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GRZEGORZ MOROZ1 DOI: 10.15290/CR.2022.39.4.06
University of Białystok, Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9593-0224

Cucumbers and Creeps:
Errors in Translation
Studies and in the Polish
Translation of Robert
Macfarlane’s The Old Ways2

In memory of Krzysztof Hejwowski (1952-2019),
the dearest friend and my guide to the world of translation studies

Abstract. Forty years ago, André Lefevere wrote a paper in which he exposed some of the ʻhowlingʼ errors

made by American translators of Berthold Brecht and declared the theme of errors to be unconstructive

in the field of contemporary translation studies. Krzysztof Hejwowski, a Polish translation studies scholar,

believed that the notion of errors should not be forgotten, no matter which way translation studies are

heading. This paper is both a homage to Hejwowski and his ʻconservativeʼ agenda and an attempt to map

the errors in the Polish translation of The Old Ways by Robert Macfarlane.

Keywords: Lefevere, Hejwowski, translation studies, errors, Robert Macfarlane.

Translation studies and errors
In 1982, in the early days of translation studies as an academic discipline, André Lefevere
published an article entitled “Mother Courages̓ Cucumbers: Text, System and Refraction

1 University of Białystok, Faculty of Philology, Centre for Literary Studies, Pl. NZS 1, 15-420 Białystok,
Poland. E-mail: g.moroz@uwb.edu.pl

2 This article is a slightly altered version of a paper delivered on 7 July 2022 at the University of Tartu,
Estonia, during Borders & Crossings: Transdisciplinary Conference on Travel Writing. I am aware of the fact
that, with its focus on errors in one particular translation, it goes against the mainstream of translation
studies, but at the same time I hope that even though it may be read as a confrontational erratum in
itself, it will begin a discussion on the problems translators face, as well as on strategies and techniques
which they use while approaching narratives of travel.

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9593-0224

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in a Theory of Literature”. Over the next few years Lefevere was to become one of the
leading scholars (together with Theo Hermans and Susan Bassnett) responsible for ʻthe
Cultural Turn in Translation Studiesʼ and “Mother Courages̓ Cucumbers” has become
one of the most often anthologized pieces of the rapidly developing academic discipline.
It is included, for example, in The Translation Studies Reader, edited by Lawrence Venuti
(1997) and, in Polish translation, Współczesne teorie przekładu: Antologia [Contemporary
Theories of Translation: An Anthology] edited by Piotr Bukowski and Magda Heydel (2009).
“Mother Courages̓ Cucumbers” opens with Lefeveres̓ statement that “translation

studies can hardly be said to have occupied a central position in much theoretical think-
ing about literature” and that he will try to show “[…] how translations or, to use a more
general term, refractions, play a very important part in the evolution of literatures”
(2012: 203). In the long second paragraph, Lefevere at first clearly cherishes describing
errors American translators committed rendering Bertold Brechts̓ Mutter Courage und
Ihre Kinder into English; for example, he shows how in the translation of H. R. Hays, “the
prayer book Mother Courage uses to wrap her cucumbers becomes transformed into a
ledger, and the innocent cucumbers themselves grow into an imaginary town, Gurken3,
supposedly the point the last transaction was entered into that particular ledger” (2012:
203). Having described a few such errors, “howlers” as he refers to them (2012: 204),
Lefevere announces: “I have no desire, however, to write a traditional ʻBrecht in Englishʼ
type of translation-studies paper, which would pursue this strategy to the bitter end”
(2012: 204). Instead, he declares, “translations can be used in other, more constructive
ways” (2012: 204), and argues that “[a] writers̓ work gains exposure and achieves influ-
ence mainly through ʻmisunderstandings and misconceptions,̓ or to use a more neutral
term, refractions. Writers and their work are always understood and conceived against a
certain background, or, if you will, are refracted through a certain spectrum” (2012: 204).
Lefeveres̓ treatment of translations as refractions in which “misunderstandings and

misconceptions” are inevitable became dominant in the burgeoning translation studies,
and, as a result, translation errors have for a long time been thought of as belonging to
the old, pre-theoretical and ʻlinguisticʼ period of the development of translation studies.
One of the few scholars who opposed this approach was Krzysztof Hejwowski. In his
Translation: A Cognitive-Communicative Approach (2004), he tackled head-on Lefeveres̓
“more constructive approach” from “Mother Courages̓ Cucumbers”. He argued that the
“howlers” Lefevere quoted do not stem from “any refraction through a certain spec-
trum” but from the translators̓ mistakes. He added that “[s]uch mistakes can (and
should) be pointed out and rectified” (2004: 199). In Iluzja przekładu (2015), Hejwowski
(2015: 289) claimed that in Lefeveres̓ (and Hermanss̓) approach, some of the old, key

3 The German Gurken means cucumbers.

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questions of translation studies (about equivalence, translation errors, translators̓
competence, freedom, and responsibility) are unnecessarily “annulled”.
Hejwowskis̓ ʻtraditionalʼ approach to translation errors and his taxonomy of these

errors prove to be particularly useful when we approach translations in which the
frequency of errors as well as their variety are truly excessive, and I am strongly
convinced that the Polish translation of Robert Macfarlanes̓ The Old Ways is such a case.

