Negotiating the Unfamiliar: Translation of Lafcadio Hearn's Some Chinese Ghosts in Early Twentieth-Century Poland

Abstract

This article provides a comparative reading of Lafcadio Hearn's Some Chinese Ghosts (1887) and Bajki chińskie (1913), its Polish translation by L. M. Brzozowska, in the light of transnationalism, translation, and transfer studies. It focuses on the rendering of cultural realities (foreignisation/domestication) and negotiating the unfamiliar aspects of the original in translation for young audiences, asking about children's literature translators’ visibility as intermediaries between cultures and the cultural mediation of English. It also discusses how Eastern cultures were represented in the source and target texts and reflects on whether Chinese tales – arriving in Polish via English – might have been an attempt to create an alternative canon to the torrent of Western children's literature.