Ireneusz Kania – the lifetime achievement award

In the fifth edition of the Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński Translation Awards of the Mayor of Gdańsk, the lifetime achievement award went to Ireneusz Kania, a translator, essayist and polymath.

When justifying their choice, the Award Committee wrote:

“Ireneusz Kania – translator, essayist and polymath – translated over a hundred books from sixteen modern and ancient languages. In this impressive bibliography, there are no accidental or trivial titles representing impermanent and fad-prone popular culture. These works, belonging to the classical canon of the humanities, were carefully selected according to a certain key and translated from the original languages. They come from the intersection of the history of ideas and cultures, the philosophy of religion, mythology and historiosophy. Most of Kania’s translations represent the essayist prose genre, although the list also includes letters, memoirs and maxims. Kania introduced entire cultural areas to the Polish-language sphere, translating from Tibetan, Hebrew, Romanian, Greek, German, French, and Italian.”

Winners of this year’s edition were selected by the Award Committee, composed of: Carlos Marrodán Casas, Anna Korzeniowska-Bihun, Piotr Paziński, Julia Różewicz and Anna Wasilewska (committee chair).

Ireneusz Kania was born in 1940 in Wieluń. While completing Romance studies at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, he simultaneously studied Oriental languages (Hebrew, Chinese, and Sanskrit). During that time, he played competitive sports (he is still physically active). He debuted in 1972 in Przegląd Orientalistyczny. In subsequent years, he also translated from English, German, French, Russian, Romanian, Italian, and Sanskrit. Between 1983 and 1988, he ran a private Tibetan course. In the 1990s, he taught literary translation at the Jagiellonian University’s Study of Literature and Art. Kania holds several awards and medals for his translation achievements, the latest being the T. Boy-Żeleński Translation Award granted by the Mayor of Gdańsk.

René Koelblen and Stanisław Waszak – the single translation award

The award for a translation of a book published in the last two years went to René Koelblen and Stanisław Waszak, who translated Georges Perec’s A Void from French into Polish (publ. by Lokator, 2022).

“Perec’s 300-page detective novel is the longest lipogram in world literature, entirely devoid of the letter ‘e’ – the most popular French vowel. (…) Both translators delivered a seemingly impossible feat, incredibly rearranging Perec’s puzzles, launching a ruthlessly perfect machinery, where the absence of ‘e’ forced them to intervene in the structure of the text, changing the numbers of individual parts and chapters. Both translators managed to overcome an enormous amount of technical problems while salvaging all allusions, ambiguities and subtexts and preserving the rhythm of this perfectly orchestrated prose, which does not shy away from the grotesque and dark humour,” reads the laudatory speech for René Koelblen and Stanisław Waszak.

Winners of this year’s edition were selected by the Award Committee, composed of: Carlos Marrodán Casas, Anna Korzeniowska-Bihun, Piotr Paziński, Julia Różewicz and Anna Wasilewska (committee chair).

Stanisław Waszak has over 30 years of experience as a journalist. Recently he has also taken the post of deputy director of the Warsaw office of Agence France-Presse. He is a translator and author of song adaptations into Polish. For three years, he co-taught song translation classes with René Koelblen at the Institute of Romance Studies, University of Warsaw.

René Koelblen is an engineer, graduate of the École Centrale de Paris (Faculty of Applied Mathematics). Between 1983 and 1985, he taught French at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. Since 1986, he has been associated with the IT sector. He is a translator and author of song adaptations into Polish (Polish-French, French-Polish). For three years, he co-taught song translation classes with Stanisław Waszak at the Institute of Romance Studies, University of Warsaw. He translated Jolanta Kurska’s extended interview with Adam Michnik and Bernard Kouchner into Polish (“Rozmowy w Awinionie”).

Anna Przedpełska-Trzeciakowska – the lifetime achievement award

In 2021, the lifetime translation achievement award went to Anna Przedpełska-Trzeciakowska for her translations of English and American literature.

