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Article published In:
Towards Culture(s) of Dialogue: Communicating Unity and Diversity through Language and Discourse
Edited by Urszula Okulska, Grzegorz Kowalski and Urszula Topczewska
[Language and Dialogue 12:2] 2022
► pp. 268–283

Cross-cultural dialogue in the Polish-English translation of neologisms

The case of science-fiction prose by Stanisław Lem

| University of Warsaw

The article discusses selected neologisms that Stanisław Lem, a Polish science-fiction writer, created for two of his numerous short stories featuring Ijon Tichy, a space traveler. It is not only their surprising and appealing structure that makes these creations and their English counterparts an interesting subject for analysis, but also, and more importantly, the fact that they carry specific allusions, which renders them humorous in their contextual appearance. All these characteristics contribute to a translation challenge present in the neologisms analyzed. The article focuses on how – and with what result – this challenge has been approached by the translators who handled it in an endeavor to expand the dialogic space between the author and his audience.

Keywords: neologism, allusion, literary translation, dialogue, science-fiction, translation techniques
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Sources of examples
  • 3.ST proper name neologisms and their characteristics
  • 4.Mechanisms of creating ST proper name neologism
  • 5.ST proper name neologisms in translation
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 8 August 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ld.00125.sal
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