ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to ‘recover’, using Bourdieu's theory of habitus, the first women translators in Poland of the early 18th century. It studies the dispositions that allowed the women to establish themselves in the literary field and the circumstances that helped them to acquire these dispositions; it focuses on social origin, socialisation, circumstances of life and work, and their impact on translatorial behaviour: motivations to enter the field, decisions as to publication of their work, and as to the choice of particular languages, themes, or genres. It is often claimed that their habitus makes translators invisible and submissive. This chapter shows that for these women, to become a translator was to be visible and required high status.
