Sulle strategie di traduzione delle citazioni bibliche nella Polonia barocca: il caso di Wieczność Piekielna di Jan Chomętowski

Abstract On Translation Strategies of Biblical Quotes. in Baroque Poland: The case of Wieczność piekielna by Jan Chomętowski. The article is a case-study illustrating which strategies were used by translators of non-liturgica! works from Latin into vulgar tongues when they had to translate biblical quotes. We examined Jan Chomętowski's Polish translation of the Latin tract Infernus damnatorum written by the German Jesuit Hieremias Drexel. We analysed how the biblica! quotes were translated. When composing the Latin text Drexel drew quotes from the Clementine Vulgata. The Polish translator could rely upon the authoritative version of the Bible prepared by Jakub Wujek, published in 1599, and indeed he did so, but he did not copy the needed portions of text unreflexively. On the contrary, he often modified the biblical quotes according to various principles: 1) in some cases he replaced some words with synonyms already occurring in the main text, in order to stress the relevance of the quote for the genera! argumentation; 2) in other cases, he modernised the language, using a more recent morphology; 3) in further instances, he slightly modified Wujek's text just for stylistic reasons. These three tendencies could overlap in the same quote. The translator had to bear in mind the genre of the work containing the biblical quotes and had to harmonise their translation with the genera! translatory strategies. Though, some piace for the practice of aemulatio was still present. The analysis of the translation of biblical quotes offers an insight into the reflection about the translation of the Holy Writ in general.