“We like to read” by Katherine Mansfield, or online reviews as a starting point for translation criticism

Abstract

Online reviews grow more and more popular in translation studies. They provide an insight into how a common reader perceives a given text and (sometimes) what they think of the translation. This perspective is still missing in translation criticism. It is partly due to the fact that opinions on translation expressed in book reviews tend to be general, repetitive, or subjective; written with no regard to the original text. This, however, is the way in which most people read books. Incorporating online reviews in translation criticism requires finding patterns in them, trying to understand where they come from and what they really say about the translation. This article presents an analysis that attempts to do just that. It is based on online reviews of “Opowiadania” (“Short Stories”) written by Katherine Mansfield and translated into Polish by Magda Heydel, who also wrote the afterword. Many of the book reviews praise the translation, regarding it as excellent. As for the stories themselves, the reviewers focus mostly on Mansfield’s astute observations, intimate, experimental style and social issues that are still relevant today, i.e., elements that are also discussed in the translator’s afterword. The analysis looks at how these elements are realised in the translation, in comparison with previous Polish renditions of the short stories. It demonstrates that the translator kept the orality (long sentences, colloquialisms) of the stream of consciousness, idiolects and children’s language that characterise Mansfield style, which helps explain some of the general feelings expressed by the reviewers.