15 LITERATURE
Łukasz Borowiec 
John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland
More or Less on the Mark?  
Translating Harold Pinter’s The Dwarfs: A Novel
Summary
A literary source text demands the translator’s approach for each process of translation. *is approach 
involves a complex and multifaceted analysis of the source text. As Pinter’s novel #e Dwarfs provides 
rich ground for such analysis, I present a selection of translation issues against the backdrop of a more 
general problem of translatability. Pinter is a master of English dialogue, which makes its translation 
a truly daunting task. *e conversations between the characters are  lled with expressions from 
cricket, dated British cultural references, puns, literary and Biblical allusions, phrases and formulaic 
expressions characteristic of Cockney, and numerous allusions to Shakespeare as well as his own 
earlier plays. I examine the translatability of #e Dwarfs by discussing three translation codes: lexical-
semantic, cultural and esthetic. Although these are closely interconnected and interdependent, I 
present a choice of issues within each code in order to submit for consideration the challenges facing 
a Pinter translator as well as to show the complexity of Pinter’s artistic vision in one of his earliest 
works.
Key words: translation, e Dwarfs: A Novel, translatability, culture in translation
Bolj ali manj ustrezno?  
Prevajanje romana Pritlikavci Harolda Pinterja
Povzetek
Vsako literarno besedilo od prevajalca zahteva speci čen pristop, ki ga mora ta na začetku postopka 
prevajanja vedno na novo izbrati. Med drugim je treba natančno in celovito analizirati izhodiščno 
besedilo. Pinterjev roman Pritlikavci (#e Dwarfs) predstavlja bogato in zanimivo podlago za tako 
analizo, zato izbrane prevajalske probleme obravnavam s stališča splošnejšega problema prevedljivosti. 
Pinter je mojster dialoga, zaradi česar predstavlja vsak prevod jezika njegovih oseb zelo zahtevno 
nalogo. Pogovori vsebujejo izraze iz kriketa, omembe starejše britanske kulture, besedne igre, literarne 
in biblijske aluzije, fraze in formulaične izraze iz cockneyskega dialekta, aluzije na Shakespeara ter na 
Pinterjeve zgodnje drame. Prevedljivost romana Pritlikavci obravnavam s stališča treh prevajalskih 
kodov: leksikalno-semantičnega, kulturnega in estetskega. Čeprav so med seboj vsi trije tesno 
povezani in odvisni drug od drugega, izpostavljam izbrane probleme znotraj posameznega koda. Tako 
opozarjam na izzive, s katerimi se soočajo prevajalci Pinterjevih del ter na razsežnost in zapletenost 
Pinterjeve umetniške vizije na primeru enega izmed njegovih najzgodnejših del.
Ključne besede: prevajanje, e Dwarfs: A Novel, prevedljivost, kultura pri prevajanju 
UDK 81'255.4:821.111–31.03Pinter H.
DOI: 10.4312/elope.9.1.15-27
16 Łukasz Borowiec More or Less on the Mark? Translating Harold Pinter’s The Dwarfs: A Novel
More or Less on the Mark? Translating Harold Pinter’s  
The Dwarfs: A Novel
1. Introduction: Harold Pinter’s The Dwarfs: A Novel and translatability
Although published over thirty years after it had been written, #e Dwarfs: A Novel can be said 
to be Harold Pinter’s (1930-2008) most important early work. Although Harold Pinter is fairly 
well-known in Poland (albeit recently somewhat neglected) and most of his plays have been 
translated into Polish, a signi cant part of his oeuvre still remains unexplored. Pinter’s poetry 
remains almost unknown
1
, not to mention his screenwriting output (while, for example, #e 
French Lieutenant’s Woman or #e Comfort of Strangers are obviously well-known  lms, the fact 
that Pinter was a scriptwriter is de nitely not). 
As for the presence of Pinter on Polish theatre stages, one can observe two major issues. One is 
the fact that translations of his plays are now in many respects outdated in terms of, for example, 
sometimes awkward choice of words or syntax. *is has a bearing on productions of Pinter 
in Poland and seems to in<uence directors’ approach to Pinter’s older plays. For instance, a 
recent staging of #e Caretaker (2010) was, to say the least, not well-received
2
. *e other is that, 
although there are excellent translations of Pinter’s later and latest works (including Celebration) 
by Bolesław Taborski, there are instances of dramas that have not been staged at all in the Polish 
version, the most surprising example being Moonlight.
Hence, the study and Polish translation of #e Dwarfs
3
 can have a twofold aim. Firstly, I think it is 
of great importance to shed light upon this fundamental item among Pinter’s juvenilia, which seems 
to have been a little overlooked in studies on Pinter. Secondly, #e Dwarfs highlights numerous 
issues connected with the process of translating not only the novel, but Pinter’s works in general and 
could be a good starting point for commencing the revival of interest in Pinter in Poland.
Each Pinter play has been so far widely discussed in numerous journal articles and research 
studies. In contrast to this, #e Dwarfs: A Novel has received a peculiar treatment, which seems 
to be a result of two major factors:  rst, the exis tence of the play #e Dwarfs (1960) based on 
the book. As with many other dramas, it has already been the subject of numerous studies. 
An additional challenge when dealing with the play is that it has three versions, each of which 
replaced the earlier ones in the course of years (see Giantvalley 1986). Second, there is the removal 
of the female character Virginia from the play. *ese two facts dramatically change the overall 
structure and emphasis in the drama. Despite the fact of sharing the same title, #e Dwarfs: A 
Novel has thus to be considered a separate work of art.
