Ethics in specialist translation and competencies of interpreter – the case study

Abstract

The subject of the considerations put forward in this article is an evaluation of the quality, in substantive and ethical terms, of the specialist translation into Polish of Henryk Hiż’s article ‘Peirce’s Influence on Logic in Poland’. The trans-    lation subjected to evaluation here was published in 2015 in the specialist philosophical journal Studia z Filozofii Polskiej  [Studies of Polish Philosophy] (October 2015, pp. 21–33). In the presented evaluation, I point out substantive and ethical violations committed by interpreter, calling attention to (a) the flouting of the principle cuilibet in arte sua ; (b) manipulation of source material; (c) dishonesty in philological-textological development; (d) improper editorial preparation; (e) disregard of the subsequent literature on the subject; (f) deliberate and unjustified abridgement of the original text. The deficiencies enumerated in points (a)–(f) are the result of interpreter’s adoption of the ‘publish or perish’ strategy, the overriding goal of which is to publish an article in a high-impact journal with the aim of achieving the most favourable bibliometric result in the shortest possible time, at a cost to the integrity and ethical responsibility of the translator-researcher.