Dr Dorota Goluch

Publication

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Research

My work has revolved around the issues of representing, translating and receiving otherness in relation to collective perceptions of the self. I focused on the Polish translation and reception of postcolonial writing, revealing an interplay of pre-existing discourses of difference with new discourses of Polish-postcolonial similarity, which forefront shared historical experiences. I am also interested in representations of the past through translation: my new project examines the links between translation and the construction of national and transnational Holocaust memory in memorial museums. Thinking about the relationships between the self and others also led me to explore various conceptualisations of solidarity; my own attempt to theorise solidarity from within translation studies centres on the notion of commonality and asks how translation can help to enlarge solidarity in today's world.

My main research interests include

• translation and postcolonialism;
• translation, activism and solidarity;
• literary translation and reception;
• translation, memory studies and the Holocaust.

I am currently investigating how the use of translation in the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum influences the ways in which the Holocaust and World War Two are remembered by diverse groups of visitors. A pilot study explored the role of translation and rewriting in the delivery of oral guided tours and in the production of museum texts; preliminary findings have been presented at a Holocaust studies conference, a translation studies symposium and a memory studies event.

I have contributed to a volume on the history of Polish literary translation: my chapter retraces Polish reception of translated postcolonial prose during the Cold War, showing that the reviewers surprisingly often discussed the translations as translations. I demonstrate how the reviewers' preferences for fluent, if non-standard, language and for informative paratexts were framed, but not determined, by the historical and political context. The chapter also intervenes into theoretical debates around translation effects, textual fluency and the metonymic character of translations as representations of their source cultures.

My earlier writing dealt with the Polish reception of Frantz Fanon, as part of a larger project examining Fanon's legacies in multiple languages and locations. I co-authored a comparative 20,000-word chapter on constructions of the Fanon figure in the ex-Yugoslavia, Poland and the former USSR. We demonstrated that the presentation of Fanon's Marxism in state-sponsored publications made him relevant and relatable to some readerships but not to others. Fanon's varying popularity notwithstanding, our account of his influence behind the Iron Curtain shows Fanon as an active political player, thus challenging perceptions of Third World subjects as mere pawns in Cold War politics.

Prior to that, I completed an AHRC-funded doctoral project, entitled Postcolonial Literature in Polish Translation (1970–2010): Difference, Similarity and Solidarity. The thesis examines Polish reviews of translated postcolonial prose to discuss Polish perceptions of postcolonial peoples and the corresponding Polish self-perceptions in the context of debates about East European postcoloniality. It demonstrates that postcolonial literature in translation was consistently – post-1989 discursive shifts notwithstanding – viewed by Polish reviewers as vital to developing knowledge of postcolonial peoples and that this goal determined the preferred translation effects (i.e. intelligibility and informativeness). The reviewers’ interest in translation may suggest that in the case of translating across a conspicuous cultural divide, translation need not be as ‘invisible’ as it tends to be otherwise. Moreover, the thesis reveals that while the long-standing perceptions of civilizational difference between Poland and non-European, postcolonial countries remained salient, statements of Polish-postcolonial similarity were gaining currency. Finally, I ventured a view that, enabled by the perceptions of similarity, solidarity could be forged between nationally, socially, politically and culturally delineated Polish and postcolonial constituencies.

Alongside studying reviews, I have analysed Polish translations of African literature, including Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (1958), The Palm-Wine Drinkard (1952) by Amos Tutuola and Weep Not, Child (1964) by Ngũgi wa Thiong'o. I initially assumed that because postcolonial authors purposefully intervened into the European languages they used, translations should convey defamiliarizing effects to capture the postcolonial (self-)representations. The novels I studied underwent partly normalizing translations instead. Yet, after learning the translators’ viewpoints from prefaces and an interview, I appreciated potential merits of linguistic normalization, such as granting African texts a measure of prestige associated with fluent language. I also commented on the universalist discursive framing of Tutuola’s translation: I associated it with Cold War propaganda about brotherhood with Africa, without ruling out its significance for intercultural understanding.

In my early work I applied critical tools derived from the writings of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak to literary works by the Indo-Caribbean female authors Shani Mootoo, Ramabai Espinet, Lakshmi Persaud and others. I showed how their subaltern, or disenfranchised, female characters subverted regulative psychobiographies (i.e. model narratives imposed by society) through paid work, sexual emancipation, or, in extreme cases, murder and suicide.

Teaching

I have taught and convened translation-related courses for undergraduate and postgraduate students, contributing primarily to the following modules:

• Introduction to Translation Theory (Year 1),
• Introduction to Translation Methods (Year 1),
• Principles of Translation (Year 2),
• Translation as a Profession (Year 4),
• Theory of Translation (MA),
• Translation Methods and Skills (MA),
• Translation and Adaptation in the Arts (MA),
• Specialized Translation: Politics and Law (MA),
• Translation and Culture (MA).

I have also supervised about fifteen undergraduate projects and around thirty MA dissertations.

In addition to my regular teaching, I have co-authored a short online course Working with Translation, which is intended for the general public, including translation and interpreting users and practitioners. The course has run regularly since 2016, attracting many thousands of learners from around 150 countries.

Biography

I joined Cardiff as a lecturer in translation studies in 2013. Before that, I completed an AHRC-funded PhD project at University College London (2009-2013) and worked as a postgraduate teaching assistant at UCL as well as the University of Leicester. Prior to my PhD, I studied postcolonial studies at the University of Kent (MA in 2009), English philology and translation studies at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow (magister in 2008) and postcolonial literature at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich (exchange year).

I have also been involved in the work of academic associations: I acted as the secretary of the Legenda Studies in Comparative Literature editorial committee (2013-2018), a postgraduate representative of the British Comparative Literature Association (2010–2013) and a web officer of the Postcolonial Studies Association (2011–2014).

Alongside my academic work I gained experience in translating popular literature, localization and teaching English as a foreign language.

Honours and awards

Enriching Student Lives award for the Student Rep Coordinator of the year (2016)

Supervisions

I welcome inquiries from potential PhD candidates, especially in the areas of:

• translation and postcolonialism;
• translation, activism and solidarity;
• literary translation and reception;
• translation, memory studies and the Holocaust;
• translation in memorial museums;
• translation from and into Polish.

I have co-supervised eight doctoral projects on a range of subjects, including fan translation, fansubbing, translation training, bilingualism and 'natural' translation, minority language translation, the sociology of translation, translation and psychoanalysis, as well as translation and the Holocaust.

Current PhD students:

• Jacob Lloyd: 'Investigating audiovisual translators in non-professional settings through the lens of translation sociology'
• Alexander Morgan: 'Let the Language Continue: Translation of Chinese into Welsh'
• Abdullah Alqarni: 'Translation of English Self-Help Literature into Arabic from a Socio-cultural Perspective'
• Lea Klein: 'The Unconscious Discourse Structures in and of Translation'