Formal Literary Style and Modern American Idiom

Abstract

In contrast to the informal style of Czasak’s translation, the most recent English-language translation of Korczak’s novel—King Matthew the First, completed by Adam Fisher and Ben Torrent and published in New York in 2014—is characterized by lexical sophistication and formal style, qualities which are missing from Korczak’s original novel, which was mostly written in plain, unembellished Polish. It would be reductive, however, to characterize Fisher and Torrent’s translation exclusively by its high literary style as it also contains a large number of idiomatic expressions. These differences in formality partially map onto dialogue, which is more colloquial, and narrative, which is more formal. This chapter will examine these differences and will also investigate how Korczak’s fictional universe was partly modernized in translation. Finally, we will briefly focus on the application of the strategies of hyperbolization, fairytalization and infantilization in the American text. In essence, the 2014 translation of Korczak’s classic tale is an intriguing combination of mixing informal and idiomatic English with an ornate style, marked by the use of sophisticated lexical items.