The Godfather: A Translator’s and Writer’s Subconscious and Conscious Skills in the Process of Evoking Reader’s Emotions

Abstract

The article is an unyielding argument supporting the thesis that not only a writer, but also a translator is expected to use their creativity so that nothing is lost in translation. Amongst various factors that influence the process of translating a novel the article focuses on two of them: a translator should stick to the original text with taking the semantic fields differences into account while s/he should keep the atmosphere of the source language, making as little changes in the target language as possible. Marking a translator’s existence in a text is strongly connected with a perlocutionary act. A great example of the translation that covers both principles is The Godfather, written by Mario Puzo and translated from English into Polish by Bronisław Zieliński. He translated only English words into Polish, leaving the target Italian words with no metamorphosis. The article presents the effect obtained by such an action.