Rev. Henryk Paprocki’s Contribution to Poland’s Orthodox Translation

Abstract

The article discloses the history and state of religious translation in Poland via the prism of one confession (the Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church) and of one translator (Rev. Prof Henryk Paprocki). Although the translation history of the Orthodox Liturgy in Poland is not so short, its achievements centred around the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom and prayer-books, while the large-scale program of translating Orthodox liturgical texts into Polish is still a one-man enterprise. This state of arts postpones the time of possessing the full Polish-language corpus of Orthodox liturgical texts, but it also means that the academic and ecclesiastical reception of these translations is slow and sporadic, and in many cases, the translator remains alone in shaping translation strategies for highly authoritative texts as those for liturgical praxis.