Polish Texts Research Articles

Functional and Stylistic Equivalence by Translating the Facts of Code-Switching (on the Material of Russian Verbs in the Polish «Version R» of A. Burgess’ Novel «A Clockwork Orange»)

The article is devoted to the analysis of Russian verb inclusions in one of the Polish versions of the translation of A. Burgess’s novel «A Clockwork Orange» under the title «Mechaniczna pomarańcza. Wersja R» (1999) by R. Stiller. The Russian language is deliberately used by the translator to construct a special «slang» Nadsat in its Polish version in order to give the text an appropriate expressiveness within the language play. 117 verbs selected from the 1,000-item Dictionary of «Unintelligible Words» accompanying the translation represent Russian-Polish code-switchings and other hybrid contact phenomena. The analysis is intended to reveal the functional and stylistic equivalence of the translator’s strategies of introducing Russian verbal borrowings in the Polish text on the formal, semantic and communicative levels. Verbal borrowings of Russian origin are classified depending on the strategy of their incorporating into the text, as well as the degree and level of its adaptation.

Lektura patograficzna Dzienników raka Audre Lorde i Lewej, wspomnienie prawej Krystyny Kofty

This article confronts two acclaimed cancerographies dealing with breast cancer, Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals and Krystyna Kofta’s Lewa, wspomnienie prawej [The Left, Recollections of the Right]. The former was published in the 1980s in the United States; the latter, which contains sections from the writer’s diary written in 2002, was published the following year in Poland. Each memoir belongs to a different time and a socio- historical context; yet by discounting all the differences the article tries to identify the core pathographic readings, which are assumed to function primarily as social facts. Finally, the article argues the American critical and sociological understanding of the illness narrative is not always compatible with Polish cultural codes and conventions, and may lead to a misreading of Polish texts in that category.

Specyfika staropolszczyzny a anotacja gramatyczna. O lematyzacji tekstu staropolskiego

Specyfika staropolszczyzny a anotacja gramatyczna. O lematyzacji tekstu staropolskiego

Trzy sposoby na odczytanie teorii Dąbrowskiego. Nie wszystko jest tu jasne. Konstruowanie podejścia neo-Dąbrowskiego

This article analyzes Dąbrowski’s theory of positive disintegration referring to current debates in the USA which discussed certain parts of the theory (e.g. overexcitabilities) and neglected others (e.g. dynamisms). This approach caused simplification of the theoretical framework proposed by Dąbrowski and inscribed it into the narrow quantitative understanding of science. Lastly, Piechowski proposed to significantly modify Dąbrowski’s theory and to even discard the two lowest levels of development in theory. This caused a reaction by Tillier and Mendaglio who tried to defend the original concepts of the author of the theory. This article juxtaposed these two interpretations of the theory and shows a third possible interpretation based on English and Polish texts written by Dąbrowski. This interpretation solved problems present in the previously mentioned approaches to the theory and shows the way forward into more systematized theoretical research which is seriously needed if we want to further develop theory and its main notions.

The Translation of the Septuagint by Rev. Prof. Remigiusz Popowski. History, Editions, Significance and an Analysis of Translation Strategy and Techniques

Newer and newer Bible translations from original languages tend to appear regularly. Their authors pursue a plethora of strategies, from interlinear to philological to dynamic ones, taking as the source text not only the Hebrew, but also the Greek canon. Since the 1980s, the books of the Greek Bible have been translated into German, English, Italian, Spanish and French; ten years ago, this group was comple­mented by the Polish rendering made by Rev. Prof. Remigiusz Popowski. Though enthusiastically received, the text was not much researched. This article is intended to make up for this paucity and present the Polish text of the Septuagint from the perspective of its bibliological process and that of descriptive translation studies: a brief account of its historical background, the author of the translation, a record of editions and the significance for the Polish biblical milieu is followed by a closer analysis and exemplification of strate­gies and techniques adopted by the author.

