Zapisana w cudzym archiwum: re/dekonstrukcja postaci Bolesławy Kopelówny na podstawie spuścizny Zygmunta Żuławskiego

Abstract

The main aim of the paper is to present the private and professional biography of Bolesława Kopelówna – a female translator from English active in the interwar period (1918–1939) in Poland. Unusually prolific as a translator, criticized by her contemporaries and then forgotten, Kopelówna authored dozens of translations from various genres: including fiction, children’s literature, and romance novels. She was also an interpreter and worked in the field of specialized translation. She traveled often and was engaged in the socialist movement in Poland. As an official archive of Kopelówna does not exist, I would like to re/deconstruct her biography through Zygmunt Żuławski’s – her friend and colleague – personal papers: letters to Kopelówna, diaries and some enigmatic traces of her own presence in his archive. By applying tools from translation history, especially contemporary findings on archives of female writers, I attempt to answer the question why Kopelówna was so intensely criticized. Microhistorical study on female translator, through the extension of the notion of an archive takes part in the discussion on the potential of translation history in literary history and cultural studies.