In their justification, Award Committee members said that:
“Anna Przedpełska-Trzeciakowska translated both prose and plays. She gave a voice to several writers from the English-speaking canon, including Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Joseph Conrad, and George Eliot. As well as T.S. Eliot, Doris Lessing, and Alice Munro. Perhaps her most remarkable achievement is translating William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury.
She managed to preserve the distinctive language of each writer she translated, transpose the colour and taste of individual works into Polish, convey the historical, social and moral realities, and skilfully employ stylization. Przedpełska-Trzeciakowska is also the author of epic biographies of Jane Austen and the Brontë family.”

The 2021 Award Committee was composed of Carlos Marrodán Casas, Jakub Ekier, Dobromiła Jankowska, Izabela Korybut-Daszkiewicz, Justyna Sobolewska, Marcin Szuster, and Anna Wasilewska (chair).

Anna Przedpełska-Trzeciakowska (b. 1927 in Warsaw) is a translator from English. In 1943, she joined the Home Army, where she completed first-aid courses. During the Warsaw Uprising, she worked as a nurse in the field hospital at 24 Piękna St. She graduated from the Cecylia Plater-Zyberkówna school and then completed English philology studies at the University of Warsaw (1945–50). She then began work in the Czytelnik publishing house and went on to become a freelancer translating classic English works and contemporary American prose. On 17 December 1981, she joined the Primate’s Committee in Aid of People Deprived of Freedom and their Families. She belonged to the PEN Club, the Polish Writers’ Union (as the co-author and chair of the Translators’ Club) and then the Association of Polish Writers. She spent three terms of office on the PEN Management Board and headed the Writers in Prison Committee. Her husband was Prof. Witold Trzeciakowski, an economist and minister in Tadeusz Mazowiecki’s government.

Teresa Tyszowiecka blasK! – the single translation award

In 2021, the single translation award went to Teresa Tyszowiecka blasK! for her translation of The African Origins of UFOs by Trinidadian poet and writer Anthony Joseph (published by Fundacja Korporacji Ha!art).

In their justification, Award Committee members said that:
“The translator extremely evocatively conveys the wild, trance rhythm of the original work, brilliantly painting the colourful, vibrant, syncretic world of Caribbean culture. The text appeals to all the senses. The sound layer is awe-inspiring with its phonetic instrumentations, rhymes and rhythms. The playful language of the translation resonates with the island music, and the Polish slang proves infinitely malleable, revealing surprising possibilities and uses. The Caribbeans – whether a killer as if taken out from a fantasy comic book or a modest tile layer – seem close to us despite their different culture and entirely different fates. The text is clear and understandable even for someone who has never experienced the Caribbean landscape before.”

The 2021 Award Committee was composed of Carlos Marrodán Casas, Jakub Ekier, Dobromiła Jankowska, Izabela Korybut-Daszkiewicz, Justyna Sobolewska, Marcin Szuster, and Anna Wasilewska (chair).

Teresa Tyszowiecka blasK! is a translator from English. Her translations include Charles Bukowski’s Hollywood, Henry Miller’s Crazy Cock, The Game-Players of Titan by Philip K. Dick, Leviathan from the Illuminatus! trilogy by R. Shea and R.A. Wilson, and Ottessa Moshfegh’s Eileen. She is associated with the alternative music scene. Tyszowiecka blasK! created the Seven Cardinal Bridges and MostArt projects, which resulted in 20 site-specific concerts centred around the bridges of Warsaw. Author of the film Akustyka (Acoustics).

Małgorzata Łukasiewicz – the lifetime achievement award

In the third edition of the Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński Translation Awards of the Mayor of Gdańsk, the lifetime achievement award went to Małgorzata Łukasiewicz, translator and essayist specializing in translating German prose, essays and philosophical literature.

When justifying their choice, the Award Committee wrote:
“The translator approaches the source text like a musical score of sorts, which each performer has to interpret in their manner. Throughout her struggles with works by other authors, Małgorzata Łukasiewicz has always respected not only the given literary conventions but the distinct language employed by individual writers, making sure to bring out all flavours, preserve all ambiguities, adjust the tone and give sentences their proper rhythm. In a nutshell: to create a Polish equivalent of someone else’s imagination, world and manner of imaging – while constantly mining the potential of her mother tongue and shifting its limits. Not shying away from bold solutions and – if need be – letting the language run wild. Do a little hocus-pocus with the language, to use her phrase. Write someone else’s book in her own words. And do it all with passion. I must add here that literature is Małgorzata’s passion: not only does she translate it, but she also writes about it and the essence of translation. Allow me to quote her again: ‘there is no better occupation in life than to play around in the huge sandbox of language’.”