The Polish translation of The Old Ways
In 2019, while working on a book, the working title of which is The Socio-Cultural Dynam-
ics of Translating Anglophone Travel Books into Polish, I read closely, sentence by sentence,
The Old Ways by Robert Macfarlane, first published in 2012, and its Polish translation, by
Jacek Konieczny, published in 2018 as Szlaki by Wydawnictwo Poznańskie. As my list of
notes on mistranslations of various kinds in Szlaki was growing surprisingly quickly, I
was growing more and more curious about the translator himself, suspecting at first
that he must be a novice in his trade and that, for some reason, the editor of the book, as
well as the proof-reader, did not do a satisfactory job either. I was surprised to learn that
Jacek Konieczny is a very experienced translator, with more than fifty books translated,
and that in his interview for Dwutygodnik, he answered the question of whether the fact
that he graduated in sociology and does not hold a degree in English is not detrimental
[in his job as a translator] by saying that it is not detrimental, because “the command of
the foreign language is not the most important [thing]. It is the faculty of being able to
write in ones̓ own language which is more important, and so I owe much more to my
teacher of Polish in the primary school […] than to a hypothetical English Department”
(my translation G. M.).4 Unlike Konieczny, I am firmly convinced that in order to be a
competent translator one has to possess a very firm command in L1 and L2, and I will
try to prove my point by providing some examples of what I consider to be errors in the
Polish translation of The Old Ways, most of which could have been avoided. My present
version of the notes to the chapter on the Polish translation of The Old Ways is more than
fifty pages long, even though I still have not started with the theoretical considerations
on the more general nature of the mistranslations in Szlaki. However, because of the
limits on the length of the present paper I will provide here only a sample of the prob-
lems I have detected, organized according to a taxonomy of errors that follows the one
presented by Hejwowski in Translation: A Cognitive-Communicative Approach. At this
point I would also like to express thanks for lively discussions and brainstorms to Piotr
Kozłowski, a former student of mine, who (under my supervision) defended (in July

4 “Nie, bo znajomość języka obcego nie jest najważniejsza. Istotniejsza jest umiejętność pisania we
własnym języku, więc znacznie więcej zawdzięczam mojej polonistce ze szkoły podstawowej, […] niż
hipotetycznej anglistyce” (https://www.dwutygodnik.com/artykul/7236-dwa-zale.html).

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2021) his M.A. dissertation entitled ʻTranslating Travel. Robert Macfarlanes̓ The Old
Ways in Jacek Koniecznys̓ Translation.̓

Translating the title
Gérard Genette, in his influential study Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretations (1987,
trans. to English 2001), coined the term ʻparatextʼ to refer to the territories of the book—
like titles, forewords, epigraphs or footnotes—which mediate between text and readers.
The crucial role of paratexts in travel writing has been recognized by many travel
writing scholars.5 In this section I will focus on just one example of paratext mistransla-
tion in Szlaki: that of the very title of the book. The full title of Robert Macfarlanes̓ book
in the original is The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot. In Jacek Koniecznys̓ it becomes Szlaki:
Opowieści o wędrówkach. I am convinced that both parts of the title in translation are
wanting. Let us start with “the old ways”. “Way” is used in the title in the meaning of a
road/path/route which people used a long time ago, like “the Icknield Way” or “the
Pilgrimsʼ Way”, which appear numerous times on the pages of the book. The word
“szlaki”, which is usually translated as ʻroutes,̓ could be used in this context if it were
preceded by the adjective “stare” (“old”) [with “dawne” (also “old”) as a weaker alterna-
tive]. But I am convinced that there is a better word in Polish to use in this context: the
word “trakt” (“way”, “road”). In the region of Podlasie, where I live, there are several
“trakty napoleońskie” (“Napoleons̓ ways”), country dirt roads, leading more or less from
west to east, on which Napoleons̓ Grande Armee, at least in the collective memory of the
regions̓ inhabitants, walked in 1812 on their way to Russia, and also, in a less organized
fashion, on their way back a few months later. There are numerous “trakty królewskie”
(“Royal Ways”) in Poland, the most famous of which is the one in Warsaw that originally
led from the Royal Castle in the Old Town of Warsaw in a southerly direction. Therefore,
“stare trakty” seems to be a better solution than “szlaki” for the first part of the title.
The ʻextendedʼ title of Macfarlanes̓ book is “A Journey on Foot”. Konieczny renders it

as “Opowieści o wędrówkach”, which literally means “Stories (tales) of wanderings
(trips)”. This time I would like to challenge both words of the translation and suggest that
one more word should have been used in the translation of this part of the title. There is
no word for “stories” in the original title and I do not see any reason why it should be
introduced in the translated title. The word “wędrówki” (wanderings, trips) is in the
plural, while in the original we have “a journey”, which is one journey. Why did Robert
Macfarlane decide to use “a journey” in the title in the singular even though in the
sixteen chapters of his book he described eleven separate journeys/trips? Presumably,

5 See, for example, A. Watson, The Garden of Forking Paths: Paratexts in Travel Literature. In : J. Kuehn
& P. Kuehn (eds.), New Directions in Travel Writing Studies, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, 54-70.

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he wanted to convey the meaning of all his external wanderings being, in fact, ʻone
(internal) journey.̓ There are numerous references to and musings on this external and
internal nature of his “journeys” in The Old Ways, the first of them at the very beginning,
in one paragraph paratext entitled “Authors̓ Note”, when he states: “Above all, this is a
book about people and place: about walking as a reconnoitre inwards” (Macfarlane 2013:
xi). I think that the best Polish word to use in this situation is the word “podróż”
(journey), which could carry similar ʻexternalʼ and ʻinternalʼ connotations [“wędrówka”
in the singular could also be considered as an alternative for “podróż”].
Whereas “opowieści” is an unnecessary addition, “on foot” remains untranslated in

the Polish title. Even though two chapters (number 5 “Water—South” and number 6
“Water—North) are about sea trips during which the narrative persona used feet to a
very limited extent, the overall title is “a journey on foot”. The first two sentences of the
above-mentioned “Authors̓ Note” reads:

This book could not have been written by sitting still. The relationship between paths,
walking and imagination is its subject, and much of its thinking was therefore done—
was only possible—while on foot. (Macfarlane 2013: xi)