New Phraseological Compounds with “Dywan” in Modern Polish Language

The subject of discussion in this article are new phraseological compounds with the component dywan, which have been in use since the 1990s in Polish texts. These compounds, not yet recorded in language dictionaries, have emerged under the influence of the English language. They refer to phrases related to the English combinations of roll out the red carpet (for someone) and pull from under someone // something or pull the rug from under someone’s feet. The article analyses the ways these expressions function in Polish texts, considering their formal structure, compatibility with minimal context, and meaning. The research shows that these new combinations, inspired by the English language, consist of three phrases: ktoś rozwinął, rozwija, rozłożył, rozkłada less commonly rozściela, rozścieli, rozpostarł, rozpościerał czerwony dywan, less commonly czerwone dywany dla kogoś, przed kimś – meaning ‘someone officially and attentively invites or receives important guests, usually from the worlds of politics, business, culture, etc.’; ktoś less commonly coś rozwinął(o), rozwija, rozłożył(o), rozkłada, less commonly rozściela, rozścieli(o), rozpostarł(o), rozpościerał(o) czerwony dywan, less commonly czerwone dywany dla kogoś, czegoś, przed kimś, przed czymś – meaning ‘someone, less commonly something, opens up to someone, something, invites someone, something to something, somewhere; someone, something facilitates something for someone, the acquisition of something, getting somewhere, especially through special treatment’; ktoś less commonly coś wyciąga, wyciągnął (-ęło), wyrywa, wyrwał(o) etc. dywan, dywanik, chodnik spod (nóg, stóp) komuś, kogoś, czego – meaning ‘someone, less commonly something, surprises, has surprised someone with something, disorients, has disoriented someone; weakens, has weakened someone, something, withdraws, has withdrawn support for someone, something, harms, has harmed someone, something’.

Jak by nie było, to gdzie nie spojrzeć, tak się mówi i pisze

This article is an attempt to make a prescriptive evaluation of phraseological units such as jak było, co by nie zrobić, kto by nie przyszedł, gdzie by nie spojrzeć, gdzie nie spojrzę, gdzie się nie ruszysz, etc. They have been present in the Polish language for at least 150 years, but are still evaluated negatively, as unnecessary Russicisms and illogical constructs. The discussions carried out in this text, supported by numerous examples from various types of Polish texts, lead to the conclusion that we are dealing with a phraseological model containing the components by nie as a construcyional axis or nie, in sentences that are formally negated yet in fact containing the reinforcement of a judgment. The phraseologised units have demonstrated their functional usefulness and should be accepted in the usage norm of Polish.

Римите в поезията на Константи Илдефонс Галчински (особености при превода на български език)

The article is devoted to the rhymes in the poetry of Polish author Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński and the ways they have been translated into the Bulgarian language. First, distinguishing features of the poetic text and the concept of rhyme are discussed, after which basic characteristics of rhymes in Polish poetry are noted. An overview of Gałczyński’s translations into Bulgarian leads to the main focus of the paper which concerns translators’ difficulties in converting the original rhyming pairs into the target language. The analysis is based on three translations of one poem: “Rozmowa liryczna” (“Lyrical Dialogue”), made by two prominent translators, Parvan Stefanov and Dimitar Pantеleev between 1960 and 1984. The observations indicate that the Bulgarian versions of the poem modify the original rhyming patterns due to the specificity of each language, as well as the translators’ individual aesthetic preferences. Almost all rhyming lexical units in the Polish text are adjacent and feminine, while there is a significantly more frequent use of cross and masculine rhymes in the three Bulgarian versions. Also, the translators refuse to preserve several irregular rhymes. The article concludes that the approaches of Stefanov and Panteleev are related to general trends in translating rhymed poetry from Polish into Bulgarian. Among them, the increased presence of masculine rhymes, largely dictated by the analytic nature of the Bulgarian language, seems prominent.

