Remarks on the translation of titles from German into Polish and vice vers

Abstract

The article discusses problems related to translating titles of films, literary works and academic publications from German to Polish and vice-versa. The authors emphasize aspects common to translation of all titles, and analyse typical problems occurring while rendering film and literary titles. In case of titles of academic publications formal and content-related changes are considerably smaller than, for instance, in film titles. This is due to the fact that while working on the latter translators take into account not only linguistic norms and conventions, but also references to the cultural background. A title has to be equally catchy in both source and target languages, and that is why translators perform certain operations when they are convinced that literal translation might yield poor results. Producing a title not related to the original is a borderline occurrence. The translator frequently needs to seek the golden mean between the content and form of the original and the requirements of the target language (linguistic norms, conventions, traditions).