Therefore, leaving this important phrase “on foot” untranslated seems to be an error.
The Polish phrases which are usually used to cover “on foot” are “pieszo” or “na
piechotę”, and therefore the second part of the title, if I were to translate the book,
would be “wędrówka piesza”, and the whole title “Stare trakty; wędrówka piesza”, a long
way from Koniecznys̓ “Szlaki; opowieści o wędrówkach”.
Titles are, obviously, very important paratexts. The decision to change the phrase “the

old ways” into the simple “szlaki” not only ʻweakensʼ the title itself and makes it blander,
but it also influences (in a negative way) those moments, and there are plenty of them in
The Old Ways when Macfarlane plays with this phrase in various manners. The first
example of this can be found on the second page of the first chapter, “Track”:

So, Macfarlane calls the route he walks in the first chapter “the path”, but it also
becomes “a young way”, in clear contrast to the old ways which he will be walking in the
following chapters. Had Konieczny decided to use “stare trakty” (old ways) for his title, it
would be easy to use the phrase “młody trakt” (young way) in contrast to “stary trakt”
(old way), and in this way he would have also preserved the oxymoronic effect (which

This is the path Iʼve probably walked more
often than any other in my life. It s̓ a young
way; maybe fifty years old, no more.
(Macfarlane 2013: 6)

Żadną inną ścieżką nie przeszedłem
w życiu tyle razy. Nie jest specjalnie stara.
Ma najwyżej pięćdziesiąt lat. (Macfarlane
2018: 14)

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I am convinced was intended by the author) of “a young way” (“młody trakt”). Instead,
he comes up with the phrase “nie jest specjalnie stara” (it is not particularly old), which
misses not only the oxymoron but also the fact that Macfarlane used two different words
about the same object: “the path” and “a young way”, whereas in translation we only
have “ścieżka” (path).

Errors of syntagmatic translation
I will start with some basic lexical problems I have detected while comparing the
English original of The Old Ways with the Polish translation. The lexical mistranslations
in Szlaki begin at the level of misreading, the translator translating not the English word
Macfarlane used, but another English word, with just one letter different from the origi-
nal. The list here consists of four pairs: copse-corpse, parson-person, haunting-hunting,
county-country. I consider the copse-corpse misreading as the most ʻhowlingʼ or ʻspec-
tacularʼ of them:

This is part of a description of northern France written down by Edward Thomas in a
letter to a friend in February 1915; Thomas was sent there to fight in the Great War. For
some reason the translator thought that the word used by Thomas and later by Macfar-
lane was “corpses” rather than “copses”, so we get this surrealistic description of the
country Thomas likes with great ploughed fields and a few corpses (sic!) on the hilltops.
However, the word “copse”, when it appears some twenty-five pages later in Szlaki, is
correctly translated as “młodniak” (Macfarlane 2018: 401).

I like the country we are […]. It s̓ open hilly
chalk country with great ploughed fields
and a few copses on the hilltops.
(Macfarlane 2013: 329)

Podoba mi się kraina, w której się
znajdujemy […]. Jest to otwarty,
pagórkowaty, kredowy krajobraz
z wielkimi zaoranymi polami i nielicznymi
zwłokami, leżącymi na wierzchołkach.
(Macfarlane 2018: 374)

These practices have their parallels
elsewhere in the country: in the line of
white marker stones that used to run
across Bodmin Moor from Watergate to
Five Lanes, for instance, set there in the
mid-1800s by a parson who wished to
traverse his trackless and often fog-bound
parish without getting lost or enmired.
(Macfarlane 2013: 144)

Odpowiedniki tych praktyk możemy
znaleźć w innych częściach kraju; w linii
białych kamieni, która biegła przez
kornwalijskie wrzosowisko Bodmin Moor
z Watergate do Five Lane, ustawionych
w połowie XIX wieku, przez osobę, która
chciała móc pokonywać ten pozbawiony
dróg i często spowity mgłą obszar, nie
ryzykując, że się zgubi albo wpadnie
w bagno. (Macfarlane 2018: 165)

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In the original the person who put up white stones is a “parson”, meaning a rector or a
vicar of a Protestant church. The “parson” was translated as “osoba” (person). Almost,
but not quite. As this person is not a parson in the Polish translation, the parish is not
necessary, and therefore it disappears in the translation.

Here, “haunting” becomes “polowanie”, that is “hunting”, even though in the text of
the chapter there are almost two pages on ʻhauntingʼ and no reference to ʻhuntingʼ at all.

In the Polish translation this golf course is the most exclusive “w kraju”, meaning in
the country. It should be “najbardziej luksusowe pole golfowe w (tym) (naszym) hrabst-
wie” (the most exclusive golf course in our county) or “hrabstwie Cambridgeshire” (in
Cambridgeshire). The translator also had problems with the word “county” in this
fragment:

The phrase “revealing continents within counties” was translated as a separate
sentence which literally means: “They reveal continents within continents”. While in
the previous example “county” became “country”, here it becomes “continent”.
The more typical kinds of lexical mistranslations are the result of the situation when

the translator decides on the wrong one out of a few different meanings of a word or a
phrase. In this category, in my opinion, the most ʻspectacularʼ mistranslation in Szlaki
happened with “the creep”:

Haunting and Fear (Macfarlane 2013: 305) Polowanie i strach (Macfarlane 2018: 347)

[…] the county’s most exclusive golf course.
(Macfarlane 2013: 8)

[…] najbardziej luksusowe pole golfowe
w kraju. (Macfarlane 2018: 16)

Such moments are rites of passage that
reconfigure local geographies, leaving
known places outlandish or quickened,
revealing continents within counties.
(Macfarlane 2013: 78)

Takie chwile są rytuałami przejścia
rekonfigurującymi geografię danego
regionu, za którym znane miejsca
zaczynają się wydawać obce albo
przesunięte. Ujawniają kontynenty
ukryte w obrębie kontynentów.
(Macfarlane 2018: 92)

