“We translate in order to differ”: Kaja Gucio in Conversation with Jerzy Jarniewicz

Gucio in Conversation with Jerzy JarniewiczKaja Gucio: For some years now we have been seeing-and, dare I say, enjoying-an unprecedented interest in translators and translation as such.No longer invisible, translators have their names printed on book covers alongside the authors; they are invited to discuss their work in various media outlets, interviewed and, at least on some occasions, expected to speak on their author's behalf, or even act as his or her representatives.While overall this new trend is quite welcome after years of essential obscurity, would you agree that it also has certain drawbacks and might bring new challenges for translators?And, while we're at it, is this awareness of translators' input really such a new phenomenon?Jerzy Jarniewicz: The main new challenge that this trend poses is the need to redefine translation as such, or, though I know it may sound like a heresy, to agree that literary translation escapes definitions.If translators are now increasingly acknowledged as co-authors, it is because their work is recognised as creative and as involving similar creative activity as the author's work.Translating a poem is in fact reinventing it, writing it again in a different language.It is for this reason that I have been campaigning to have the translators' names on book covers: not to gratify them, but to make readers aware of whose words they are going to read.It is theytranslators-who are responsible for the text offered to their readers.Let me remark on one more important process.The difference, once considered unproblematic, between the original and the translated work, is now being questioned and problematised.