the language to expand so there is place for another, foreign language in its boundaries. In the process of erasing of the Polish source-text, the Bulgarian target-text is being fulfilled with translators’ creative energies. This translation strategy disrupts the stereotypical reception model of Polish poetry in Bulgaria, popularized by Boian Penev. It overcomes its asymmetrical patterns. Svetla Gurova’s and Blaga Dimitrova’s translations are analyzed as continuation of the palimpsest translation model, introduces by Dora Gabe.
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Goran Vojnovic’s novel "Čefurji raus!" in Tomasz Łukaszewicz’s Polish translation is undoubtedly an opportunity to commune with cultural otherness, and, simultaneously, it touches upon the issue of seeking one’s identity in the face of multiculturalism. The translator undertook a very difficult and ambitious task. In the translation of the novel, which deals with the issue of multiculturalism and subculture, the difficulties the translator is confronted with are being multiplied. The comparative analysis of the original and the translation of the novel reveals that Čefur’s identity in the translation has gained more universal frames than in the original. It is mainly because of the cultural barrier which, for the translator, is a strong differentiation between main characters’ language in terms of their nationality. It is a means of conveying vital information as well as a source of characters’ identification which in the original is reduced. Unfortunately the translator did not make an attempt to individualize the characters’ speech using, for example, different language registers or elements of slang, humour, or vulgarity. At the same time, some of the translator’s choices either sharpen the opposition friend-stranger on the basis of which the characters define their attitude to the surroundings and shape their own identity or enhance the familiar character of the relations which take place within "Čefurian" community. At the stylistic level, the main characters’ language is more crude and limited in comic elements. And thus, in the Polish context, Čefur appears to be more obscene and less sensitive. These displacements give evidence to the translator’s inefficient rhetorical and pragmatic abilities. Despite the fact that, as a consequence of semantic losses the universal features of the main character’s identity are clearer, the novel may become attractive to secondary readers because of the possibility of identification with the analysed issue.
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The article presents the problem of cultural barriers in Slovak translation of Witold Gombrowicz’s Ferdydurke which was published in a new translation horizon in 2004. The roman was translated by a very well known Slovak translator — Jozef Marušiak. The author of the article shows the translation strategies which were used by him to overcome cultural barriers and reconstruct foreign mental mechanisms as part of different culture. The strategies exploited in the process of reinterpretation of the original meanings were the literal strategy combined with the strategy of neutralization of foreign cultural facts. The question is if it is possible to translate complicated prose of Witold Gombrowicz to Slovak and reinterpret implicated in the original text cultural facts and whether they constitute the cultural barrier in the process of translation.
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The paper presents a comparison of Polish and Slovak translations of A.A. Milne’s book Winnie-the-Pooh, made by Irena Tuwim, Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska, Margita Príbusová and Stanislav Dančiak. The main object is to show determinants of honorification in the children’s style in compared languages: behavitives, adressative forms, deminutives and hypocoristics. The author also focuses on problems connected with the translation of plays on words, short rhyme poems and children’s songs.
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So-called Czech humour is very popular in Poland. This contribution analyzes short sections of Hašek’s novel about Švejk and a play by the Jára Cimrman Theatre in order to explore how humour is translated. The chosen texts represent two different types of humour that Czechs identify with to such an extent that some expressions actually seep into everyday language. The analysis of the novel about Švejk suggests significant differences between the first and final (in fact third) translation into Polish. While the first translation replaces a number of originally neutral expressions with stylistically marked ones to denote emotional experiences, the third one reflects the original’s stylistic marks. Yet, it is the gradual use of these marks that brings about a comic effect through the gradual confrontation of disparate elements. The analysis of the play by the Jára Cimrman Theatre shows that humour that mainly involves Czech identity can be interpreted but not translated. Both examples suggest two basic cultural barriers in translation: the language barrier and the barrier of tradition.
