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Article published In:
Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics
Vol. 35:2 (2022) ► pp.626–649

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

ORCID logo | University of Gdańsk

This paper explores two different translation strategies to the issue of sound (operetta) stylisation in the poem “Hermitage” [Pustelnia] by Wisława Szymborska (1981), winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. The methodology borrows from Gideon Toury’s Descriptive 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.

Keywords: sound stylisation, literary translation, translation strategy, comparative analysis, polysystem theory
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Primary aspects of Szymborska’s poetry
  • 2.Methodology
    • 2.1Descriptive translation studies and polysystem theory
    • 2.2Sound instrumentation
    • 2.3Communicative-cognitive approach to translation
  • 3.Phonosemantic analysis of two translations
    • 3.1Analysis of the translations of the first stanza
    • 3.2Analysis of the translations of the second stanza
    • 3.3Analysis of the translations of the third and fourth stanzas
    • 3.4Analysis of the translations of the fifth stanza
    • 3.5Analysis of the translations of the sixth and seventh stanzas
  • 4.Conclusions
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 21 September 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/resla.20029.god
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