Translator ethics in non-censored translations of press articles from English into Polish in post-communist Poland

Abstract

The paper aims to test a hypothesis of introducing free speech in Polish translations instead of censored renderings typical of post-World War II reality after 1989 when communists lost the parliamentary elections (4th June) and stopped ruling Poland. The new political reality of a democratic system was reasserted by abolishing the censorship apparatus in 1990. The analysis is based on articles from a magazine Forum. Przegląd Prasy Światowej , which are Polish translations of 10 source texts (STs) - selected articles concerning Polish issues from The New York Times . The STs and their Polish translations have been compared in detail to be able to evaluate the target texts (TTs) according to their correspondence with the STs. In lieu of the censorship rule of hiding unwanted content and manipulating the audience, also with the propaganda language (Newspeak ), after 1990, the only remaining type of information flow blockage was self-censorship or superiors’ interference. The analysis will discover how topics changed, what happened to the language of propaganda, how the contents of STs are revealed in translations, and what translation techniques are applied in the process of transferring the ST message. The questions posed are, first, how accurate the translations after 1990 are, and second, what reasons might have occurred to have avoided the publication of some contents. The analysis will be the basis for evaluating translators’ ethics in ST content delivery by reference to Andrew Chesterman (1997, 2001, 2018), Anthony Pym (2001, 2012), Jeremy Munday (2012), Juliane House (2015), and others.