1
 The poems are sometimes used as part of theatre performances, as in The New World Order at Teatr Żeromskiego in Kielce, Poland 
(2006), in which, among others, Pinter’s poem “American Football” appeared between the plays and sketches that comprised the 
performance (the plays were Mountain Language, One for the Road, The New World Order and Victoria Station).
2
 Cf. “In boring, emotionless monologues, the characters talk mainly about what they are not going to achieve in life” (Kyzioł 2010). If 
not stated otherwise, all translations are by ŁB.
3
 For the purposes of this essay, and if not stated otherwise, the title The Dwarfs stands for the novel by Pinter.
17 LITERATURE
As a result of this complicated fate of the book, there are just a few studies on it, although over 20 
years have passed since its publication. It seems justi able to claim that the reason for this could 
be a presumption that since the play based on the novel has already been so widely investigated, it 
seems not worthwhile to deal with the book. While it is true to say that, in the majority of cases, 
studies of the play prove helpful in elucidating the intricacies of the novel, one should not forget 
about its di=erent genre as well as the fourth main female character, Virginia, who plays a not 
insigni cant part in the development of the story. However, previous analyses and investigations 
of Pinter’s #e Dwarfs do little to unravel the novel’s variegated layers, including historical, social 
and cultural references to British reality in the 1950s; formal and thematic epitomization of major 
trends in the history of post-war British  ction; a nd last but not least, the focus of this paper, 
which are linguistic, intertextual and intercultural aspects revealed in the process of translation
4
.
#e Dwarfs was inspired by real events from Pinter’s early twenties. He transferred them into the 
novel, sometimes with an almost documentary exactitude, which has been con rmed by people 
who spent Pinter’s adolescent years with him (for example, Woolf (2007); Billington (2007, 
59), which includes memories of Jennifer Mortimer). #e Dwarfs tells the story of a group of 
friends on the verge of adulthood (one character among them is modelled after Pinter himself, 
as the author confessed to his biographer and also on other occasions (Stanford 2003). *ey are 
forced to face their  rst mature decisions and deal with inevitable failures. *e plot centres on 
conversations among the four main characters: Mark, Len, Pete and Virginia. On the surface, 
the purpose of the exchanges is to reveal the cleverness, brilliance as well as dominance of one 
character over the others. *e conversations circle around art, poetry, drama, religion and male-
female relationships, to mention just the most prominent ones. When one looks more deeply, 
however, out of these talks emerge two striking qualities of the novel. Firstly, the fact quickly 
noted by Pinter scholars that #e Dwarfs introduces the reader to numerous aspects of Pinter’s 
later dramatic works with a consistency quite remarkable for a beginner writer. Secondly, and 
perhaps more importantly, the novel discloses layers of meaning that go far beyond youthful 
experimentation and a fascination with Beckett or Joyce, which becomes especially prominent 
when the novel is subject to the process of translation. 
Pinter is above all a master of English dialogue, which makes each attempt to transfer his richly 
idiomatic language onto the domain of another language and culture a truly daunting task. In #e 
Dwarfs the conversations between the characters are  lled with expressions taken from Pinter’s 
favourite cricket, references to British reality immediately after World War II, linguistic puns, 
literary quotations, paraphrases of the Bible, phrases and formulaic expressions characteristic of the 
Cockney dialect, numerous allusions to Shakespeare, not to mention single words, expressions and 
even larger passages which can be found both in Pinter’s earlier pieces as well as in his later plays.
4
 The existing studies on The Dwarfs approach the novel quite carefully, as if following Toby S. Zinman’s observation that “[o]bviously, 
when a playwright writes a novel, the question of whether any talent, even one as major as Pinter’s, can jump genres, is a great 
question. Even though the novel was written before the fact of Pinter’s being called to his vocation, he did, after all, choose to publish 
it decades later” (1997, 105). Most probably, that is why Pinter’s novel is examined predominantly from three perspectives: as an 
artistic manifesto of a playwright-to-be (Gillen 1990; Gillen 2001; Prentice 1994; Billington 2007); as a source of almost exclusively 
thematic tricks and solutions which reappear in later works (Peacock 1997); as a work worth reviewing, but not worth analyzing, 
owing to its many flaws, inconsistencies and even epigonism (Zinman 1997; Kaufman 1990; Steinberg 1990). It must be stressed 
that this is merely a selection of examples.
18 Łukasz Borowiec More or Less on the Mark? Translating Harold Pinter’s The Dwarfs: A Novel
All this shows the range of challenges facing a translator of Pinter. Maria Krzyszto ak, one of 
the Polish experts on literary translation, notices that “due to the speci c nature and uniqueness 
of every literary work, translators as well as literary scholars and translation critics most of all 
should be aware of the individual nature of artistic structures in literary texts which form the 
source for the translator of literature” (1999, 56). *is awareness requires from the translator 
a complex and multifaceted analysis and interpretation of the source text
5
. Obviously, it is 
impossible to cover in this short paper each and every aspect of the translation process of Pinter’s 
#e Dwarfs, but it seems worthwhile to outline a number of issues as part of the broader concept 
of translatability. Extracting the gist of various discussions on translatability (which can be said to 
be a core problem in theories of not only literary translation), Krzyszto ak de nes it as “an ability 
to convey directly the esthetic, stylistic, connotative and linguistically creative characteristics 
of a given text” (Krzyszto ak 1999, 71). T ranslatab ility is a concept closely connected with a 
particular literary text as well as its cultural and historical context
6
. 
