Abstract
From the Editors:
The 2020 Michael Henry Heim Prize in Collegial Translation is awarded to Joanna Trzeciak Huss, Kent State University, for her “Retroactive Catastrophe,” a translation of “Katastrofa wsteczna” by Przemysław Czapliński, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań.
Czapliński’s “retroactive catastrophe” is a true oxymoron—an apparent contradiction deployed for dramatic effect. The article surveys the debates that erupted with force in the 1980s over the complicity of Poles in the Shoah. Czapliński’s provocative contribution to the topic is his claim that these debates have released the original catastrophe’s long-suppressed consequences, challenging Poles to reject the dominant, historical version of their collective narrative of solidarity and victimhood. To become a post-catastrophic society, Poles need to acknowledge the effect of the Shoah on this narrative and embrace an open and inclusive future.
Joanna Trzeciak Huss’s translation deftly conveys the author’s meaning to English-reading scholars as well as to non-academic audiences. The original article is carefully and cogently argued, which Huss ably renders into lucid, tart English. She also interprets the historical and cultural contexts of a specific linguistic community—educated Poles in the twenty-first century, who are well acquainted with the issues involved. Czapliński speaks directly to this audience, challenging their fundamental belongings and beliefs, using a natural language and cultural concepts he and they share. As Huss notes in the translator’s introduction, this meant that she had to make choices for the benefit of English-reading audiences; for example, she changed the author’s references to “we” and “us” to “Poles.”
By masterfully rendering both linguistic nuances and cultural conventions, the translator has provided a worldwide audience with extraordinary access to an intensely local Polish debate, one that crucially has been carried over from the twentieth to the twenty-first century.