After the years of whinging about lack of recognition, low status and how people think that anyone who knows two languages can translate translators – at least in Poland – are finally gaining some ground on their mortal enemies: original artists.

Today’s Gazeta Wyborcza reports how a translator, Hanna Szczerkowska, forced (by use of the courts) a theatre group to take their production of a play she translated off the stage. They had broken her copyright by – oh perfidy! – adapting her translation of a play by Adam Rapp. The production that took to the boards had rude words in it that were not present in her translation. They call it “ochrona praw autorskich” here: “protection of authors’ rights.” Asked for comments, one Dariusz Kosiński of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków described it as an ominous sign of the domination of authorial rights over all others. But no discussion of a matter that concerns the Polish intelligentsia would be complete without a put down of the Unqualified. Tadeusz Słobodzianek of The Drama Laboratory in Warsaw says “The improvement of plays is taken on by amateurs who have no idea about the written [sic] word.” Best leave things to the professionals, eh? Like Hanna Szczerkowska, who has demanded of another theatre group a 10,000 zloty forfeit if she is not given the script 10 days before the premier or if there are any changes in the script not previously agreed with her. Finally, the professionalism that translators have always dreamed of.