Translator’s biography and microhistory

A contribution to the history of the literary translator

Abstract

Microhistory is the historiographical practice of examining a single element in order to elude generalisation and enable more general phenomena to be specified. The single element can be an individual/a person, but also a small collective. The author considers whether this is a method that can be applied to the study of a literary translator. Existing biographies of translators were used to reconstruct a microhistory of Polish translators of Hamlet active between 1797 and 1939. The reconstruction of the microhistory was further enabled by methods used to describe translators’ biographies developed by the sociology of translation. The application of two methods allowed to reconstruct the image of the translator of Hamlet into Polish in the nineteenth century, and to determine his parameters such as gender (male), origin (landed gentry), social ambitions (desire for social advancement into the intelligentsia class), education (educated person), passions (a person writing his own literary texts), profession and source of livelihood (not treating translation activity as the main source of income).

The usage of microhistory for Translation Studies is helpful to identify trends prevailing in the translation field and situations common to translators working in the same time frame and geographical-historical space. At the same time, the con- clusions obtained allowed to complement the general history of literary translation in Poland and contribute to the separation of the history of the literary translator in Poland.