The tale about a rayok with factories in the background

Abstract

The article addresses the issue of the translation of a poetic feuilleton, which provides illustrative material for other academic research. The achievement of this purpose imposes certain choices on the translator, just as the temporal distance between the creation of the original and the translation does. Therefore, besides presenting practical translation solutions, the article refers to the concept of selecting equivalents from potential choices and proposes using the theory of fuzzy logic, owing to which it is possible to blur the boundaries between the creative freedom of the translator and the necessity of its limitation. 

Fragments of the poetic feuilleton come from the poems published in Russian press in Łódź at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. Their translations were used in a research project devoted to the multicultural literature of Łódź and its presence in the local foreign-language press published in the city at the time. 

As the translated texts concern the reality of Łódź and the problems of its residents, the translation must take into account the realities typical of the city. Consequently, the translator’s decisions were not focused solely on preserving the form and the lexical-semantic plane of the poem. They had to consider the cultural characteristics related to historical distance on the one hand and regional specificity on the other. Moreover, in some cases it was necessary to take into account references to Russian culture (primarily literature) and to decide whether they should be recreated in translation.