Przekład literacki na cztery ręce, czyli o warsztacie niemieckiego tandemu tłumaczy Ksiąg Jakubowych Olgi Tokarczuk

Abstract

Literary Translation in Four Hands – the Workshop of the German Translation Tandem of Olga Tokarczuk’s The Books of Jacob

The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk, the Polish Nobel Prize winner in literature, was published in 2014 by Wydawnictwo Literackie (Krakow). The German translation of the novel is the result of the work of the tandem, Lisa Palmes and Lothar Quinkenstein, who by using the TOLEDO platform (Translators in Cultural Exchange) programme of the German Translators Fund, have made a “translation journal” entitled Die Funken der Erlösung. Journal zur Übersetzung des Romans Die Jakobsbücher von Olga Tokarczuk (Kampa) available. Its reading allows us to reconstruct the translation tandem’s successive activities in the preparation for the proper translation process: from the reconstruction of the boundary between history and fiction during the reading of the source texts, through the deconstruction of the image of the main character in the original and its reconstruction in the translation, to the exploration of the colour of the epoch, the polyphonicity and intertextuality of the novel and the definition of their translation strategies.