Wordplay in selected Polish translations of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Abstract

This article presents the results of a comparative analysis of the translations of wordplay in selected Polish renderings of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. So far, there have been 10 attempts to translate this book into Polish. The present paper looks at the techniques employed by three translators: Antoni Marianowicz (1955), Maciej Słomczyński (1965), and Bogumiła Kaniewska (2010), though occasionally reference is also made to other renditions of the book. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is particularly rich in wordplay, which is why rendering it into a foreign language is a real challenge. Słomczyński and Marianowicz tried to preserve most of the puns used by Carroll or replace them with new ones, while Kaniewska’s translation is much more literal and, in consequence, it fails to convey the ambiguity and comic effect of the original.