Compound predicates in Boleslav Prus's novel "Pharaoh" and in its Ukrainian translation

In Ukrainian studies, not enough attention is paid to the problems of translating Polish predicates into Ukrainian, although both theory and practice of translation need addressing the mentioned problems. The article deals with the types of compound nouns and compound verb predicates, extracted by cross-selection from the test of the novel "Pharaoh" by Boleslav Prus and from the text of the Ukrainian translation of this novel, which belongs to Maria Prygar. In the course of the study, the comparison method was used to compare predicates in the Polish language and their translations in the Ukrainian language, and the descriptive method was used to describe the obtained research results. It has been found that the constructions of compound predicates with linking verbs być, chciec, musieć, móc, poła, niepodobna, trzeba, warto, pałyda, wypada, wyłać, pałyda, etc., are typical for the Polish text. With linking verbs, infinitives appear or usually nouns, adjectives, participles in the nominal part of the compound nominal predicate. Methods of translating compound noun and compound verb predicates into Ukrainian have been identified and described in detail. The peculiarities of the translation of verb connections and nominal parts of compound predicates are characterized. It was found that the translation of predicates can be direct and can be performed using translation transformations. Such transformations as part-language replacement, replacement of the predicate form, replacement of control forms, replacement of the sentence structure, replacement with a contextual lexical counterpart are actively used in translation. It was found that the transformations presented in the text of the Ukrainian translation meet the modern requirements for translation, the main of which is compliance with the norms of the language of translation. The obtained research results will be useful for translators from the Polish language, for the formation of a coherent theory of translation from closely related languages.

Specyfika staropolszczyzny a anotacja gramatyczna

OLD POLISH LANGUAGE SPECIFICITY AND GRAMMATICAL ANNOTATION: TENSE AND MOOD CATEGORIES This article is dedicated to the grammatical annotation of Old Polish texts. The problem with the annotation of tense and mood in medieval texts has been discussed. It results from the absence of the verb as a grammatical class, the varied ways of constructing the forms of tense and mood, and the mobility of the elements of these forms. Due to the difficulties related to the material studied, as well as technical issues, it was necessary to implement an additional level of annotation. The article discusses the rules of the second annotation, and identifies forms and constructions that are problematic to interpret in grammatical and syntactical basis. Differences in the way of understanding of agglutination category have been shown (in relation to other corpora of historical and contemporary texts). The work on the preparation of the “Tense and Mood” search engine has demonstrated that Old Polish apocryphal texts document the development of Polish verbal inflection.

Translation and Transmission

Translation and Transmission

Verbification of Feminine Forms of Adjectives Można ‘Posible ’, Niemożna ‘Imposible ’ and Niepodobna ‘Imposible ’ – Corpus -Based Aproach

Abstract The article is devoted to the process taking place in the Middle Polish period, which led to the transformation of nominative, singular, feminine forms of three adjectives (można ‘possible’, niemożna ‘impossible’ and niepodobna ‘impossible’) into verbal lexemes (the so-called predicatives). In this respect, the predicative uses of these forms in the texts collected in the Electronic Corpus of 17th- and 18th-century Polish Texts (up to 1772) were investigated. The progressive verbification of adjectival forms was considered to be indicated by three changes in the constructions where these forms played the role of a predicate: supersession of connections with feminine verb forms by connections with neuter forms, limiting the connections with verbs to the auxiliary verb być ‘to be’, and disappearance of connections with the personal form of the verb być in the present tense. The research results show that both forms acquired the two most important features characteristic for predicatives during the 17th century. The third of the analysed properties characterizes the form można/niemożna from the second half of the 19th century, and the process of its acquisition by the form niepodobna has not ended yet.

Keywords in Religious Literature of 17th and 18th Centuries in Light of the Data from the Electronic Corpus of 17th - and 18th -Century Polish Texts

Abstract This paper discusses the application of standard keyword extraction methods from corpus linguistics for the study of old Polish language. The unfolding analysis is based on writings included in the Electronic Corpus of 17th- and 18th-century Polish Texts. The aim of this analysis is to select keywords from over two million tokens derived from texts tagged as religion in the corpus and compare them with the reference corpus containing over nine million tokens, while verifying the applicability of the log-likelihood method for the analysis of old Polish language and developing a part of the research model.

