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Review: Jean Ward. 2020. The Between-Space of Translation. Literary Sketches. Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego.

Authors:
Explorations: A Journal of Language and Literature, 9 (2021), pp. 71-72
REVIEW
Jean Ward. 2020. The Between-Space of Translation. Literary Sketches. Gdańsk:
Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego.
DOI: 10.25167/EXP13.21.9.9
Ewa Rajewska (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań)
ORCID: 0000-0002-8561-0638
Much has been written about the conceptualisation of translation and its metaphors.
Translation Studies have for some time emphasized its double entanglement due to the
fact that translation exists in two worlds, linguistic and cultural, following the laws of
belonging and autonomy. Brian Harris once called translation a “bi-text” functioning in
the two dimensions of here and there. Importantly, Jean Ward’s “translation zone” lies in
between. As her collection of essays entitled The Between-Space of Translation testifies,
this “in-betweenness” has several dimensions, too. The most obvious is a “specific border
terrain, one particular literary, linguistic and cultural between that of “English and
Polish” (9). Ward was born in England, graduated in English from Oxford and took up
her interrupted academic career at the University of Gdańsk, where she received her PhD
and where she heads the Division of Research into English Language Literature. Her
comments on translation as presented in The Between-Space come from between or, more
accurately, at the intersection of her fields of interest and professional activities as
university lecturer, literary translator, translation scholar, essayist and critic. The generic
affiliation of The Between-Space of Translation is also borderline as Ward has it, her
book is “not purely a discussion of translation, nor is it a work of pure literary criticism.
Rather, it is something in between” (15). I would argue that in the phrase “in between”
the preposition “in” is also significant. Ward herself openly admits it: “The reflections in
this book are based on the experience of living in, and between, two cultures” (21).
While living “in” and “between” two cultures, two literatures, two languages and two
discourses about translation, Ward manages to collate in her critical interpretations many
different scholars and authors. Thus, Ronald Knox, Michael Edwards, Seamus Heaney,
Octavio Paz, Theo Hermans, Lawrence Venuti, Michael Cronin, Mathew Reynolds (to
name some of the most frequently discussed authors) meet Edward Balcerzan,
Małgorzata Łukasiewicz, Stanisław Barańczak, Jerzy Jarniewicz and Agnieszka
Romanowska (among others). Wilfred Owen encounters Józef Czechowicz, and Geoffrey
Hill faces up to Czesław Miłosz. For Ward, a literary translation, which may be identified
as an act of reading and a hermeneutic enterprise, is a meeting place. Central to her book
is the question “What is translation?,” answered in subsequent chapters with the
metaphors of encounter, friendship, loss and gain, colonisation, exploration, and
72 EWA RAJEWSKA
hospitability. It should be noted that these common metaphors gain here new meanings
and non-obvious implications.
Importantly, Ward refers to the well-known metaphor of “Translation as Border
Crossing” (this is the title of one of the chapters). Such a border is not exactly a line but
rather a “between-space” or “border terrain.” As Ward notes: “I am thinking of the idea
of crossing a border not as a conqueror who comes to subdue the conquered, but as
someone looking to meet others on equal terms. I am thinking of borders as places of
meeting, permeable areas of mutual enrichment, territories rather than lines, and even if
lines, then lines which one is invited and encouraged to cross” (46). The meeting of
literary texts from both sides of this border or meeting with a literary text from the
other side of the border suddenly reveals “cultural history [i.e. also literary history]
enshrined in language” (51). We might put it differently: “A translated text, if read
beside the original, will almost always reveal something in that original, and in the
language in which the original is written, which is not obvious until the translation draws
attention to it; it will also often point to unsuspected or underexplored potential in the
language of the translation” (22). The thesis is illustrated with many illuminating
examples, some merely touched upon, others precisely and brilliantly analyzed. Ward
concludes: “The metaphor of the border as a place of meeting, where the familiar and the
foreign come together not to do battle with each other but to entertain each other in
mutual ‘hospitability of words,’ provides an image of translation that is helpful here,
implying as it does the equality and the equal ‘visibility’ of the participants in the
encounter” (53).
Elegant. Revealing. Full of insights. A beautiful read.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
AUTHOR’S BIO: Ewa Rajewska is Professor of Polish Philology at Adam Mickiewicz
University in Poznań. A translation scholar, editor and literary translator from English,
she heads the M.A. Translation Specialization at AMU’s Institute of Polish Philology
(www.przekladowa.amu.edu.pl). She is the author of Stanisław Barańczak poeta i
tłumacz [Stanisław Barańczak as Poet and Translator, 2007] and Domysł portretu: O
twórczości oryginalnej i przekładowej Ludmiły Marjańskiej [The Implied Portrait: On the
Literary and Translation Works of Ludmiła Marjańska, 2016]. She co-edited and co-
authored the monograph Stulecie poetek polskich. Przekroje, tematy, interpretacje [The
Century of Polish Women Poets. Studies, Themes, Interpretations, 2020] Her translations
from the English include Kenneth Burke’s The Philosophy of Literary Form into Polish.
E-MAIL: ewa.rajewska@amu.edu.pl
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