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The translator here translated the word “the creep” as “tych skurwieli” which means,
more or less, “these motherfuckers”, which is as vulgar as it is ridiculous. The whole
phrase “wystrzeliwania tych skurwieli” in Polish is not only a mistranslation; it is also
ambiguous. The phrase used by Konieczny literally means “shooting these motherfuck-
ers”, and “these motherfuckers” could be either Germans or shells. This is a surprising
mistake, as the word “creep” appears in the previous sentence, the beginning of which
reads “The offensive will begin with the creeping artillery barrage – the ʻhurricane
bombardmentʼ” (Macfarlane 2013: 333), and the translator managed this bit quite well
“Ofensywa zacznie się od postępującego ostrzału artyleryjskiego—ʻhuraganowego bombar-
dowania […]” (Macfarlane 2018: 377), where the phrase “creeping artillery barrage” is
more or less correctly translated as “postępujący ostrzał artyleryjski” (literally ʻadvanc-
ing artillery barrage”, although Polish military historians usually translate this phrase
more literally as “pełzający wał ogniowy”6). Why did the translator not connect “creep-
ing barrage” with “the creep” in the next sentence and decide to translate the singular
noun “the creep” as “tych skurwieli” (“these motherfuckers”)? Probably because of the
combination of two factors: a not very firm grasp of English, and translating in a hurry.
The translators̓ problems with the English word “estate” resulted in a series of

mistranslations:

Here, “an estate Land Rover” becomes “land rover kombi” in Polish, which, when
retranslated back to English renders “land rover estate”. The translator here mistakenly
took the expression “an estate Land Rover”, meaning a Land Rover car belonging to the
estate, as “a Land Rover estate”, that is a Land Rover station-wagon (to use the American
term for this type of car). The word “estate” appears in the next sentence of the descrip-
tion “A mile further we passed the estate shooting lodge” (Macfarlane 2013: 189). This is
translated as “chata myśliwska”, that is “hunting lodge”; so this time the “estate” is left

6 See, for example, http://www.historycy.org/index.php?showtopic=50168&st=135.

The timing and aiming of the creep has to
be precise: synchronized between
batteries […]. (Macfarlane 2013: 333-34)

Moment i kierunek wystrzeliwania tych
skurwieli należało zgrać z niezwykłą
precyzją. (Macfarlane 2018: 378)

The sound of an engine behind us, then
the honk of a horn: an estate Land Rover
bounced past, hardly slowing to let us
leave the track. (Macfarlane 2013: 189)

Warkot silnika za naszymi plecami, potem
ryk klaksonu: land rover kombi przetoczył
się obok nas w podskokach, nie zwalniając
nawet zbytnio, żeby dać nam czas na
uskoczenie z drogi. (Macfarlane 2018: 216)

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untranslated. When the term “estate” appears for the third time in the very same para-
graph: “I was glad to get away from the estate roads and out onto the unmetalled foot-
paths […]” (Macfarlane 2013: 189) the phrase “the estate roads” is translated as
“prywatne tłuczniowe drogi” (Macfarlane 2018: 217), that is “private gravel roads”. So, in
the Polish translation, there is absolutely no connection between “estate Land Rover”,
“estate hunting lodge” and “estate roads”; no idea of the narrator describing a specific
estate with a Land Rover car, a shooting lodge and its own roads.
The translator had problems with the word “feather”, used by Macfarlane in two

different chapters of his travel book to refer to the same ʻstructureʼ:

The strange ʻstructureʼ described by Macfarlane, made by his friend Steve Dilworth
out of dolerite and whalebone, is “a feather”. The word is repeated twice in the first
sentence and then used once again some ten lines later. In the Polish version, it
becomes “skrzydło”, which is a ʻwing.̓ The word is repeated twice. But by the time the
translator gets to the next “feather” he has ʻlearntʼ to translate it (correctly) as a “pióro”.
So the same object is first “skrzydło” (wing) to be transformed into “pióro” (feather),
which obviously confuses Polish readers. When, seventy pages later, the narrative
persona picks up another feather, he makes this comment.

This time Dilworths̓ ʻfeatherʼ is described by the persona as a “dolerite and whalebone
structure”; while the translator has apparently forgotten about this object, which he
called both “skrzydło” (wing) and “pióro” (feather) earlier. Here, he probably thought
that there are two objects being referred to (even though the noun “structure” is used in
the singular in the original): “doleryt Dilwotha i rzeźby przedstawiającej kość wielo-
ryba”, which literally means “Dilworths̓ dolerite and a sculpture representing a whale-
bone”, rather than one “structure” made by Dilworth of dolerite and whalebone.

When I picked it up it weighed almost
nothing: an inverse echo of Dilworth’s
dolerite and whalebone structure.
(Macfarlane 2013: 256)

Podniosłem je, wydawało się nic nie ważyć,
odwrócone echo dolerytu Dilwortha
i rzeźby przedstawiającej kość wieloryba.
(Macfarlane 2018: 290)

It was a feather, a foot-and-a-half-long stone
feather, made of a polished black rock with
green flecks. […] The feather was cool in my
hands and impossibly heavy. (Macfarlane
2013: 175)

Było to skrzydło, półtora stopowe kamienne
skrzydło, wykonane z wypolerowanej
czarnej skały poprzetykanej zielonymi
drobinkami. […] Pióro było chłodne w
dotyku i absurdalnie ciężkie. (Macfarlane
2018: 200-201)

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Sometimes, using too general terms (hypernyms) may lead to some cultural
misunderstanding:

A flask is a type of bottle but not exactly a “butelka” (bottle). In English the term “hip
flask” often gets shortened to “flask”, as is the case here. The equivalent in Polish is
“piersiówka”. The word derives from “pierś” (breast), suggesting an alternative place-
ment of such a useful implement. Yet “flask”, although a type of “bottle”, differs from an
ordinary bottle in that it is usually much smaller than a standard bottle (of whisky). It is
handier because of its flat shape and is usually made of some durable stuff, like stainless
steel, and for all these reasons it is much more practical to carry on you (either on your
hip or your breast) than an ordinary bottle. Although Macfarlane makes it clear on
several occasions in The Old Ways that he is not a teetotaller, he probably would not want
to be seen by his Polish readers leaving his Cambridge house late on a December
evening carrying a bottle of whisky on his hip.
Sometimes, the translators̓ lack of precision is not so culturally poignant, and merely

clumsy:

The word “golfers” is translated as “zawodnicy”, a word which means “competitors”;
this word is much more general and not precise in the sense that not all “golfers” take
part in “zawody” (competitions). So, it should be translated as “golfiści”, a word which
means “golfers”, or alternatively as “gracze” (players).
Sometimes, such too-general terms result in a loss of comprehension:

Robert Macfarlane describes here a golf putting green (although it is now not green, but
white, because it is covered by snow) with “a flagstick” in its centre. Konieczny translates
the term “flagstick” as “maszt” (mast), which is not only not precise, but also misleading.