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Translatological research generally focuses on problems of translation in the languages and cultures with the average distance between each other. For Poles the common perception is that the Slovak culture is close to the Polish one. According to the latest anthropological concept the culture is considered close when in the receiving area it is well-known and accepted and interest in it puts it in a central position in comparison with other strange cultures. Slovak culture in Poland is little-known, does not attract the interest, so it can only be described as a neighbourly. Such a position of Slovak culture in Poland is reflected in the number of published translations of Slovak literature and their reception. The belief that Slovak culture proximity to the Polish one is applied to the perceived similarity of languages which affects the quality of translation. Differences and dissimilarities in culture are reflected in the language and cause various types of obstacles in the process of translation: in the translation of names, words-realities, collocations, social behaviors, conventions of text, literary trends and currents. Observation of these difficulties leads to the conclusion that contrary to popular belief about the proximity to the Polish and Slovak cultures translation within these literatures poses many problems caused by cultural differences. Solutions of these difficulties adopted by translators, demonstrate the fact that translators yield to the illusion of proximity of cultures. Translations do not perform their functions belonging to them in the Polish-Slovak intercultural dialogue. The belief in the cultural proximity is one of the most significant barriers in translation.
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The aim of this article is to illustrate the phenomenon of melancholy, its sources, mechanisms and modes of existence. Basing on The Wardrobe by Olga Tokarczuk and its Croatian translation the author tries to demonstrate a relation between melancholy and language, she considers the art as a kind of fight against nothingness (and melancholy) and explores the textual manifestation of melancholic subjectivity. A psychoanalytic approach to melancholy aids to determine the condition of text (the translated text in particular). The image of melancholy reconstructed from The Wardrobe is a culture-independent phenomenon. The universalism of melancholy and the allegorical nature of Tokarczuk’s work remove barriers between original and translated text culture facilitating the act of translation. The main source of cultural barriers, in this case, are the linguistic (mainly grammatical) differences.
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After almost one and a half years of being left out in the cold, the leading governing party in Bratislava, Smer-sociálna demokracia (Direction - Social Democracy) was readmitted in February to the great international family of the centre-left. The decision of the Party of European Socialists (PES) to this effect was met with ambivalent reactions in the public sphere and continues to divide the socialist movement itself to the present day. This is quite understandable; the decision of the PES Presidency in Brussels was probably the most controversial move in the European party’s history – and the most incomprehensible as well. The damage it will do is almost impossible to estimate. In October 2006, the PES suspended the temporary membership of the party led by Robert Fico – the current Slovak prime minister – after Smer formed a government coalition with the Slovak National Party (SNS), which was (and still is) regarded as racist and xenophobic. The PES had no other choice, in fact, since the principles of the organization set down in 2001 in Berlin take an explicit and unequivocal stand on this issue: it is deemed unacceptable for PES member parties to form an alliance with extremist political groups at either local or national level. The rehabilitation of Smer was conditional on abandoning this partnership. The events of the past 18 months suggest, however, that Fico never seriously considered complying with the decision made by the PES leadership in 2006. On the contrary, he initially attempted to pose as the victim of some kind of conspiracy involving the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSzP). Later on, as the deadline approached in Brussels for revision of the PES’s decision on the suspension of Smer, the party leader and prime minister gradually changed communication tactics and began to relay the message to the world that the joint government administration in fact enabled Smer to “domesticate” the SNS, and that the achievements of the coalition were on the way to pulling the rug from under extremist and populist groups in Slovakia.[…]
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In the present study we will use a risk assessment method designed by Vision Consulting Budapest to review the situation of Central and Eastern European countries. We do not believe there is a general risk factor that affects all participants equally. Risk is a relative term; what constitutes risk to some may signify hope or opportunity for others. This is why the subject of risk must be specified in all risk analyses. Since Vision’s most important partners are pre-eminent players in the commercial/business sphere, our model weighs political risk primarily and expressly from the perspective of economic decision-makers. Our opinion is that models that rely exclusively on quantitative methods are inadequate for measuring risk. Rather than composing indices on a technical basis, we believe in methods that rest on analytical knowledge and insight. We strive to determine the risks pertaining to a given political system through a consensus of our analysts. We analyze political risks in eight categories: predictable political events; the possibility of unexpected change; legal security; foreign and security policy risks; public policy alternatives; the role of economic rationality; functionality and governability; and the legitimacy of the given political sphere.1 Subsequently we assign one of fifteen ratings according to the level of political risk, where “A+” denotes the lowest possible risk and “E-” the highest. The basis for the current study was provided in part by Vision’s Eastern European risk assessment, which we published on 28 April 2008.2 Our analysis here deals primarily with Hungary’s political risks, since – as a consulting institute in Budapest – this is the subject area in which our knowledge runs deepest. The underlying analysis of the Hungarian situation was published in April 2008, during the government crisis.
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