Přednáška dr. Krzystofa Pulawskeho Correcting Source Language Texts in Translation

Dr. Krzystof Pulawski: Correcting Source Language Texts in Translation

One of the biggest dilemmas of all time for the translators is the problem of correcting
different texts they translate. How often do they pause over their laptops and ponder upon a
midnight dreary: TO CORRECT, OR NOT TO CORRECT? And then sometimes they
make certain changes, and sometimes they do not, often feeling guilty and uncertain about
their choices.
It seems that this Hamletic question needs a more systematic approach, which I would like
to offer during my lecture. We will look at some texts, see if they should be corrected,
what those corrections would depend on, and how we can justify them.

Krzysztof Puławski, English philologist, translator, research assistant at the University of
Białystok, who collaborated with the Institute of Applied Linguistics, Warsaw University. His
publications concern broadly defined literary translations and include many articles and a
monograph on Polish translations of the books in Hiberno-English: Przetłumaczyć Irlandię
(Białystok 2020).

Apart from that Puławski translated over a hundred books from English by authors such as
David Lodge, Tracy Chevalier, Raymond Carver, Flann O'Brien, Michael Ondaatje, Bruce
Chatwin, E. L. Doctorow or Joe Biden, and poems by William Blake and William Butler
Yeats, as well as dozens of plays including those by Andrew Bovell, Jordan Tannahill,
Max Posner and Jez Butterworth, and songs by Michael Flanders and Tom Lehrer, among
others.

Puławski is the author of plays, three of which appeared in "Dialog". (4/2005, 4/2008, 7-
8/2016 co-authored with Tetiana Logoida), with which he also cooperates as a translator.
He published one volume of poems called Martwiątka (Deadlings) (Białostocka
Filologiczna Kolekcja, 2017) and a book of short-stories Mikołajek w szkole Dobrej
zmiany (Little Nicholas in Present-Day Polish School)) (Kielce 2019) and a short novel
Pan Walczyk w mieście B (Mr Waltz in the city of B). His main fields of interests are
literary translations, poetry/songs and theatre.
He lives in Supraśl in Podlasie region in Poland.