Cockney w polskich przekładach Murzyna z załogi „Narcyza” Josepha Conrada

The Nigger of the “Narcissus” is a novel in which linguistic differentiation plays an important role in identifying particular characters, and in contributing to their verisimilitude. Linguistic polyphony provides the reader with information concerning social status and geographical origin of the novel’s characters. A prominent role is given to the anti-hero – Donkin, an East-End Londoner, who appropriately speaks cockney. The author does not attempt to stylize Donkin’s speech in order to reconstruct all the? features typical of this language variety. He mostly employs phonological features to signal Donkin’s cockney utterances. Despite the fact that both Polish translations introduce linguistic varieties into their texts, the outcomes are not as successful as those featured in the original. The first reason is that both Lemański and Zieliński use colloquialization to reconstruct Donkin’s speech, a procedure they also employ with respect to the? other characters representing the lower class. Consequently, Donkin’s speech is clearly differentiated from the standard English used by the narrator, but not from other sailors. The second reason is that lexical stylization is frequently absent as it strongly depends on the subject-matter of the message; whereas in the original, graphological forms are introduced more consistently as they are independent of/on? what Donkin talks about. Finally, lexical colloquialization, while pointing to the social status of a character, cannot provide target readers with any additional information implied by the very fact of using cockney not only for purposes of emphatic loudness, vigorous body language, attentioncatching utterances, but also as indicative of the manifestations of arrogance, insolence and impertinence.