Specyfika staropolszczyzny a anotacja gramatyczna. O potrzebie nowych wartości kategorii

OLD POLISH LANGUAGE SPECIFICITY AND GRAMMATICAL ANNOTATION: ON THE NEED FOR NEW CATEGORY VALUES The paper is focused on the grammatical annotation of Old Polish texts. The authors discuss the necessity to use unusual grammatical category values: 0 and X. It occurs when any of the values is impossible to determine (e.g. due to damage to the manuscript or insufficient syntactic/semantic context) or a word takes no value in a given category (e.g. an unstated adjective). The article presents factors influencing the choice of 0 and X values. It shows those grammatical classes and categories in whose annotation the use of these values has been highly significant.

Barokowa polszczyzna w internecie, czyli Elektroniczny słownik języka polskiego XVII i XVIII wieku

BAROQUE POLISH IN THE INTERNET OR THE ELECTRONIC DICTIONARY OF POLISH IN THE 17TH AND 18TH CENTURIES In 2021, the Electronic Dictionary of Polish Language of the 17th and 18th Centuries (e-SXVII) was given the 4th edition Award of the Linguistics Committee of the Polish Academy of Sciences for outstanding scientific achievements in the field of linguistics. The award was granted in the category of team work carried out by Prof. Włodzimierz Gruszczyński PhD together with the Studio of the History of Polish Language of the 17th and 18th Centuries IJP PAN under his management, where e-SXVII is being created. The dictionary has been recognized as “an achievement in producing linguistic resources or tools”. The article reports on the history of the studio and introduces the evolution of conceptual works, especially after the decision to suspend further publication of SXVII in paper form (2004) and transform it into the first Polish dictionary created initially in the electronic form. It also deals with detailed issues regarding the canon of sources, structure and content (shape) of individual elements of the entry and media structure, and relations with other digital collections (especially the Electronic Corpus of Polish Texts from the 17th and 18th Centuries). The authors of the article also describe an important IT tool created for the needs of this dictionary.

Gombrowicz in Transnational Context: Translation, Affect, and Politics

Gombrowicz in Transnational Context: Translation, Affect, and Politics

O nowym przekładzie Pentezylei Szymona Szymonowica (Szymon Szymonowic, Pentesilea / Pentezylea, przełożyła i komentarzem opatrzyła Elwira Buszewicz, Wydawnictwo Neriton 2022, ss. 207, ISBN: 978-83-67245-15-9)

In the oeuvre of Szymon Szymonowic, an outstanding Polish poet of the late Renaissance, Latin works occupy a prominent place, which led to him being called the Polish Pindar. One of his works is the tragedy Penthesileia that continues the themes of the Trojan myth. Printed for the first time in Zamość (1618), the work was not fully translated until 1778. Parts of the work were translated later. The latest translation by Elwira Buszewicz combines a vocabulary understandable to modern readers with a desire to reproduce the poetic artistry of the Latin original and a solid philological commentary. The bilingual edition with parallel printing of the Latin and Polish texts, which makes it possible to follow the translation continuously, was preceded by an extensive scholarly introduction. Its author outlined the state of research on Penthesileia and pointed out the antecedents of the theme of the Amazons in Greek, Roman, medieval, and modern literary traditions.

“And hop from Riga to Krakow…”: (Un)traditional Polish Text in the Cycle of Poems “The Krakow Trumpeter“ by Sergey Moreino

This article focuses on the issue of so-called Polish text of Russian culture in the poetic cycle Krakovskiĭ trubach [The Krakow Trumpeter] (1989–1990) by Sergey Moreino, a Russian poet and translator, who currently lives in Latvia. Traditional semiotic patterns and national stereotypes which existed in Soviet culture (Poland as a Big Cemetery, Poland as a Big Border, Romantic Poland, etc.) had a long-term impact on post-Soviet literature. As it turns out, however, in the case of Sergei Moreino, who consciously kept distance from any Polonophilia moods of the 1960s and 70s, there emerged innovative ways of presenting Poland, and especially the urban space of Krakow.