I would like to examine the translatability of #e Dwarfs by discussing three translation 
codes: lexical-semantic, cultural and esthetic. Although these are closely interconnected and 
interdependent (and frequently overlap), I would like to present a choice of issues within each 
code in order to submit for consideration the challenges facing a Pinter translator as well as to 
show the depth and complexity of Pinter’s artistic vision in one of his earliest works. 
2. The lexical-semantic code
Within the lexical-semantic code the most striking are words, expressions or phrases which 
do not possess even paraphrased counterparts in Polish. In the case of #e Dwarfs, this is 
visible particularly in the di=erent kinds of terminology that the characters use. A particularly 
prominent  eld of interest for Mark, Len and Pete is gambling. Time and again they refer 
to betting and use expressions like “eachway bet” (2, 10
7
). In Poland betting on the results 
of sports events is not uncommon, but for an average reader the whole range of di=erences 
between various kinds of bets may be at least obscure. To complicate things even more, one 
of the sports on which the British de nitely placed bets in the 1950s was cricket, which 
also reappears in exchanges between the characters
8
. All this once more is even less clear for 
the Polish reader than the concept of betting, since in Poland cricket is for many a mystery, 
5
 As a result, the translator’s choices can be treated as “interpretive moves”, as described by Venuti (201 1, 128).
6
 It is interesting to expand this by what Allan Turner adds: „[…] in a complex, polyphonic work of literature […], choices made by the 
translator, whether wittingly or unwittingly, may reveal what an author was doing in the original. By the same principle, any transla-
tion, to the extent that it differs in some respects from its source text, may contribute to an analysis of what constitutes the unique 
character of a literary work” (2006, 169).
7
 All references to the novel are to Harold Pinter, The Dwarfs: A Novel, Faber and Faber, London, 1992. In the brackets the page 
number follows the chapter.
8
 A good example is the fragment of Chapter 4 (pages 34-5) in which Len and Mark pretend that their conversation is a cricket match:
- What have you got against Jesus Christ?
- That’s a fast yorker. [i.e., one of the most difficult throws in cricket]
- Can you play it?
And later:
- Howzat?
- Not out. 
19 LITERATURE
to say the least. Nonetheless, in the translation I tried to preserve, for instance, the double 
meaning of “howzat?”: as a cricket term and a short version of “how is that?” As a result, I 
decided to expand the Polish version of “howzat?” into something like: “And what now? Is the 
batsman out?” *is kind of approach was necessary for two reasons. *e  rst one is cultural
9
. 
#e Dwarfs – in many respects a book about British post-war times – should not be devoid 
of references to a sport which for many British people is part of their national identity (a 
concept especially important and strongly underlined in the  rst decades after the war). *e 
second one is rooted in Pinter’s biography: every Pinter fan knows that the playwright was 
a great devotee of cricket
10
. *us, a book so closely connected with Pinter’s life and passions 
would become distorted if the lexicon of his characters disappeared as a result of being either 
removed or made more approachable through the introduction of lexical items to convey 
similar meanings (for example, if the idea of taking risks appeared instead of the concept of 
betting proper). As Itamar Even-Zohar puts it, “under certain circumstances constraints [and 
in the  eld of the Polish language it is the non-existence of cricket terminology and limited 
familiarity with betting terms] may operate not only in selecting from among established 
options, but in providing options that did not exist before” (1981, 5). Consequently, some 
cricket and betting terminology has to be introduced into the Polish translation under the 
pressure of lexical “constraints”.
3. The cultural code
*e above-mentioned issues are closely interwoven with the cultural code, which is present on 
almost every page of the novel. A close reading of #e Dwarfs reveals the 1950s East End as seen 
through the eyes of young Pinter and his companions. *e originality of the playwright’s early 
works seems to reside in the fact that he places his characters in quite precisely portrayed time 
and space while forcing them to face universal problems. In other words, he elevates a speci ed 
reality to the level of metaphor and sometimes even symbol
11
. *us, it seems intriguing and 
promising to decide on preserving the cultural elements in the novel so as not to obscure them 
with the translator’s creativity, as this would lead to the danger of writing a new novel that 
has little to do with the original text
12
. *at is why it is better for the reader to learn what “the 
black hole of Calcutta” was (2, 16), how A and B buttons in telephone booths worked (14, 97) 
or to read the whole conversations about bus trips with all the London place names (4, 31-2), 
9
 This already shows clearly how blurred the boundaries are between the codes under discussion.
10
 He was recorded to have said, “I tend to think that cricket is the greatest thing that God created on earth, [...] certainly greater than 
sex, although sex isn’t too bad either” (Bull 2008).
1 1
 For example, the conversation between the two women in the sketch The Black and White, apart from being realistic, becomes an 
image of loneliness and a struggle to evoke empathy in the other person.
12
 To a certain extent, my intention in translating The Dwarfs (which is also what the complexity of the novel forced me to do) was to 
follow, at least in part, what Lawrence Venuti claimed when he stood “out against ‘transparent’ translations that pretend to give a 
‘faithful’ version of an original”; Venuti “[rejected] the ideal of the ‘fluent’ translation, as being in itself a falsification, and ultimately 
[called] for ‘abusive’ translations that proclaim the presence of the translator. For Venuti, the virtue of such an approach is that the 
characteristic marks, the native flavour of the original are not smoothed out in the name of fluency” (Jackson 1991, 82). Venuti’s 
stand is best summarized by Jolanta Kozak, who says that “foreignizing translation is [...] not only an opportunity to broaden the 
conceptual horizons of the reader through repeating the foreign what (image), but also an opportunity to refresh the language of 
translation through exposing and sabotaging the structures of the canon, thanks to the method of deformation (by showing how – so 
showing e.g., the texture, syntax transferred from the original)” (2009, 166-7).
