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his article studies the development of the translation theories in the second half of the twentieth century, a period during which significant theoretical contributions were made in translation circles. These contributions had a profound impact on the practice of translation. The individuals who contributed to the present state of translation theory worked in translation circles, and this article examines their contributions. A selected history of theoretical developments, focusing on the most important ideas relevant to translation work, is presented in order to examine the impact of such theories on the practice of translation. It has become commonplace to believe that the deconstructionist and poststructuralist views on translation have opened new perspectives in Translation Studies. The aim of this paper is to highlight the main tenets of the major authors of these theories. The attention is especially drawn to a well-known controversy related to the concept of equivalence and translation strategies. This paper presents the main criticism made by the poststructuralist translation views on interpretation. Finally, some conclusions are drawn.

The phenomenon of translatability is an incredibly interesting translation problem, the subject of eternal disputes and discussions, which probably will never be definitively settled. Translatability is only a theoretical ideal, which, in fact, only corresponds to different degrees of approximation. Untranslatability is caused by the differences in the construction of language systems and the presence of different types of terms, words, common phrases and collocations related to specific socio-cultural phenomena in respective languages. The translatability of statements is also hindered by allusions of language and particular erudite manners of poetic text organisation, used for expressive and aesthetic language-specific sound values and semantic associations. Thus, the translatability of literature, and especially poetry, is particularly limited. The purpose of this article is to debate the problem of (un)translatability and to define its limits. The article is an attempt to discuss the fundamental questions of when the independence and freedom of manoeuvre of a translator reach their limits and whether a text should be translated or left in the original language.

The Responsibility of Translation Studies Scholar, or Reflections on Normativity and Freedom of Interpretation (the Case of John le Carré) The translatologist – as an academic researcher – rarely faces the necessity to take legal responsibility for the results of his or her scholarly analysis. Especially today, in the western culture of the second decade of the 21st century, the freedom of theoretical reflection is regarded as an essential element of intellectual development of an individual and as a sine-qua-non condition for the change of discursive, and perceptive, paradigms sensu largo. However, when the translator assumes the role of an expert in the course of legal proceedings related to cases of possible translation plagiarism – the results of his or her intellectual exploration can no longer be construed merely as “theoretical proposals”. In the case presented in this article, such awareness resulted in the fact that the authors, considering themselves poststructural scholars, chose to return to structuralist methodological approaches (variantivity), norms in translation, and to the concept of the tertium comparationis, which, in the context of a comparative analysis of two translations, is the source text.

Style as a Specific Problem of Literary Translation. An overview of the English and Italian Translations of Witold Gombrowicz’s Works This research study deals with an area which has largely escaped the attention of researchers so far, i.e. linguistic equivalence and the limits to the translatability of Gombrowicz’s convoluted style, an effective deterrent for other translators. This article investigates the English and Italian translations of various works of Gombrowicz. Particular attention must be paid to the way in which translators have rendered the Polish original, and above all to the vocabulary, phrasing and structure of the language used by Gombrowicz in the Italian and English languages.