Proper names of biblical provenance in Wacław Potocki’s poetry

This article presents the results of an analysis covering a portion of the vocabulary found in Wacław Potocki’s literary works. The examinayion of the lexical structure of the poet’s writings was limited to the biblical proper names coming from the three-volume edition of the poet’s Dzieła (Works) (Kukulski 1987). The material was excerpted using the corpus method and the Electronic Corpus of 17th- and 18th-century Polish Texts (until 1772). The aim of this article is to divide the collected biblisms according to the onomastic classification and to discuss the findings of their functional analysis. The Bible was a significant source of creative and ideological inspiration for the 17th-century author, which was reflected in the presented collection of proper names, with the anthroponyms that fulfilled allusive and content functions winning the greatest share. The study is concluded with a compilation of the outcomes of the comparative analysis performed with regard to the frequency of biblical proper names, cetified in W. Potocki’s Dzieła and in the corpus of Baroque texts.

Wkład ks. Konstantego Michalskiego do skarbca kultury europejskiej

Rev. Konstanty Michalski, CM, (1879-1947), a philosopher, Thomist, professor and rector of the Jagiellonian University as well as an active member of the Historical-Philosophical Department of the Polish Academy of Learning; he was chairman of the Commission of the History of Philosophy in Poland and Vice-Director of the Department. In 1924, he initiated the Catholic Scientific Institute in Kraków. He experienced the horrors of the concentration camp in Sachsenhausen near Berlin. Michalski’s academic achievements in the field of the history of medieval thought include three thematic groups: Polish philosophy, Western philosophy and philosophical-theological thought of Dante Alighieri. While investigating the 14th century philosophical trends and problems of Scholasticism, Michalski concluded that the dynamics of mediaeval thought was strictly related to the reception of Aristotle’s works and their Arabic and Greek commentators. Together with Aleksander Birkenmajer he put forward a project of a critical edition of the Latin translations of Aristotle’s works, Latin translations of the Arabic and Jewish thinkers as well as the best medieval commentaries on the works of the Stagirite and independent philosophical treatises. On behalf of the Polish Academy of Learning Michalski presented a project of the editorial series Corpus philosophorum medii aevii to the Union Académique Internationale (International Union of Academies) in Brussels in 1928. The Union accepted the proposal of the two medievalists from Kraków in 1930. Michalski gave great impetus to Aristotelian studies, which made medievalists continue their work until today. Corpus philosophorum medii aevii is the most significant and greatest contribution to research on mediaeval thought, continued by scientific centres in Poland and abroad. Michalski reached the conclusion that only getting familiar with the main Western trends would allow him to fathom the doctrinal currents of Polish medieval philosophy. From 1920, he stopped investigating Polish Scholasticism and began seeking its sources in the main trends of Western philosophy of the 14 century. He was not so much interested in schools and systems as in the issues discussed in the 14th century, their formulations and proposed solutions. Michalski was the first Polish scholar who raised research on the history of philosophy to a European level by investigating the sources and carrying out independent studies on fields that had been little known or examined. At the same time, he was the first Polish scholar who explored the main trends in the 14th century philosophy in France and England, contributing to European science to a considerable extent. His achievements are permanent and notable. He studied from the historical-critical perspective over 360 philosophical texts in Polish, English, French, German and Italian libraries. He showed numerous parallels, analogies and similarities in problem-doctrinal areas between medieval philosophy on the one hand and modern and contemporary philosophy on the other. The outcome of his research activities has been included permanently in fundamental textbooks for medieval philosophy. However, his research was not limited to perceiving the main late medieval philosophical currents that dominated teaching at the universities in Oxford, Paris and Kraków. He also studied the texts of ancient and medieval philosophers, especially Saint Thomas Aquinas, at the same time referring to contemporary thought. Problems of contemporary philosophy inspired him to research the Middle Ages. The ideas of Max Scheler, Nicolai Hartmann, Roman Ingarden or Jan Łukasiewicz paved the way for him to make discoveries in the14th century philosophy.