[…] edited of its golfers by the darkness […]
the countys̓ most exclusive golf-course […].
(Macfarlane 2013: 8)

[…] pozbawione, jak to nocą, zawodników
[…] to najbardziej luksusowe pole golfowe
w kraju […]. (Macfarlane 2018: 16)

South and uphill where I stood, big humps
surrounded what appeared to be a small
lake with a flagstick in its centre.
(Macfarlene 2013: 7)

Na południe, czyli w górę zbocza,
zobaczyłem wielkie białe garby otaczające,
jak się zdawało jeziorko z zatkniętym
masztem po środku. (Macfarlane 2018: 16)

An hour later I went for a walk with a flask
of whisky to keep me warm. (Macfarlane
2013: 6)

Godzinę później wyszedłem na spacer
z butelką whisky; chciałem mieć coś na
rozgrzewkę. (Macfarlane 2018: 14)

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What we have here is a long stick with a flag on top; such a “flagstick” stuck in a hole is a
very characteristic feature of golf courses. Konieczny, instead of using a descriptive term
like “(długa) tyczka z flagą na szczycie” ([long] stick with a flag on top) or “kij z flagą pokazu-
jący położenia dołka” (a stick with a flag showing the position of a hole)7, uses a hypernym,
“maszt”, usually reserved for taller and more substantial vertical structures. Moreover, he
ʻforgetsʼ about the “flag”. In this way, whereas it is clear from Macfarlanes̓ original frag-
ment that he is describing “a golf putting green”, even though he does not use the term,
and the green is not green but white or grey in the moonlight, Konieczny, through a wrong
selection of words, makes the description distinctively less clear and confusing to readers.
Finally, the translator felt free to move far beyond the range of meanings connected

with a given word/phrase, for example:

“ennui” is translated as “uwznioślenie”, which means “ennoblement”.

Realization errors
Sometimes in Szlaki lexical mistranslation is probably the result not of a lack of linguis-
tic competence but, most probably, of too quick and perfunctory reading of the original,
and working under the pressure of time, a similar phenomenon which has been
suggested above in the case of pairs of words like ʻcopse-corpse.̓ Here are some more
examples:

The last sentence in translation means “Ian waved the greeting, they answered the
same way”. Whereas in the original they did not answer in the same way, that is they did
not wave, but merely “nodded back”, quite a different reaction. In fact, the narrator goes

7 See, Angielsko-polski słownik golfowy (English-Polish golf dictionary), www.golfowy.pl/slownik_golfowy.

[…] mix of excitement, incompetence,
ennui, adventure and epiphany.
(Macfarlane 2013: 31)

[…] mieszanina podekscytowania,
niekompetencji, uwznioślenia, przygody
i epifanii. (Macfarlane 2018: 42)

They looked at us, unsmiling [...] They
knew the boat and they knew Ian, but the
implication was clear enough: Keep away,
this is our day, our rock. Ian waved the
greeting, they nodded back. (Macfarlane
2013: 136)

Spoglądali na nas nie uśmiechając się […]
Znali łódź, znali Iana, ale ich sylwetki
sugerowały wyraźnie jedno. “Trzymajcie
się z daleka, to nasz dzień, nasza skała.”
Ian pomachał im na powitanie, oni
odpowiedzieli w ten sam sposób.
(Macfarlane 2018: 157)

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quite a long way to describe this tense, even if brief, meeting between the guga hunters
and Ian (with his crew), and the effect is spoilt at the end in the Polish translation.

The optimal pace for the human mind to function in the translation is changed from
“three miles an hour” in the original to eight miles per hour; definitely a trot, rather
than a “pedestrian pace”.

Two dolphins from the original become “trzy” (three) dolphins in the translation. In a
similar manner:

“[A] single white stone” becomes “dwa pojedyńcze białe kamyki” which means “two single
white pebbles”. The word used by the translator for “stone” is “kamyk”, which is a diminutive
of “kamień” (stone). So, “kamyk” is a small stone, something like a pebble, a word which
shouldnotbeusedinthecontextofastonethesizeofanostrichegg.Howasinglewhitestone
has been translated as two single white pebbles is beyond my comprehension. One more
comment, “przeglądając plażę”, is not a good translation of “scouring the beach”. The Polish
word “przeglądać” (to survey, to browse, to scan) does not connote well with “the beach”.
I would go for “przeczesując plażę, odkryłem […]” (while combing the beach I discovered […]).

