On Helena Hellerówna. The Life and Achievements of a Polish Literary Translator

Helena Hellerówna, a Polish interwar literary translator, was born in Cracow on February 27th, 1899, and died as a U.S. citizen in New York on June 25th, 1978, under the name Helen Antonia Atlas. She translated, among others, awarded works (e.g. Fiancée d'Avril by Guy Chantepleure or Le repos de Bacchus by Pierre Boileau) and recognized authors (e.g. André Maurois, François Mauriac, or Maria Peteani) frequently signing as Hel Hel or H.H. Her career was interrupted by WWII, during which Hellerówna became a victim of the Holocaust. Her contribution to the Polish translation community has been largely forgotten, to the point where even the Polish National Library has no accurate information about her. This paper presents a preliminary study on Helena Hellerówna as a translator, with the aim of reconstructing her biography and compiling a complete list of her translations, to facilitate further research on her works within the framework of Translator Studies (Chesterman 2009). The objective of this approach is to bring the translator out of the “shadow” of the author, as mentioned by Venuti (2008). In the case of translators about whom little is known – such as Hellerówna – conducting in-depth research in Translation Studies is challenging without first establishing a comprehensive biographical account, and this study seeks to provide it.