20 Łukasz Borowiec More or Less on the Mark? Translating Harold Pinter’s The Dwarfs: A Novel
since these also show elements of Pinter’s own background and the submersion in the reality 
of the East End that stayed with him for the rest of his life. 
However, the speci cs of the cultural code are not only connected with the social and historical 
backdrop against which the plot is set. A close look into the novel reveals a number of biblical 
references and allusions. In many cases it is impossible to pass by a fragment or passage without 
noticing the connections. To provide contrasting examples, it would be instructive to consider 
one obvious and the other less clear, though possible, reference to the Bible in the text: 
1) *e fragment from Chapter 6 (49): “Christ? No, no. No. He’s what he is and I’m what I’m 
not. I can’t see how we can be related”, which refers to Exodus 3:14
13
: “And God said unto Moses, 
I AM THAT I AM: and he said, *us shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent 
me unto you”. Also Pete’s “Follow me. I am the way and the truth. I am the resurrection and the 
life” (23, 135). *is is a combination of biblical quotations from John 11:25: “Jesus said unto 
her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he 
live” (before Lazarus is resurrected) and Matthew 9:9: “And as Jesus passed forth from thence, he 
saw a man, named Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom: and he saith unto him, Follow me. 
And he arose, and followed him.” 
2) A less clear reference can be found in biblical phrases which in Poland exist in particular 
forms and which are based on the most widely used translations of the Bible. *is fact has to 
be taken into consideration if the complex texture of #e Dwarfs is to be transferred to another 
language. A good example here would be Chapter 9 (60): “Who spoke, saying”, which suggests 
stylistic reference to the Bible, namely the way the words of Jesus are quoted. See, for instance, 
Matthew 16:13 (emphasis mine): “When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he 
asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?” or Matthew 22: 41-
42: “41 While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, 42 Saying, What think ye 
of Christ? […].” *is doubling of a reporting verb can be found in the Polish translation of the 
Bible, called Biblia Warszawska (*e Warsaw Bible), which, interestingly enough, is the most 
popular protestant version in Poland. *erefore, it neatly corresponds with Pete’s Anglicanism, 
which he discusses in detail in Chapter 8.
Another kind of cultural reference is connected with the fact that Pinter’s characters grow up 
in the post-war world. Pinter’s political activism and anti-war statements are well known, and 
that is why it is interesting to observe how Pinter inserts references and allusions to war time 
(especially the Holocaust) into the book.  Once more, two examples:
1) Chapter 6 (48) Pete says with bitter irony: “It was a cake I’d forgotten about, in the oven. […] 
*e neighbour […] was in a state, white in the face. Obviously thought I’d been boiling human 
bones.” Pete may be referring to methods used by Nazis in getting rid of the bodies of people 
murdered in concentration camps, where researchers used the corpses to produce, for example, 
soap through processes such as boiling.
2) Chapter 14 (90), Len says: “– You must excuse me. I’m in the centre of a holy plague.” T o which 
13
 All quotations are from 1769 Oxford King James Bible, http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org. 
21 LITERATURE
Mark replies: “– Do you want me to send out a cart to bury the dead?” Here we are potentially 
dealing with another Biblical allusion. *e beginning of Chapter 14 could be a reference to the 
ten plagues of Egypt, which befell Egyptians for keeping Jews in captivity. *e cart to bury the 
dead may be connected with the last plague as it is described in Exodus 12: 29-30: 
“29 And it came to pass, that at midnight the LORD smote all the  rstborn in the land of 
Egypt, from the  rstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the  rstborn of the captive 
that was in the dungeon; and all the  rstborn of ca ttle. 30 And Pharaoh rose up in the 
night, he, and all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt; for 
there was not a house where there was not one dead.” 
*e exchange between Mark and Len acquires multiple meanings as a result of a number of 
factors. *e person “in the centre of a holy plague” is Len, clearly a Jew and also one of the 
characters who throughout the novel displays a  erc e willingness to de ne concepts of God and 
religion. Additionally, being a Jew, Len also belongs to the nation which less than a decade before 
the time of the plot was the object of mass extermination. *us, by referring to the Bible Len also 
refers to World War II and its atrocities. Perfectly aware of Len’s implications, Mark supplies the 
picture of a cart which can also be found  guring p rominently in numerous war  lms made by 
the Nazis to document their misdeeds. 
4. The esthetic code
*e esthetic code is connected to the organization of the text, drawing the reader’s attention to 
its own artistic uniqueness. With regard to the translation process of #e Dwarfs, the esthetic 
code is most prominent in, but of course not limited to, four areas: language games, the Cockney 
dialect, intertextual allusions and quotations from other literary sources (mainly Shakespeare) 
and  nally phrases and fragments that appear in ear lier and later works by Pinter himself. 
a) Language games. *ese take many forms. Apart from Pete and Len’s bantering about their 
surnames (Pete’s constant referring to Len as Weinblatt and Len’s changing of Pete’s surname 
from Cox to Pox
14
, one can again  nd references to the time of war. *is is especially apparent in 
Mark and Pete’s exchange in front of the second-hand book shop (2, 19): 
– Ethiopian architecture I think it was. 
