„That's Inconceivable” or on the Translation of Modified Collocations in Utopia byWislawa Szymborska

Abstract

Modified collocations give the construction basis of Utopia by Wisława Szymborska and thus are the key for understanding of its meaning. The poetess introduces new senses not only by dephraseologization of all expressions used in the poem but also by applying many methods of modification to one particular idiom all at once. Translation of collocations modified in such a way is extremely difficult but, sometimes, doable – at least in some fragments of the text, which is proven by the work of Stanislaw Barańczak and Clare Cavanagh.