| dc.description.abstract | This monograph is an attempt to review all modern Polish translations of the
Bible with focus on using traditional determinants of the Polish biblical style.
Tens of translations of both the complete canon and individual books of the Old
Testament and the New Testament that have been published in Polish since 1945
were analyzed. The collection of texts includes various groups of translations.
First of all the Bible was translated in particular denominational circles (Catholics,
dissenters) but there were also ecumenical and supradenominational translations.
Attempts to translate the Bible were made by Biblicists and theologians as well as
by writers and poets who were interested in the Word (among others by Roman
Brandstaetter, Zygmunt Kubiak, Czesław Miłosz, Anna Świderkówna). Various
translations are also determined by different translational techniques that are used
in modern times (dynamic, interlinear, philological, and paraphrastic ones).
The volume starts with an explanation of the notion traditional biblical
language, its role in the sphere of religious language as one of functional
varieties of the Polish language and a taxonomy of such linguistic devices.
A separate description refers to presentation and a typology of the analyzed set
of modern translations of the Holy Scriptures into Polish as well as to numerous
philological analyses of the translations. The basic material and analytic part
of the monograph includes two comprehensive chapters. The former contains
presentation and evaluation of the textual status of nearly one hundred well
established phraseological units (expressions, locutions, and phrases) that come
from biblical language. The latter chapter contains comparison of different ways
of using traditional biblical language (such as formulas, dicta, aphorisms, and some
pericopes) in modem translations of the New Testament. Each of these chapters
is supplemented with syntheses that show both (reasonable or groundless)
measures modifying the traditional biblical language layer and contribution of
particular translations to the process. The subject of description is, in sum, 180
structures and mini-texts most of which were separated and became phrases of
literary and colloquial Polish. Many of them also creates loci communes of the
European language family. The method of description makes the publication
have lexical character. Philological and normative comments added to each
of the described biblical language units show limits of respects or renouncing
principles of the stylistic decorum which were worked out in the Polish biblical
language in the course of many hundred years' experiences and were observed
by Catholics, dissenters, and Biblicists as well as by authors (writers and poets)
who were ardent lovers of the Word.
From the conducted analyses it appears that distinct revaluations in the
Polish biblical style took place during the post-war period. The most important
reasons for the revaluations were as follows: 1) in Catholic translations the pattern
of the Vulgate was replaced by translations from original biblical languages
(Hebrew, Greek), 2) modern, often colloquia] devices of the Polish language
substituted for many determinants of the traditional biblical style that were
formed by old Polish translations of the Scriptures (the Catholic Bible translated
by Jakub Wujek - published in 1599 and the Protestant Bible of Gdansk - 1632),
3) new methods of translation were used. This volume is both a continuation and
an enlargement of the author's studies that were published in the monograph
Frazeologia biblijna w języku polskim (Biblical Phraseology in the Polish Language)
(Kraków 2001). | en_EN |