– What was? 
– *at book I nearly bought. 
– Oh that one. I thought it was Logic and Colic by Blitz. 
– Oh no, Mark said, you’re thinking of Dust by Crutz.
Once more surnames deserve attention. “Blitz”, of course, refers to the bombing of London 
by the Germans. “Crutz”, however, may add an ironic twist here, suggesting a combination of 
“crazy” and “nuts”. Since the word “blitz” is not unknown in Poland, the second name had to 
14 
It is worth noting that the word “cox”, or “coxswain”, means “someone who controls the direction of a rowing boat” (Longman 
Dictionary of Contemporary English 2012), which seems to be closely connected to Pete’s fascination with sailing.
22 Łukasz Borowiec More or Less on the Mark? Translating Harold Pinter’s The Dwarfs: A Novel
stay in the original form in the Polish version and merely remain suggestive of wartime through 
similarities to German spelling. However, I was tempted to change both names into “Wojak” 
and “Świrak”, the  rst of which may bring to mind r eferences to #e Good Soldier Švejk by 
Jaroslav Hašek (in Polish “Wojak Szwejk”), and the second suggests a fairly crazy person, while 
following the lexical ending of the  rst word
15
. 
b) #e Cockney dialect. Michael Billington in his article “Look back in Hackney” (2003) 
is correct in stating that the style of #e Dwarfs takes a lot from the Cockney dialect. *e 
dialogues in the novel vary from longer theoretical musings to fast-paced colloquial exchanges 
interspersed with expressions, idioms and phrases characteristic of Cockney. Cockney is too 
speci c to London to have any direct equivalent in the Polish language. At the same time, for 
the characters it constitutes what Broeck calls lexicalized or institutionalized metaphor
16
. As 
a consequence, the translation tries, as it were, to “cover” – but only in places where it was 
absolutely necessary – the Cockney forms with carefully chosen Polish equivalents or near-
equivalents, in the belief that leaving some typically Cockney expressions would de nitely 
destroy the smooth <ow of the characters’ exchanges. As a result, Mark, Len and Pete’s 
eloquence would inevitably be lost, and one should not forget that it is also this eloquence 
that has become the trademark of Pinter’s style (not to mention the fact that having “the gift 
of the gab” is what every Cockney should possess).
Cockney is a dialect full of word games, speci c gr ammar rules and rhyming slang. While 
Pinter’s novel is de nitely not pure Cockney, many elements of the dialect can be spotted in 
#e Dwarfs and require appropriate rendering from the translator. First of all, the characters’ 
dialogues abound in phrases like “I’m telling you” or “I tell you”, “look here”, “listen here”, or 
just “here”. Preserving diligently all these forms would result in very awkward language for the 
characters. Although such linguistic behaviour can also be traced in Polish, it never happens to 
such an extent. So, a very important element of translating, especially those parts, was reading 
the Polish version aloud, as if the novel were a script. *is seems an appropriate way to spot 
places where characters sound unnatural, and it indirectly shows how dramatic Pinter’s  rst and 
only novel was (it also explains the natural choice of the radio as the medium of voice for the  rst 
rendering of #e Dwarfs)
17
. 
15
 Thus, Robert L. Politzer is right to claim that “in many instances words are not used with a clear cut single meaning, but their entire 
value plays a role in their actual use. Obvious examples for this importance of values, within actual speech are, for instance, the pun 
or intentional ambiguity. Both offer, for this reason, considerable difficulty to the translator and are often completely untranslatable. 
Inequalities of value may also have another result. Expressions of two different languages may mean the same, but the associations 
they suggest, the images they invoke are apt to be different. Texts in which ambiguity, suggestiveness are important are thus always 
more difficult or often impossible to translate” (1956, 320). 
 The names of the two authors could also be seen as metaphors, in which case Raymond van den Broeck is right to point out: “For 
example, when the creation of poetic metaphors of [...] a highly condensed type [...] appears to be dependent not only on metaphoric 
potentialities (which are inherent to every natural language) but also on the particular morphological potentialities [...], it may be as-
sumed that the relative success of transferring them into another language will equally depend on the morphological characteristics 
of the TL [target language]” (1981, 80).
16
 “[T]hese are those [...] that have gradually lost their uniqueness and have become part of the established semantic stock (or ‘lexicon’) 
of the language. They are the so-called lexicalized metaphors whose range may vary from mere ‘formators’ (such as in the face of, 
beforehand, everybody, already) to single lexical items (such as to harbour evil thoughts, hard cash, a hard-boiled character, etc.) and 
idioms” (1981, 7 4-5). 
17
 The issue of intonation seems to play an important part here. In his discussion of the interrelations between syntax and intonation, 
23 LITERATURE
Finally, Cockney is most famous for its rhyming slang. While #e Dwarfs is not full of such 
expressions, they can still be traced. *e Polish language does not seem to have a proper 
equivalent, so the translator’s choice was to convey in the Polish version the jocular nature 
of the rhymed constructions together with the intended meaning, while trying to preserve 
the lexical content. One example occurs in Chapter 6 (49) with the fragment, “Go home. 