The 2019 Committee of the Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński Translation Award of the Mayor of Gdańsk was composed of Joanna Kornaś-Warwas, Piotr Paziński, Julia Różewicz, Justyna Sobolewska, Tomasz Swoboda, Ryszard Turczyn and Anna Wasilewska (chair).

Małgorzata Łukasiewicz (b. 1948) is a translator from German and a literary critic. She made her translation debut in Literatura na Świecie and went on to translate around 70 literary and philosophical works. Among others, she rendered the following into Polish: essays by Hans-Georg Gadamer (1979), Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha (1988), Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment (1995), and The Joyful Wisdom by Friedrich Nietzsche (2008). Łukasiewicz received numerous awards, including the Pro Helvetia award (1989), the Bosch Foundation award (1991), the Polish PEN Club award for translation, the Literatura na Świecie award for lifetime achievement (2000), the Hermann Hesse award for translating The Hesse-Mann Letters: The Correspondence of Hermann Hesse and Thomas Mann 1910-1955 (2008) and the Polish-German award for literary translators. She was twice shortlisted for the Nike Literary Award: in 2008 for Rubryka pod różą (2007) and in 2012 for Jak być artystą. Na przykładzie Tomasza Manna (2011).

Marcin Szuster – the single translation award

In 2019, the single translation award went to Marcin Szuster for his brilliant translation of Djuna Barnes’ pivotal modernist novel Nightwood from English into Polish (Ossolineum publishing house).

Justyna Sobolewska, member of the Award Committee, about the selection of Nightwood:
“The novel was first published in 1936, its plot being little more than a pretext for the author’s unbridled linguistic imagination. Lexical wealth, fickle syntax, sudden shifts between various types of discourse and risqué metaphors, bordering on conscious pretentiousness, place Nightwood within the poetics of camp. These elements, as well as playing with literary conventions, allusions to classics and contemporary avant-garde writers, such as Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, posed a huge challenge for the translator.
Marcin Szuster, who has already translated such authors as James Schuyler, William Burroughs, Bob Dylan, Paul de Man and Harold Bloom, created a new kind of language for Djuna Barnes: one that is thrown off the beaten track of banalities, boldly tackling extravagant linguistic associations, vivid monologues and entering in a creative debate with the Polish tradition of translating literature from the English-speaking world.

The 2019 Award Committee was composed of Joanna Kornaś-Warwas, Piotr Paziński, Julia Różewicz, Justyna Sobolewska, Tomasz Swoboda, Ryszard Turczyn and Anna Wasilewska (chair).

Danuta Ćirlić-Straszyńska – the lifetime achievement award

In the second edition of the Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński Translation Award of the Mayor of Gdańsk, the lifetime achievement award went to Danuta Ćirlić-Straszyńska for her translations of literature from Yugoslavia and former Yugoslavian countries.

In her laudatory speech, chair of the Award Committee Anna Wasilewska said:
“Danuta Cirlić-Straszyńska has given her voice to several dozen writers, but when rewriting other people’s books, she always remembered not to publish her own ones under their names, preserving the separate language of each of them and giving their works a distinctive sound. Like an expert actor, she portrayed other people’s voices, using the entire keyboard spanning low and high tones.”

The winner was selected by the Award Committee composed of Anna Wasilewska (chair), Jacek S. Buras, Andrzej Jagodziński, Michał Kłobukowski, Sławomir Paszkiet, Justyna Sobolewska, and Tomasz Swoboda.

