Oksana Kondratieva The Language-Centric Approach to Creativity in Translation

About this book

The monograph The Language-Centric Approach to Creativity in Translation focuses on the linguistic dimension of creativity in translation – an aspect often overlooked in favour of cognitive, psychological, cultural, or educational perspectives. Drawing on Quine’s principle of ontological relativity, the study positions translation as a distinct field of inquiry, arguing for the coexistence of multiple concepts of creativity within Translation Studies, each based on a specific understanding of what translation is.

Focusing on the systemic-structural view, which conceptualizes translation as a verbal phenomenon, the work adopts a language-centric perspective to explore how this framework informs the translator’s creative reshaping of the original. Within this approach, a dual understanding of translational creativity is proposed. In its narrow sense, translational creativity refers to the resolution of translation difficulties – language-related challenges caused by structural and functional differences between languages, as well as the translator’s subjective interpretation of these differences – whose successful resolution requires considerable creative effort. In its broader sense, translational creativity is conceived as the realization of linguistic variability – referred to here as interlingual translational variability – which underscores the inherently creative process of selecting among multiple valid translation strategies. It acknowledges that a given problem may have several equally acceptable solutions and that making these choices lies at the core of creative thinking and professional practice.

The monograph also examines how translators function as language innovators – particularly through the verbal constructs it analyses, such as eye dialect, proper names, paragraphemic devices, and invented words (lexical nonsense) – offering valuable insights into the factors that foster innovation and creativity in translation. These factors include not only the influence of the source text, but also the socio-political conditions of the target context, its cultural norms, and the extent to which it prioritizes semantic fidelity over artistic expression. Central to this process is the translator’s ability to interpret the creative elements of the source text – an ability that forms the foundation for any meaningful transformation, as without it, inventive choices risk appearing arbitrary and ineffective.

The research material comprises English-language literary works from the mid-1600s to the present, by authors such as Swift, Carroll, Dickens, Shaw, Tolkien, Dahl, Pratchett, Saunders, and Smith, alongside their Polish translations by F. Sobieniowski, K. Piotrowski, W. Górski, M. Skibniewska, P. Cholewa, and others, whose contributions are recognized as vital to cultural exchange and as a source of linguistic and literary innovation.