Krytyka przekładu a tekst nieliteracki. Wybrane problemy tłumaczenia rosyjskiej literatury szachowej na język polski

This article applies a modified model of Antoine Berman’s critical analysis to the translation of specialized Russian chess literature. The point of departure for the analysis was the Polish translation (from Russian) of the third volume of Garry Kasparov’s fundamental work on the history of modern chess – Мои великие предшественники. The study of the material covered such aspects as the translation of specialized terminology, specialized text phraseology and widely understood chess language units (including professionalisms and jargonisms). Moreover, the article also discusses the problem of the asymmetric functioning of the chess lexicon in Russian and Polish. Another issue which is presented in the study is the heterogeneity of this type of texts, which manifests itself in the presence of specialized terminology, elements of an “artificial semiotic code” (diagrams, chess notation, symbols), the colloquial and publicistic style, along with its broad phraseology, metaphors and embedding in the historical context. The said heterogeneity is often problematic for translators. An attempt was also made to characterise the translation strategy and the reasons for certain imperfections in the translation (manifestations of misinterpretation of fragments of the original text and stylistic changes).