Danuta Ćirlić-Straszyńska (b. 1930) graduated in Polish studies from the University of Warsaw. She worked as an editor in the Czytelnik publishing house, then in the Literary Section of the Polish Radio, and finally on the editorial board of Literatura na Świecie. In the 1960s, she regularly collaborated as a critic with Nowe Książki, other literary magazines and the Polish Radio. Her writing debut was Bajki spod pigwy (Tales from the quince tree), loosely based on Yugoslavian folk motifs. She made her translation debut in 1966 with her rendition of Mysterious Boy by Croatian writer Ivan Kušan. Since then, she has translated more than 60 books, often with her foreword or afterword. Between 1967 and 2006, she introduced the Polish publishing market to several writers, including Danil Kiš, Miloš Crnajski, Miodrag Bulatović, Milorad Pavić, and Bora Ćosić. She translated over 20 radio plays, numerous short stories published in magazines and theatre plays. For her lifetime achievement, she received the Order of the Yugoslav Flag with a Gold Star, the Serbian PEN Club award (1980), the ZAIKS award, and the Literatura na Świecie award (2005). She was also recognized by the Association of Macedonian Translators (1984) and the Association of Polish Translators (1984).

Piotr Paziński – the single translation award

The first winner of the single translation award was Piotr Paziński, who translated The Tale of the Scribe and Other Stories by Shmuel Yosef Agnon from Hebrew into Polish (Nisza publishing house).

Justyna Sobolewska said the following in her laudatory speech:

“Piotr Paziński has achieved something rather remarkable. He successfully introduced Agnon, a virtually unknown writer (with just a small selection of short stories published before), into the Polish language. Agnon was referred to by contemporary Israeli writers inspired by his literary output. Now we have received a broad selection of his works: from early parables to his mature, brilliant short stories that remind one of Borges. What unites the collection is the motif of the Scripture and writer’s work and the figure of the scribe, which acts as a broad metaphor for the writer, a researcher of the Scripture, but also a translator. His protagonists live among books – one has arranged them just for them to protect him. (…) The poet Christopher Reid wrote that ‘translators create their authors’. Paziński’s translation is the ultimate proof of this theory.”

The winner was selected by the Award Committee composed of Anna Wasilewska (chair), Jacek S. Buras, Andrzej Jagodziński, Michał Kłobukowski, Sławomir Paszkiet, Justyna Sobolewska, and Tomasz Swoboda.

Piotr Paziński (b. 1973) is a writer, philosopher, translator, and editor-in-chief of Midrasz. He spent several years analysing James Joyce’s Ulysses, which brought fruit in the form of his book Labirynt and the Dublin z Ulissesem guidebook. Paziński has won Polityka’s Passport award and the European Literary Award. He also researches the philosophy of Judaism and the Jewish subject in literature.

Maryna Ochab

The first winner of the Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński Translation Award of the Mayor of Gdańsk was Maryna Ochab, a brilliant translator of French literature into Polish.

Anna Wasilewska, head of the Award Committee, said the following in her laudatory speech:
“Maryna Ochab is a translator with passion, but one streaked with accuracy and respect for the original rather than forcing her voice through. She respects the integrity of sentences and the length of breath, does not add or subtract anything, and can salvage all ambiguities and the gist of what is conveyed between the lines. Like many translators, she likes being in the shadow, but it is high time for her to play centre stage and stand in the spotlight.”

The winner was selected by the Award Committee composed of Anna Wasilewska (chair), Edward Balcerzan, Andrzej Jagodziński, Adam Pomorski, Krzysztof Pomian, Stanisław Rosiek, and Justyna Sobolewska.

Maryna Ochab – tłumaczka, głównie z języka francuskiego. Przełożyła m.in. Symbolikę zła Ricoeura, Zazi w metrze Queneau (nagroda „Literatury na Świecie” 2005), Życie seksualne Immanuela Kanta Jeana-Baptiste’a Botula, dwie powieści kryminalne Jean-Claude’a Izzo, Przechodzimura Marcela Aymé oraz wiele książek historyczno-kulturowych z nowej francuskiej szkoły historycznej. W 1999 roku otrzymała Nagrodę PEN Clubu  za tłumaczenie z języka obcego na polski. Tłumaczy głównie z języka francuskiego, ale również włoskiego, angielskiego i rosyjskiego. Popularyzuje także literaturę polską – na język francuski przetłumaczyła chociażby Zdążyć przed Panem Bogiem Hanny Krall.