With Finlays̓ help I managed to confirm
more facts about Manuss̓ Stones and the
man who had laid them. Manus had indeed
lived as a crofter […]. (Macfarlane
2013: 149)

Dzięki pomocy Finlaya udało mi się
potwierdzić kolejne fakty na temat
Kamieni Manusa i ludzi, którzy je ustawili.
Manus rzeczywiście był zagrodnikiem […].
(Macfarlane 2018: 171)

Scouring the beach, I discovered a single
white stone, the size and shape of an ostrich
egg. (Macfarlane 2013: 111)

Przeglądając plażę, odkryłem dwa
pojedyncze białe kamyki o rozmiarach
i w kształcie strusiego jaja. (Macfarlane
2018: 130)

[…] two yellow-striped dolphins broke
water […]. (Macfarlane 2013: 106)

[…] trzy pokryte żółtymi pasmami delfiny
wyskoczyły nad wodę […]. (Macfarlane
2018: 123)

Kierkegaard speculated that the mind
might function optimally at the pedestrian
pace of three miles per hour [...].
(Macfarlane 2013: 27)

Kierkegaard wysunął tezę, że umysł
funkcjonuje optymalnie w czasie wolnego
spaceru z prędkością ośmiu mil na godzinę.
(Macfarlane 2018: 37)

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In the original we have three nouns in the singular. The narrator states that Finlay
helped him to confirm facts about “Manuss̓ Stones”, that is about one person named
Manus, and that he also confirmed more facts about “the man who had laid them”, that
is about this man called Manus. And the next sentence gives one more confirmed fact
about Manus (that he had lived as a crofter). In the Polish translation the fact about
Manuss̓ Stones is translated correctly, but afterwards we have “i ludzi którzy je ustawili”,
which means “and the men who laid them”, the plural noun (ludzi) with the plural
ending for the verb (ustawili). And then we move to the correctly translated phrase that
Manus had really been a crofter. So, whereas in the original it is clear that Manus laid
Manuss̓ Stones, in the Polish translation some mysterious “men who laid them” appear.

Seventeen acres of rough marshy pasture becomes “siedem akrów” (seven acres).

The Polish translator sent Edward Thomas not to the Western Front, but the Eastern
Front (“na froncie wschodnim”).

While the narrative persona passed at least two shirtless “elderly Spanish men”, in the
translation he passed just one “starszy Hiszpan” (an elderly Spanish man).

Thus, Bariton is moved from the border of Sussex to the border of Essex.

I passed the elderly Spanish men, shirtless
in the noon heat. (Macfarlane 2013: 256)

Minąłem starszego Hiszpana, który
w południowym upale rozebrał się do pasa.
(Macfarlane 2018: 291)

When Edward Thomas travelled to fight on
the Western Front, […] (Macfarlane 2013:
198)

Kiedy Edward Thomas pojechał walczyć
na froncie wschodnim […] (Macfarlane
2018: 228)

They had an acre of the land behind the
house which ran up to the treeline of the
forestry and seventeen acres of rough
marshy pasture […]. (Macfarlane 2013: 193)

Dziadkowie mieli akr ziemi wznoszącej się
ku skrajowi lasu oraz siedem akrów
nierównego, bagnistego pastwiska.
(Macfarlane 2018: 222)

Near Bariton, near the county border with
Sussex. (Macfarlane 2013: 313)

Pod Bariton, na granicy hrabstwa Essex.
(Macfarlane 2018: 354)

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Mistaking two SL syntagms or verb frames
In Szlaki, mistranslation of a syntactical and/or grammatical nature is not as common as
mistranslation caused by lexical complexities of words and phrases, but it is not particu-
larly rare. Here are some examples:

This is the beginning of the quotation Macfarlane used from a book by A. R. B.
Haldane, The Drove Roads of Scotland. The first sentence was translated as “Brązowe
żagle statków z bydłem wypływały z cieśniny Minch” (“The brown sails used to go from
the strait of Minch”), misunderstanding the “have gone”, which here means, “have
disappeared” and translating the sentence in the past tense with the verb “wypływały”
(sailed out of). It is not only an example of mistranslation, but also of clumsy Polish, for
in the first sentence it is not the ships themselves, but their brown sails which “wypły-
wały z cieśniny Minch” (sailed out of the Minch). Of course, this sentence does not
connect with the second one in the Polish translation. The first one is about the cattle
ship which sailed out of Minch, and the second correctly uses the present tense and
conveys the idea of “thrift growing undisturbed”.
The next example shows a problem that is partly grammatical, concerning the third

conditional and the fact that it refers to the past, and is partly culture-bound:

Macfarlane uses the third conditional here, referring to the past, and referring to a
well-known 1859 novel by Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White, which opens with Walter
Hartright, one of the novels̓ narrators, describing his meeting at night on the road
outside London with the ghost-like figure of “a woman in white”. Konieczny changes the
conditional to the present, and his sentence means: If the Broomway did not exist,
Wilkie Collins could invent it. Which does not make much sense in view of what has
been written above. The Polish sentence “Gdyby nie istniała Broomway, Wilkie Collins
byłby zmuszony ją wymyślić” refers to the past, and the fact that Collins might have been
forced (“might have had to”) to invent it. However, without the knowledge of Collinss̓
novel, this sentence in Polish is pretty enigmatic. Should a translators̓ footnote be

If the Broomway hadnʼt existed, Wilkie
Collins might have had to invent it.
(Macfarlane 2013: 60)

Gdyby Broomway nie istniała, mógłby ją
wymyślić Wilkie Collins. (Macfarlane
2018: 70)

The brown sails of the cattle boats have gone
from the Minch. On slipways and jetties
from Skye to Kintyre, thrift grows
undisturbed in the crannies of stones […].
(Macfarlane 2013: 191)

Brązowe żagle statków z bydłem wypływały
z cieśniny Minch. Pochylnie i mola, od Skye
do Kintyre, porasta zawciąg zapuszczający
korzenie w szczelinach pomiędzy
kamieniami […]. (Macfarlane 2018: 219).

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added here? How many more translators̓ footnotes should be added to hundreds of
Macfarlanes̓ footnotes? It is an open question. The kind of question I would prefer to be
asking rather than complaining about errors.