You? You’re just a Charley Hunt” (also “Charlie Hunt” as a synonym for an extremely foolish 
person, rhyming with “cunt”). Preserving the name of the  ctitious person would result in 
total ambiguity, so here the idiom was translated into Polish as “dupa wołowa” (literally “beef 
ass”) to describe someone exceptionally stupid and weak. In this case the goal was to preserve 
crude eloquence at the cost of losing the name of an imaginary character. *is was caused by 
the fact that the reader has enough evidence for the three men’s fascination with word games 
concerning names to be left unaware of the one in this example. 
c) Allusions and borrowings from the works of other writers. Apart from clear references to 
Shakespeare (especially Hamlet), either in the form of direct quotations (the beginning of 
Chapter 12 (76), in which Pete sings Feste’s song from Twelfth Night) or modi ed ones 
(15 (99), in which Mark paraphrases Duncan’s words from Macbeth, Act I, Scene 4: “I’ve 
discovered an art, Mark said, to  nd the mind’s construction in the arse”), William Blake’s 
“*e Lamb” (9, 66), John Milton’s Samson Agonistes (23 (138), the fragment “All passion 
spent”), S. T. Coleridge (“Dejection: An Ode” (21 (122): “Now is grown the very habit of my 
soul”) or the concept of “the willing suspension of disbelief” (18 (110): “I suspend belief”), 
Pinter also uses popular songs (see Chapter 21 – the quotations mainly from blues lyrics), 
fragments of nursery rhymes (see Chapter 21 (126), for a fragment of “Goosey, Goosey, 
Gander” [“Downstairs. Upstairs. In my lady’s chamber”] or Chapter 9 (60), for “Ride a Cock 
Horse to Banbury Cross” [“She’d ride a cockhorse”]) and even refers to Russian literature (23 
(140): “Oblomov by Goncharov”
18
). If a particular work existed in Polish translation, it was 
used in the correctly modi ed form. Far more di@cult were nursery rhymes, which can be 
found to possess historical undertones, and it seems that they should not be replaced by Polish 
equivalents but carefully translated, as they would lose, even if only accidentally intended, but 
nevertheless existing, meaning
19
. 
Józef Mayen explains that the latter has a “dismantling” influence on the former (as well as on the lexical content) and subordinates 
syntactic rules in order to provide words with variegated meanings (1972, 32). In fact, The Dwarfs abounds in syntactic constructions 
which are characteristic of the style of spoken rather than written language. It seems to be caused by the fact that, as a very gifted 
listener of live speech, Pinter equips its written record with signals of encoded intonation. This, in turn, influences the syntax of the 
characters’ dialogues. That is why one can find Len saying about Mark’s suit: “What do I think of the cut? The cut? The cut? What a 
cut! What a cut! I’ve never seen such a cut!” (4, 31); or Pete describing Mark: “[H]e’s a strange chap, is Mark. [...] He surprises me, 
that bloke, now and again, for the good, I mean” (6, 50).
18
 Ivan A. Goncharov (1812-1891) was a Russian writer. His most famous work is Oblomov, whose main character was called a Russian 
Hamlet because of his indecisiveness and inability to act with determination. 
19
 For instance, “Goosey, Goosey, Gander” was interpreted as telling about Catholic priests being persecuted by protestants in the XVI 
c. Priests had to hide in “priest holes” – secret rooms where they could safely pray. The whole nursery rhyme is as follows: 
Goosey Goosey Gander where shall I wander,
Upstairs, downstairs and in my lady’s chamber
There I met an old man who wouldn’t say his prayers,
I took him by the left leg and threw him down the stairs.
24 Łukasz Borowiec More or Less on the Mark? Translating Harold Pinter’s The Dwarfs: A Novel
With allusions to Shakespeare the problem lies, as with indirect biblical paraphrases, in expressions 
suggestive of possible references, for example in fragments such as in Chapter 23, (140) in which 
Mark’s words “beginnings can’t be observed” may be a paraphrase of Iago’s words from Othello 
(Act II, Scene 3, lines 178-179), after he falls into disgrace in Othello’s eyes: “I cannot speak / 
Any beginning to this peevish odds”. It is crucial to preserve such suggestions, as they display a 
striking correspondence to the events in the novel (Mark has already made his  rst advances to 
Virginia). 
5. Pinter quotes Pinter
Special attention should be given to places where Pinter quotes Pinter, by which I mean he 
either uses what he had already written or has a go at expressions or fragments which were to 
appear later in his works. In Poland, a great majority of Pinter’s works were translated soon 
after their English publication. It allowed translators (most of all the late Bolesław Taborski as 
the greatest translator of Pinter’s plays) to trace the development of linguistic forms in Pinter’s 
writing. As a result, one current challenge facing the translator of an earlier work by Pinter is 
whether to incorporate all the existing translator’s work or suggest an entirely new approach. 
As a consequence, the translator of #e Dwarfs is, on the one hand, bound by what has already 
been done so as not to obscure what would be obvious for the English reader and, on the other, 
tempted to give oneself freedom when dealing with the text, which does not have to be in 
agreement with other translators’ choices.  *is entrapment is succinctly expressed by Venuti: “A 
particular edition of a source text [here, Pinter’s previous plays] inscribes an interpretation which 
then limits the translator’s interpretive moves” (2011, 129).
As a result, the decision has been made to conscientiously trace and show those fragments in #e 
Dwarfs which have already appeared in Polish, altering them to the needs of the present translation 
but only to such an extent that it does not obscure or discard the connections with Pinter’s other 
writings. Here is a selection of examples in the order in which they appear in the novel: 
1) Chapter 3 (27), the fragment when Pete says about Mark: “I’m sure he rides barebacked most 
of the time and doesn’t give it a thought”. “Ride barebacked” also appears in #e Hothouse (Pinter 
1991a, 219), when Roote says: “Never ride barebacked. Always take precautions. Otherwise 
complications set in”.
