https://doi.org/10.31261/PS_P.2025.36.16
Based on the translation of the novel Nie trzeba głośno mówić [You Mustn’t Speak Aloud] by Józef Mackiewicz, whose action takes place during the Second World War, mainly in the eastern territories known in Polish as Kresy Wschodnie, the author of the article analyzes several terms that pose special challenges to the translator: Rzeczpospolita, Kresy, kresowość, krajowość. The very notion of Rzeczpospolita (Republic) is a paradox: the name of a republic for a state entity headed by a monarch. Behind this concept lies the Sarmatian myth, an essential component of Polish cultural history, without which the translator cannot penetrate the deeper layers of the narrative. The term Kresy cannot be rendered in Romanian by a single lexeme but only through periphrasis: Ținuturi de Margine or Ținuturi Răsăritene (Borderlands or Eastern Territories). It is not so much the name itself that is important, but rather its multinational and multicultural character, which is strongly reflected in the pages of the novel. In the second part of the article, the author also discusses the issue of historical and cultural transfer of certain terms that have long been integrated into the European lexicon but, in the Polish writer’s vision, undergo modifications: kraj, naród, rewolucja, historia. The article highlights the importance, for the translator, of knowing the cultural history of the country from which they are translating.
Download files
Citation rules
Licence

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
The Copyright Owners of the submitted texts grant the Reader the right to use the pdf documents under the provisions of the Creative Commons 4.0 International License: Attribution-Share-Alike (CC BY-SA). The user can copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose.
1. License
The University of Silesia Press provides immediate open access to journal’s content under the Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Authors who publish with this journal retain all copyrights and agree to the terms of the above-mentioned CC BY-SA 4.0 license.
2. Author’s Warranties
The author warrants that the article is original, written by stated author/s, has not been published before, contains no unlawful statements, does not infringe the rights of others, is subject to copyright that is vested exclusively in the author and free of any third party rights, and that any necessary written permissions to quote from other sources have been obtained by the author/s.
If the article contains illustrative material (drawings, photos, graphs, maps), the author declares that the said works are of his authorship, they do not infringe the rights of the third party (including personal rights, i.a. the authorization to reproduce physical likeness) and the author holds exclusive proprietary copyrights. The author publishes the above works as part of the article under the licence "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International".
ATTENTION! When the legal situation of the illustrative material has not been determined and the necessary consent has not been granted by the proprietary copyrights holders, the submitted material will not be accepted for editorial process. At the same time the author takes full responsibility for providing false data (this also regards covering the costs incurred by the University of Silesia Press and financial claims of the third party).
3. User Rights
Under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license, the users are free to share (copy, distribute and transmit the contribution) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material) the article for any purpose, provided they attribute the contribution in the manner specified by the author or licensor.
4. Co-Authorship
If the article was prepared jointly with other authors, the signatory of this form warrants that he/she has been authorized by all co-authors to sign this agreement on their behalf, and agrees to inform his/her co-authors of the terms of this agreement.
I hereby declare that in the event of withdrawal of the text from the publishing process or submitting it to another publisher without agreement from the editorial office, I agree to cover all costs incurred by the University of Silesia in connection with my application.
2025
Published: 2025-05-26
10.31261/PS_P

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.