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    Published : 2025-04-02
    Vol. 73 No. 1 (2025)

    Service, Creativity, or Betrayal? The Old Polish Translation in an Ethical Perspective

    Alina Nowicka-Jeżowa

    https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5917-9015

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.18290/rh25731.9

    Abstract

    The paper explores the ethical challenges associated with literary translation. It confronts contemporary concepts influenced by the so-called “ethical turn” with historical translatological theories that determine the translator’s responsibilities with respect to the translated work, established rules and methods of translation. A brief survey of these theories covers the fundamental directives of Cicero, Horace, and Saint Jerome, their humanistic continuations during the Renaissance, notably the contributions of Leonardo Bruni Aretin, Gianozzo Manetti, Joachim du Bellay, and the Polish scholar Jakub Parkosz of Żurawica. The humanist theory of translation, grounded in Renaissance cultural anthropology and the belief that text is an authentic representation of its author, declined gradually, leading either to the justification of literary theft (Giambattista Marino’s il furto) or the classification of violations of the author’s property as legal offences. I present the views of Polish translators from the early modern era in the broader context of European thought on the ethics of translation. These beliefs reflect diverse attitudes—ranging from doing service to one’s native culture (with a considerable domestication of the translated text) to textual fidelity to show  honesty and respect for its author.

    Keywords:

    Robert Escarpit, creative betrayal, ethical turn, ancient rules of translation, humanist theory, Polish translators of 16th and 17th centuries, interpretatio recta, interpretatio libera, traduttore-traditore, domestication, ethics of translation



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    Roczniki Humanistyczne · ISSN 0035-7707 | eISSN 2544-5200 | DOI: 10.18290/rh
    © The Learned Society of the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin & The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Faculty of Humanities

    Articles are licensed under a Creative Commons  Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)