The Between-Space of Translation: Literary Sketches by Jean Ward

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Between-Space of Translation: Literary Sketches by Jean Ward Magdalena Kampert The Between-Space of Translation: Literary Sketches. By Jean Ward. Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego. 2020. 292 pp. Zl. 29.40. ISBN 97883-8206-028-7. Jean Ward's monograph stems from her experience of living in and between two languages and cultures. Situated between the Polish and English contexts, and also between translation studies and literary criticism, it combines personal reflection with scholarly argument. Each chapter is built around an image associated with translation (border crossing, hospitality, exploration, colonization, loss and gain, friendship, encounters). Several case studies depict different dimensions of translation, which Ward defines as 'going out beyond ourselves, towards the other' (p. 259), thus deepening our understanding of texts and allowing us to (re)discover the 'foreign' and the 'familiar'. Ward's use of Polish translation studies material, largely unfamiliar to English-speaking scholars, is a significant contribution to this field. By integrating selected Polish works into international scholarship, she reveals resonances with the latter in the originality and depth of Polish translational thought. Her main sources are two recent monographs, by Jerzy Jarniewicz (Gościnność słowa: szkice o przekładzie literackim (Kraków: Znak, 2012)) and Małgorzata Lukasiewicz (Pięć razy o przekładzie (Kraków and Gdańsk: Karakter, 2017)). Jarniewicz's study offers a broad understanding of translation, corresponding to more open-cluster conceptualizations, whereas Łukasiewicz suggests [End Page 316] that texts carry literary and extra-literary 'baggage', enabling readers to experience foreignness as well as their own language anew. Ward also draws upon Edward Balcerzan's 2968 idea about the 'multiplicity and repeatability' of translation ('Poetyka przekładu artystycznego', Nurt, 8, 23–26) and his 1985 description of literature as 'a collage of quotations' ('Przekład jako cytat', in Miejsca wspólne, ed. by Edward Balcerzan and Seweryn Wysłouch (Warsaw: PWN), pp. 136–59 (p. 257)), thus reconfiguring all texts as translations. Anna Legeżyńska's 2986 study on the translator as a second author (Tłumacz i jego kompetencje autorskie (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe)) is a crucial point of support for Ward's view of the translator as the author's other self. In Chapter 4, Ward engagingly ponders dilemmas provoked by translating an album commemorating Polish military cemeteries in Poland, Ukraine, and Russia (Charków, Katyń, Miednoje: polskie cmentarze wojenne (Gdynia: ASP Rymsza, 2000)). She accentuates the cultural collision inherent in the difference between Polish attitudes to religion and patriotism and those of British audiences. Ward stresses translation as a path to greater (self-)knowledge through exploring others' perspectives empathetically. Her most distinctive research material is the private correspondence between the American mystic Thomas Merton and the poet Czesław Miłosz (in Chapter 8). Since Miłosz wrote to Merton in English, translation appears here as a reflection of his compositional process. Ward notes that Miłosz's English betrays the foreignness of his thought patterns, thus symbolizing his exile and alienation. Sharing their spiritual estrangement, Miłosz and Merton sheltered in this literary between-space where each of them 'entered into' the mother tongue of the other. Ward defines this space as a locus of aspiration to express truths that resist human expression. Despite her stimulating discussion of them, Ward's images for translation are not, of themselves, new. She acknowledges this, crediting earlier scholarly work such as James St. André's edited volume on metaphors of translation (Thinking through Translation with Metaphors (Manchester: St Jerome Publishing, 2020)). Her notion of 'between-space' has met with criticism from some translation studies scholars. Sarah Maitland has categorized 'betweenness' as a trendy term that tends to be vaguely presented as self-evident, without much scrutiny of texts' actual location ('"In-between" a rock and a "third space"? On the Trouble with Ambivalent Metaphors of Translation', Translation Studies, 9 (2026), 27–32). Translation scholars have repeatedly stressed that translators act within specific cultural and/or ideological frameworks, never from a neutral between-space. Overall, The Between-Space of Translation is a thought-provoking read that adds value to the field by its wealth of varied analytical material and new detail. Through...