Re/Deconstructing voices of (female) translators: The case of Bolesława Kopelówna (1897-1961)

Abstract

The article presents the life and work of Bolesława Kopelówna, a Polish literary translator who was especially active (and widely criticised) in the interwar years in Poland, and is now almost completely forgotten. The article attempts to answer the following questions: why was Kopelówna so intensely criticised? Why has she disappeared from the collective memory? Why was she so active in the field of translation? And, no less crucially, who was this enigmatic figure of Bolesława Kopelówna? Through an application of microhistorical tools to fragments of Kopelówna’s life and work, I will re/deconstruct her seemingly non-existing archive. Combining interdisciplinary tools from literary history, history and feminist studies, my aim is not only to bring back the voice of a silenced, overlooked, and underestimated translator, but also to encourage other researchers to attempt to fill blank spaces in translation history.