Cross-cultural dialogue in the Polish-English translation of neologisms

Abstract

Abstract The article discusses selected neologisms that Stanisław Lem, a Polish science-fiction writer, created for two of his numerous short stories featuring Ijon Tichy, a space traveler. It is not only their surprising and appealing structure that makes these creations and their English counterparts an interesting subject for analysis, but also, and more importantly, the fact that they carry specific allusions, which renders them humorous in their contextual appearance. All these characteristics contribute to a translation challenge present in the neologisms analyzed. The article focuses on how – and with what result – this challenge has been approached by the translators who handled it in an endeavor to expand the dialogic space between the author and his audience.