Omissions (elisions)
Hejwowski is strict about omissions. He declares that they “are hardly ever justified – in
translations of more ambitious literary works probably never” (2004: 226). It is individ-
ual words, short phrases, and whole sentences which are omitted in Szlaki. I will start
with two examples in which whole sentences are elided, in an attempt to show the detri-
mental effect omission has on comprehension:

On one July evening in 1932, 16,000 people boarded special scheduled Southern Railway
trains in London to follow a moonlit walk over a stretch of the Downs, gathering to
watch sunrise from the Ring. But then in 1987 the Great Storm blew in and wrecked
Chanctonbury. It s̓ now missing most of its main trees, and its interior has reverted to a
sprout scrub of ash and bramble. (Macfarlane 2013: 317)

For some reason, in the Polish translation the whole sentence “But then in 1987…” is
left untranslated. This sentence is important in this paragraph, as it ʻconnectsʼ the first
and third sentences of the quoted fragment. Without it, the whole paragraph is not
logical and lacks clarity.

The whole short sentence “There were no casualties” is left untranslated, which
changes the perception of the fragment considerably. Moreover, the next sentence is not
very clear because there is one word which is unnecessary and the sentence is not gram-
matical. “że ale żeby zostać ostrzelanym” means “that but to come under fire”, the
unnecessary word is “że”, which here means “that”; this “że” is probably some over-
looked remnant of an earlier version of this sentence.
Sometimes the elision of a phrase is only a part of a sentence, but such phrases in

Macfarlanes̓ precise, even though poetic, prose are rarely redundant:

They were shot at from the banks.
Warlordism was rife here. There were no
casualties. But to come under fire before
theyd̓ even reached the mountain […].
(Macfarlane 2013: 268)

Zostali ostrzelani z brzegu. W okolicy roiło
się od watażków. Wszystko rozumiem, że
ale żeby zostać ostrzelanym zanim w ogóle
dotarło się pod górę […]. (Macfarlane
2018: 302)

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The phrase “Finlay being one” is left untranslated. This might seem not a very crucial
deletion if we look at this sentence only. But this sentence comes at the end of a long
paragraph devoted to Finlay MacLeod, “naturalist, novelist, broadcaster, oral historian,
occasional selkie-singer and seal-summoner and an eloquent speaker in both English
and Gaelic” (Macfarlane 2013: 144-45), and therefore the omission of the “Finlay being
one” markedly reduces the rhetorical passion of the narrative persona.

The simile used by Macfarlane here of Segovia and Ely, a cathedral town in the Fens
some fifteen miles north of Cambridge, is left untranslated. Besides, the pronoun in the
Polish translation should be “je” rather than “ją” as it refers to the word “miasto” (town),
which in Polish is neuter in gender and should have the pronoun “je”, not the feminine
pronoun “ją”. The elision of the simile with Ely and the Fens is similar to another elision
in the sentence “The house has been recently constructed on Morrisian principles”
(Macfarlane 2013: 338), where “Morrisian principles” is elided in the Polish translation.
It is difficult to assess to what extent these two examples are the result of some
conscious “domesticating strategy” of the translator, or whether they point to the haste
in which he was translating The Old Ways. Sometimes, the elision of just one word causes
a profound change in the meaning:

The Polish translation literarily means: “This convention—born of a region which was
not subjected to centuries of feudalism and therefore has not inherited a separate class
of landowners.” It is not an inheriting “landowning class” which is crucial in the original

This convention—born of a region that did
not pass through centuries of feudalism,
and therefore has no inherited deference to a
landowning class […]. (Macfarlane 2013: 16).

Obyczaj ten—zrodzony w części świata,
która nie została poddana wielowiekowym
wpływom feudalizmu, a przez to nie
odziedziczyła odrębnej klasy posiadaczy
ziemskich […]. (Macfarlane 2018: 23-24)

Yet, it still seems to sail upon the flatlands
that surround it, as Ely does upon the Fens.
(Macfarlane 2013: 257)

Mimo to miasto wydaje się żeglować
po otaczającej ją równinie. (Macfarlane
2018: 291)

The event had outraged the Sabbatarians
on the island (of whom there were many)
and delighted the secular modernizers (of
whom there were fewer, Finlay being one).
(Macfarlane 2013: 145)

Zdarzenie to wzbudziło oburzenie ludzi
fanatycznie czczących świętość niedzieli
(których było wielu) i uradowało świeckich
zwolenników postępu (których było mniej).
(Macfarlane 2018: 166)

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but an inherited “deference to a landowning class”. There is no “deference” (szacunek)
in the Polish translation. One word is missing but the meaning is changed a lot.

Translation of culture-bound items
And, finally, just two examples of mistranslation in the category of culture-bound items:

Here the translator did not recognize that “a bed & breakfast” means a pension,
a cheap hotel, and he translated the phrase as “Now and then I treat myself to a night in
bed and to a breakfast”.

Here “Camino” becomes “droga świętego Jana” (“the road of St. John”). Why St. John
and not St. James? Why did the translator not leave the Latin/Spanish word “Camino”,
used also in English and Polish, but instead venture out on his own little translational
pilgrimage, changing saints on his way?

Final remarks
There are many more instances of what I consider errors in Szlaki; they have not been
presented because of the editorial limits on the length of the present paper. I am
convinced that the selection of errors presented and discussed is comprehensively repre-
sentative of the whole range of problems present in this translation. While embarking on
the theme of problems encountered in Polish translations of Anglophone travel writing, I
imagined that I would be focusing mostly on slightly more ʻsophisticatedʼ issues
connected with the translation and publication of travel writing, such as the extent to
which translatorsʼ and/or editorsʼ footnotes should be used to help Polish readers with
specific issues. It turned out, instead, that while working on the Polish translations of The
Old Ways by Robert Macfarlane (as well as on The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell), I
was making longer and longer lists of items I considered to be errors, many of which are
of a relatively basic, rudimentary nature. At the beginning of my travel/translation
research, I came across a statement Elżbieta Tabakowska made in the chapter entitled

A former student of mine, Matt Lloyd, had
walked the full Camino one autumn, with a
knapsack and a ukulele. (Macfarlane
2013: 243)

Jeden z moich dawnych studentów, Matt
Lloyd przeszedł jesienią całą drogę św. Jana
z plecakiem i ukulele. (Macfarlane
2018: 275)

