"One God equally alive under any name" : Wanda Dynowska (Umadevi) and spirituality in translation between India and Poland

The paper discusses the translation work of Wanda Dynowska (Umadevi), a Polish translator, editor, publisher, journalist, poet, and educator, who devoted herself to bringing together the Polish and Indian cultures. A biographical sketch and an overview of the place of religious/spiritual writing in Dynowska’s output are followed by an analysis of her translation of Raihana Tyabji’s contemporary narrative of bhakti devotionalism: The Heart of a Gopi (1936). Drawing on the approach of ‘humanized’ translation history and translator studies, based on paratextual material and archival documents, Dynowska’s choice of this unusual piece of writing by a nominally Muslim female author is linked to similarities in the author’s and the translator’s biography and personality: un-orthodox religiousness, views on the role of women, and social position as educated female associates of Gandhi’s. Dynowska’s foreignizing translation, seemingly at odds with her self-proclaimed aim of popularizing knowledge about India among Poles, is also contextualized in light of her personal beliefs and circumstances: her idea of and relationship with Indian culture, and her independence, as a self-publishing translator, from editors, publishers or critics, who could otherwise influence her strategy.