2) Chapter 5 (41), the fragment: “Bordered by ribs and caves of cloud the bright moon stuck”. 
A very similar phrase appears in the one-acter Silence. One of its characters, Rumsey, says: “I 
watch the clouds. Pleasant the ribs and tendons of cloud” (Pinter 1978, 203). One can notice 
an important similarity: Rumsey’s feelings are transferred onto his perception of natural 
phenomena, and that is why for him shapes of clouds possess an almost sexual quality. In #e 
Dwarfs the narrator uses a slightly modi ed description i n the moment that ends one of the most 
tender scenes between Virginia and Pete. Interestingly, the awareness that the phrase  rst used 
in the novel is later uttered by a character in a Pinter play emphasises the fact that #e Dwarfs 
has quite a complicated narrative structure. Alongside the obvious presence of the  rst-person 
narrators Len, Pete and Virginia (one never learns what Mark is thinking), there is the potentially 
uninvolved third-person narrator (the one who uses all the reporting verbs and states purely 
25 LITERATURE
factual descriptions of the characters’ behaviour such as “he sat down” or “he opened the door”). 
However, at the same time the same narrator resorts to descriptions such as the one above or, e.g., 
“*e door cracked, pale heads whispered through dark, the red light damaged the black, shut” 
(21, 129). Even from this short overview, it transpires that this interpretational possibility should 
also be accounted for in the translator’s choices. 
3) Chapter 12 (79), the fragment: “What I’m accusing you of is operating on life and not in it”. 
Pete’s words clearly suggest T eddy’s comment from #e Homecoming (Pinter 1991b, 69): “It’s a 
question of how far you can operate on things and not in things”. *e word “operating” is not 
an easy one to translate in this context, but the Polish translation of the play (by Adam Tarn) 
– “oddziaływać” (Pinter 2006, 63) – provides a suitable solution and allows the translator to 
preserve this link with Pinter’s later works as well
20
.
4) Chapter 13 (84), the fragment when Pete questions Virginia about Marie Saxon: “Did you 
have your bath while she was here?” and “Did she soap your armpits?”. Pete’s questions bring to 
mind the play Old Times when Anna and Deeley wait for Kate to  nish her ba th and talk about 
the way she “gives herself a great soaping all over”. Later Deeley suggests that Anna should dry 
Kate because as a woman she knows “where and in what density moisture collects on women’s 
bodies” (Pinter 1991b, 291, 294). *us, the man reveals his suspicions of a close relationship 
between the two women. In a more succinct way this is also what Pete does (note the same 
verb “to soap”). Although his words are not the same as those from Old Times, his question is 
unexpected enough to make Virginia speechless. *erefore, keeping the allusion concealed in 
Pete’s accusation should also remain the translator’s aim. 
5) Chapter 21 (124), Pete’s story about retrieving old manuscripts from graves. As other 
researchers have also noted (see Peacock 1997, 30-2), this fragment was used by Pinter in Night 
School. *ere the same story is told by an ex-prisoner, Walter, who talks to Sally, the girl who 
rented his room while he was away (Pinter 1977, 220). In the Polish translation of Night School, 
Walter refers to Sally in a more formal way (Polish “pani” is repeated many times in his story; 
in English this di=erence is obscured). In contrast, Pete’s talk in #e Dwarfs is more direct (the 
character talks to his peer), longer and contains more details (e.g., the precise description of 
the ways manuscripts are attached to dead bodies). It is also more reminiscent of a monologue 
interspersed with direct references to the listener (“Drink up”, “You look like a ghost, as it is”). 
*erefore, this part was translated from scratch, as the common elements remain discernible 
despite the changes. 
Apart from all the above examples, in #e Dwarfs one can  nd references to Pinter’s writings 
which still wait to be translated into Polish. *e most prominent instance is “A Note on 
Shakespeare” (Pinter 1998, 5-7), large extracts of which were used in Mark’s conversation with 
Pete in Chapter 23, which is all devoted to Shakespeare. However, what is also worth noting 
are intriguing similarities between fragments of the novel and Pinter’s early poems (see Pinter 
1998, 103, 108, 124). For example, in Chapter 9 (59) Pete’s thoughts circle around “periphrastic 
20
 Curiously, this phrase appears for the first time in the autobiographical “Queen of All the Fairies”. It is worth noting that, apart from 
changing the word “life” to “things”, the quotation in The Homecoming is reversed, which was also noticed by Penelope Prentice 
(1994, xlviii).
26 Łukasz Borowiec More or Less on the Mark? Translating Harold Pinter’s The Dwarfs: A Novel
conjugation” and the phrase appears in Pinter’s poem “School Life” (1948). Another one, “*e 
Midget” (1950), has an atmosphere suggestive of Pete’s dream about midgets on a boat from 
Chapter 2 (21-2). Last but not least, the poem “Jig” (1952) is a vivid depiction of a mad dance of 
women and men on a boat, which could be seen as an extension of Len’s brief description of Pete 
and Virginia’s relationship from Chapter 14 (93): “I think when they are alone they must do a jig, 
a dance, that nobody else could understand”. All these instances do not require comparison with 
the already existing Polish versions, but being aware of them de nitely enhances the translator’s 
knowledge about the characters and the general mood the novel should convey (e.g., references 
to boats are very strongly underlined in the novel with regard to Pete, and in the light of these 
poems, this fact seems to be no accident).