Now and then I treat myself to a night in
a bed & breakfast […] but mostly I sleep just
wherever I am walking. (Macfarlane
2013: 313)

Od czasu do czasu pozwalam sobie na
spędzenie nocy w łóżku i śniadanie […]
ale zazwyczaj śpię tam, gdzie akurat dojdę.
(Macfarlane 2018: 355)

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“Polish Tradition” in Mona Bakers̓ Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, that after
“the political upheaval of 1989 […] [i]n addition to international best-sellers a large
number of substandard books began to appear in equally substandard Polish transla-
tions” (1998: 529). Then, I was taken aback by the boldness with which the (slightly
bizarre) dichotomy was constructed between “international best-sellers” and “substan-
dard books”, and also by the apparent relish with which the derogatory label “substan-
dard” was used twice in the same sentence to refer both to books and to their translations.
I still believe that such labelling and dichotomising should be avoided by researchers at
all costs, but I now see that a serious problem exists in this area. Wydawnictwo
Poznańskie, a renowned Polish publishing house of long-standing, published a travel
book by a renowned British writer that few scholars or critics would call ʻsubstandard.̓
The graphic layout of the translated book, with a photo by Filip Springer, a celebrity
writer, and photographer, is fully professional, with all the appropriate blurbs by the
appropriate celebrity writers. But then, despite two “series editors”, Sylwia Smoluch and
Bogusław Twardowski, one book editor, Piotr Chojnacki, one proof-reader, Anna
Gradecka, (whose names and functions are listed on page 2), we get a translation riddled
with errors at various levels, making the complex, poetic and artistic prose of Robert
Macfarlane, at many points, clumsy and difficult for the Polish reader to comprehend.
It is not directly a problem of Jacek Koniecznys̓ lack of a degree in English. Obviously,

such a degree helps but is not necessary to have a firm grasp of the language from which
one translates. Konieczny, despite his lack of an English degree, is convinced that he is a
competent translator from English, particularly considering the fact that he has trans-
lated and published more than fifty books. My working hypothesis, which I would like to
test and/or develop, is that with this huge increase in the number of books translated
from English into Polish after 1989 (including travel books), there has been a great
increase in the number of professional translators making their living out of it. But the
book market in Poland has not increased much in size, which means that with literally
thousands of new books published each year, many of them translations from foreign
languages, the average number of copies of a given title sold is diminishing, although
this is only a supposition because such data are considered confidential. As translation
costs constitute a considerable part of the expenditure encumbered by publishers, it is
natural that publishers try to reduce these costs by paying translators as little as possi-
ble. This, in turn, means that translators, in order to survive, must ʻproduceʼ many, many
pages of translation a day. This means that they make mistakes, at least some of which
they would not have made if allowed to work at a more relaxed pace. And then three
editors and a proof-reader employed by Wydawnictwo Poznańskie also work so quickly
and perfunctorily that they let all these errors remain, together with such misspellings
as “należąy” (instead of “należący”), “takih” (instead of “taki”) or “śmieci” (instead of
“śmierci”) (Macfarlane 2018: 252, 255, 367).

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Another hypothesis worth venturing is that the translation of Anglophone non-fiction
travel books (travel writing) offers, on average, more challenges to a translator than the
translation of a love story, fantasy novel, or thriller. The combination of complex, ʻartis-
tic,̓ often poetic language, yet grounded in a non-fictional paradigm often supported by
many discourses—in the case of The Old Ways such discourses include: naturalistic,
geological, sporting, tourist, academic—is prone to result in mistranslation on a much
larger scale than the same translators commit while translating, for example, popular
detective fiction.

References
Genette, G. 1997. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretations, trans. by Jane E. Lewin.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hejwowski, K. 2004. Translation: A Cognitive-Communicative Approach. Olecko: Wydawn-
ictwo Wszechnicy Mazurskiej.

Hejwowski, K. 2015. Iluzja przekładu: Przekładoznawstwo w ujęciu konstruktywnym.
Katowice: Śląsk.

Lefevere, A. 2009. Ogórki Matki Courage, trans. by A. Sadza. In: P. Bukowski and
M. Heydel (eds.), Współczesne teorie przekładu: Antologia. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Znak,
223-46.

Lefevere, A. 2012. Mother Courages̓ Cucumbers: Text, System and Refraction in a
Theory of Literature. In: L. Venuti (ed.), The Translation Studies Reader: Third Edition.
London/New York: Routledge, 203-19.

Macfarlane, R. 2013. The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot. London: Penguin Books.
Macfarlane, R. 2018. Szlaki: Opowieści o wędrówkach, trans. by Jacek Konieczny. Poznań:
Wydawnictwo Poznańskie.

Tabakowska, E. 1998. Polish Tradition. In: Routledge Encyclopaedia of Translation Studies,
M. Baker, London/New York: Routledge, 523-32.

Watson, A. 2015. The Garden of Forking Paths: Paratexts in Travel Literature”.
In: J. Kuehn & P. Smethurst (eds.), New Directions in Travel Writing. London: Smeth-
urst, Palgrave Macmillan, 54-70.

Funding
This study was supported by the Regional Initiative of Excellence Programme of the
Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education for the years 2019-2022; project
number 009/RID/2018/19; the amount of funding 8,791,222 PLN.

***
Grzegorz Moroz is Professor of British Literature at the University of Białystok. He has
published monographs and many articles on Aldous Huxley, and on Anglophone as well

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as Polish travel writing, including: Travellers, Novelists and Gentlemen: Constructing Male
Narrative Personae in British Travel Books from the Beginnings to the Second World War
(Peter Lang, 2013) and A Generic History of Travel Writing in Anglophone and Polish Litera-
ture (Brill/Rodopi, 2020).

GRZEGORZ MOROZ DOI: 10.15290/CR.2022.39.4.06
Cucumbers and Creeps: Errors in Translation Studies and in the Polish Translation of Robert Macfarlane’s The Old Ways