Perspective in translation : an analysis of Wisława Szymborska's poem "Niebo" and its translations into German and English

Bibliogr. s. 363

The paper is concerned with perspective, which has been presented on the basis of Wisława Szymborska's poem: "Niebo" and its translations into German (by Karl Dedecius) and English (by Stanisław Barańczak and Clare Cavanagh). In the context of translation it seems reasonable to analyse perspective from the point of view of cognitive linguistics as the (view)perspective - the phenomenon comprising such components as: "vantage point, orientation, mental transfer, mental scanning, viewing arrangement, subjectivity/objectivity, setting/participant distinction and reference point phenomena" (Langacker 1995: 91), the same as seeing it as "interpretation perspective." It is exemplified by a two-stage analysis of language differences in the translations, namely the cognitive analysis based on the rules of cognitve grammar of Langacker (1995, 2005), enabling a translator to choose translation equivalents (Tabakowska 2000: 176) and an analysis based on literature studies, the aim of which is to show how the translation equivalents influence the meaning of the original text. The cognitive analysis has shown that a really important factor in translation is to include two elements of the perspective: the relation between the subject and object of conceptualisation, the so-called subjectivity and the vantage point.