6. Conclusion
What best sums up the challenges that a translator of #e Dwarfs has to confront are the manifold 
ways in which the word “mark”, as both noun and verb, is used in the novel. It is di@cult to 
disregard the impression that interweaving the characters’ dialogues with expressions containing 
the word “mark” could be interpreted as a conscious plan on Pinter’s part to suggest to the reader 
that the character named Mark is based on the playwright himself. In various forms, “mark” is 
used by all the male characters. Pete uses it twice in his conversation with Mark (Chapters: 23, 
135, and 30, 180). *e phrases are “to be up to the mark” and “to be on the mark”. Also Len 
in Chapter 19 describes Mark as a “marked man” (116), and later in the same chapter Mark 
displays his unwillingness to consider what Len suggests to him by saying, “You’re o= the mark” 
(119). All the intricacies of the variegated use of the word “mark” reveal the border beyond which 
it is probably impossible to go while trying to transfer Pinter’s novel into the  eld of another 
language. In Polish there is only one verb “markować”, which in simple terms means “to pretend; 
to try to cheat somebody”. Only in one case was it possible to retain the original sound of the 
English word and use the Polish word, but with a slight change of meaning (Pete says, “I haven’t 
met anyone who was quite up to the mark”, which, as it turns out later, is what he thinks about 
Mark as well). In the Polish version Pete says, “I haven’t met anyone who would at least be able 
to pretend what I expected of him” / “nie spotkałem nikogo, kto by choć zamarkował to, czego 
oczekiwałem”). In all other cases the emphasis had to be placed on the context of conversations, 
and meaning, not sound, had to be underscored. Nevertheless, one can at least still try (who 
knows how the Polish verb “markować” will develop in subsequent years?), and this seems to be 
the essence and curious appeal of the never-ending process of translation, even if it is destined to 
be always not entirely up to the mark.
Bibliography
1769 Oxford King James Bible. http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org (accessed on 5 January 2012).
Billington, M. 2003. Look Back in Hackney. The Guardian, 16 April. http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2003/apr/16/theatre.
artsfeatures.
– – –. 2007. Harold Pinter. London: Faber and Faber.
Broeck, R. van den.1981. The Limits of Translatability Exemplified by Metaphor Translation. Poetics Today 2, no. 4: 73–87.
27 LITERATURE
Bull, A. 2008. Playwright Harold Pinter’s Last Interview Reveals His Childhood Love of Cricket and Why It Is Better Than Sex. The 
Guardian, 27 December. http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2008/dec/26/harold-pinter-final-interview.
Even-Zohar, I. 1981. Translation Theory Today: A Call for Transfer Theory. Poetics Today 2, no. 4: 1–7.
Giantvalley, S. 1986. Toying with The Dwarfs: The Textual Problems with Pinter’s ‘Corrections’. In Harold Pinter: Critical Approaches, 
ed. Steven H. Gale, 72–81. London and Toronto: Associated University Presses.
Gillen, F. 1990. Between Fluidity and Fixity: Harold Pinter’s Novel The Dwarfs. The Pinter Review: Annual Essays 4: 50–60.
– – –. 2001. !‘To Lay Bare’: Pinter, Shakespeare and The Dwarfs. In Pinter at 70: A Casebook, ed. Lois Gordon, 189–99. London and 
New York: Routledge.
Jackson, T.H. 1991. Theorizing Translation. SubStance 20, no. 1: 80–90.
Kaufman, D. 1990. In Short: Fiction. New York Times Book Review, 18 November: 9.
Kozak, J. 2009. Przekład literacki jako metafora. Między logos a lexis. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.
Krzysztofiak, M. 1999. Przekład literacki a translatologia. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM. 
Kyzioł, A. 2010. Groźba kolorowych kabelków. Polityka, no. 10, 6 March: 57.
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, s.v. “cox”. http://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/cox (accessed on 5 January 2012).
Mayen, J. 1972. O stylistyce utworów mówionych. Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich.
Peacock, D.K. 1997. Harold Pinter and the New British Theatre. London: Greenwood Press.
Pinter, H. 1977. Plays: Two. London: Eyre Methuen.
– – –. 1978. Plays: Three. London: Eyre Methuen.
– – –. 1991a. Plays One. London: Faber and Faber.
– – –. 1991b. Plays Three. London: Faber and Faber.
– – –. 1992. The Dwarfs: a Novel. London: Faber and Faber.
– – –. 1998. Various Voices. Prose, Poetry, Politics 1948-1998. London: Faber and Faber.
– – –. 2006. Dramaty 2: Uwikłania rodzinne. Sulejówek: Agencja Dramatu i Teatru “ADiT”.
Politzer, R.L. 1956. A Brief Classification of the Limits of Translatability. The Modern Language Journal 40, no. 6: 319–22.
Prentice, P. 1994. The Pinter Ethic: the Erotic Aesthetic. New York: Garland.
Shakespeare, W. 1996. Othello. London: Penguin Books.
Stanford, P. 2003. Harold Pinter – Between the Lines. The Independent Sunday, 13 April: 6.
Steinberg, S. 1990. Review of The Dwarfs, by Harold Pinter. Publishers Weekly, 31 August: 12.
Venuti, L. 2011. Introduction. Translation Studies 4, no. 2: 127–32.
Woolf, H. 2007. My 60 Years in Harold’s Gang. The Guardian, 12 July. http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2007/jul/12/theatre.
haroldpinter.
Zinman, T.S. 1997. Pinter as Novelist, or, Cobbler, Stick to Thy Last. Cycnos, no. 14: 105–11.