Revisiting The Trumpeter of Samarkand. Between automatic and literary translation of a short story by Ksawery Pruszyński
In its scientific dimension, the monograph is devoted to the possibility of using automatic translation of literary works into languages that do not belong to the same family, as well as to examining translation quality by comparing the automatically obtained texts with their literary versions. I...
Gorde:
| Egile Nagusiak: | , , |
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| Formatua: | Online |
| Hizkuntza: | poloniera |
| Argitaratua: |
Lublin University of Technology Publishing House
2025
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| Gaiak: | |
| Sarrera elektronikoa: | https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/162893 |
| Etiketak: |
Etiketarik gabe, Izan zaitez lehena erregistro honi etiketa jartzen!
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| Gaia: | In its scientific dimension, the monograph is devoted to the possibility of using
automatic translation of literary works into languages that do not belong to the same family,
as well as to examining translation quality by comparing the automatically obtained texts
with their literary versions. In particular, the work concerns the translation from Polish into
Uzbek and Tajik of Ksawery Pruszyński’s short story “The Trumpeter of Samarkand”,
which was written in 1942. The specificity of the methodology used was that no single
person knew both the original language (Polish) and the target languages (Uzbek and Tajik).
For this purpose, a language of communication was found (Russian), which was known to
both parties and was used not only for correspondence, but also allowed, by translating the
story into this language, to properly present the content of the text as well as most of the
linguistic context. The widely available Google Translate program was used for machine
translation, and the free DiffNow program was applied to compare automatic and literary
translations.
For a better understanding of the content of the story, its action, historical and
philosophical considerations and the context of World War II by users of Uzbek and Tajik,
the work presents a broad historical context. It describes both the little known connections
between Poland and the peoples living in modern Uzbekistan during the times of Genghis
Khan, as well as the presence of Polish soldiers there in 1942, from whom the Polish
Army in the East under General Władysław Anders was created. Also presented is the
interpenetration of the world of Polish and Uzbek legends with historical facts.
The final utilitarian result of the monograph is the publication of full literary versions
of the story in question in five languages: Polish, English, Russian, Uzbek and Tajik, the
latter two both in the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets. For a better understanding of the text,
dictionaries of concepts, terms and characters appearing in the story have been prepared
in national languages. In the context of achieving the scientific goal, it was shown that the
method used to translate literary works by correcting automatic translation into a literary
version performed by a person who knows the text in a language other than the target
language is an effective procedure. This approach may significantly accelerate the sharing of
selected literary works between smaller nations or countries with sporadic historical ties.
Comparisons made between the texts obtained from machine translation and their
literary versions showed that the difference in their quality in relation to the entire story
ranged from 19% to 32%. The results of quantitative research showed that machine
translation into Uzbek was of better quality than into Tajik. It is possible that the level of
these translations was influenced by the fact that the Uzbek language is written in the Latin
alphabet, while Tajik uses the Cyrillic one. |
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