Linguistic aspects of subjectivity in song translation (in the light of Wojciech Młynarski’s works and self-referential remarks)

The article discusses the manifestations of subjectivity in the translation of songs created by Wojciech Młynarski, one of the best-known Polish songwriters of the second half of the 20th century. His personalized translation strategies have been presented on examples of Polish translations of the lyrics written by Irving Berlin, Vladimir Vysotsky and Bobby McFerrin. The analyses have shown that Młynarski gave absolute priority to three aspects of translation: prosodic equivalence; equivalence of intentional meaning (pragmatic equivalence) and comparability of the recipients’ aesthetic experiences. Wherever possible, the translator sought equivalence at the lexical-semantic level or at the imaging level, for example, he searched for lexemes or idioms that would evoke a picture similar to the original. However, if it was impossible to reproduce literal meanings or images in the target language, he focused on the three priorities listed above, leaving the other aspects of the original song in the far background