Two translation approaches to sound orchestration in Wisława Szymborska’s poem “Hermitage”

Abstract

AbstractThis paper explores two different translation strategies to the issue of sound (operetta) stylisation in the poem “Hermitage” [Pustelnia] by WisławaSzymborska (1981), winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. The methodology borrows from Gideon Toury’sDescriptive Translation Studies(1995,2012), Itamar Even-Zohar’s polysystem theory (1978,1990). A comparative study of two different translations of the poem conducted by two teams of prominent translators is carried out. This method of exploration intends to reveal the underlying translation mode, the first one towards the text’s accuracy and the second one towards the text’s adequacy.It is argued that the translators’ domesticating procedures, preeminent in the second translation, succeed in recreating the invariant source sound stylisation and the poem’s discursiveness, though at the expense of the semantics of the original. Relying on polysystem theory, the author concludes with the correspondence between the target texts’ divergent positions in the polysystem and their translation modes, each adopted in a different historical and cultural context.