ABSTRACT
This chapter examines cultural asymmetry, a feature engendered by rapid cultural transformation and posited to be a crucial contextual factor in translating into and from weaker or dominated cultures. It argues that the asymmetry affects translators' choices - often implicitly, in terms of domestication and foreignization and presents an analysis of an extensive corpus of English-Polish translations in two genres: voiceover and news articles. The chapter argues that the rapid sociocultural transition that Poland has been undergoing since 1989 has resulted in a particular vulnerability and weakness in cross-cultural encounters with Anglo-American culture and the English language as hegemonic representatives of the West. The current official language policy of the European Union, which declares that all members should be entitled to speak with their own voices, does not seem to be taken seriously. Much of the recent writing on translation which draws on functional linguistics in the broadest sense adopts domestication as a default translation strategy.
