I am a translator and editor located in Warsaw, Poland, specializing mainly in research papers by Eastern European authors (see www.saxtranslations.com). I am also a part-time lecturer in translation theory/practice.
I am working on the following projects (when my kids let me): - a PhD thesis on information structure in Polish and English (working in the framework of Relevance Theory, taking account of dynamic aspects of language processing) - a handbook of techniques for Polish-English translation - a Polish-English dictionary of politics, media, and public administration
chapter in: "Current Research in the Semantics/Pragmatics Interface" (eds. Victoria Escandell-Vidal, Manuel Leonetti, Aoife Ahern), Emerald, 2011
This chapter develops a relevance-theoretic model – building on and refining the ideas of Wilson ... more This chapter develops a relevance-theoretic model – building on and refining the ideas of Wilson and Sperber (1979), Sperber and Wilson (1995), and Breheny (1998) – of how one aspect of intonation, the position of sentence stress, affects the incremental processing of simple utterances in English. After proposing a notation (adapted from Wedgwood, 2005) for modeling how cognitive effects may be derived from not-yet-fully-decoded utterances, the chapter advances the central tenet that the position of sentence stress should be seen as marking a particular stage in the hearer's incremental processing, encouraging the investment of effort in deriving cognitive effects at that stage. It sketches how this approach compares against other work within Relevance Theory, including efforts to analyze intonational contours or tones themselves in terms of procedural meaning, and it concludes, contra Breheny (1998), that although the position of sentence stress has an impact on the procedures of utterance comprehension, it is not best viewed as constituting a type of “procedural meaning” per se.
Relevance Studies in Poland, vol. 4 (ed. Piskorska, Agnieszka), 2012
This paper outlines a relevance-theoretic approach to ‘thetic’ sentences (all-new, subject-stress... more This paper outlines a relevance-theoretic approach to ‘thetic’ sentences (all-new, subject-stressed sentences) such as my CAR broke down or JOHN arrived, building on Sperber & Wilson (1995 – hereinafter S&W), Breheny (1996, 1998), and Sax (2010). It claims that a number of the distinctive traits of thetic sentences in English may be productively explained in terms of the relevance-theoretic comprehension procedure and the impact of early focal stress placement on dynamic processing. One conclusion is that the ‘out of the blue’ view of thetic sentences widely assumed in the information-structure literature is misleading; instead, a processing constraint introduced by what I call an ‘expectation for an explanation’ is found to be more explanatory.
Teaching Translation and Interpreting: Advances and Perspectives, 2012
This paper examines some of the key words of Polish business language – exemplified by material d... more This paper examines some of the key words of Polish business language – exemplified by material drawn from company websites and business correspondence – from the perspective of their translation into English, analyzing them in terms of the "showing of good feelings" and a conceptual metaphor of BUSINESS IS HOSPITALITY. These genre-marking key words, including współpraca (cooperation), oferta (offer), and a range of verbs such as zapraszać (invite) and polecać (recommend), pose a particular challenge to Polish-English translation despite having seemingly obvious and straightforward equivalents in English. The paper discusses a few ways these key words can be translated unsuccessfully and successfully into English. It goes on to claim that these key words are euphemistic in that they serve to mask the suggestion of self-seeking, profit-driven behavior, which is more stigmatized in Polish culture, and considers why these euphemistic senses are generally not reflected in either specialist or general-purpose dictionaries. As these key words are a source of frequent mistakes in Polish-English translation, the conclusion is that the underlying intercultural-pragmatic issues need to be specifically addressed in supplementary guidelines for translators and in business translation courses, where they are at present unfortunately neglected.
W pracy najpierw omawia się relacje pomiędzy abstrakcyjnie rozumianą strukturą tematyczno-rematyc... more W pracy najpierw omawia się relacje pomiędzy abstrakcyjnie rozumianą strukturą tematyczno-rematyczną (STR) (Bogusławski 1977 i in.) a procesem przetwarzania przez odbiorcę linearnego toku wypowiedzenia w czasie rzeczywistym. Wskazuje się na pewne problemy z tym związane i potem wykorzystuje wybrane pojęcia teorii relewancji (Sperber i Wilson 1995 i in.), by zaproponować dynamiczne podejście do STR w języku polskim. Struktura tematyczno-rematyczna jest także w tym modelu rozumiana jako zestaw podziałów treści wypowiedzenia, ale z tą różnicą, że te podziały powstają w czasie rzeczywistym jako wynik procedur interpretacji u odbiorcy i pod wpływem inferencji pragmatycznej zachodzącej już podczas samego procesu przetwarzania. Autor stawia tezę, że na poziomie mniejszych fragmentów wypowiedzenia wykładniki STR (tu: miejsce przyłożenia głównego akcentu zdaniowego oraz szyk głównych składników) kierują procesem budowania i weryfikowania przez odbiorcę hipotez o eksplicytnej treści wypowiedzenia i jego implikaturach. W zaproponowanym dynamicznym modelu różne podziały tematyczno-rematyczne mogą powstać na różnych etapach przetwarzania wypowiedzenia, i w tym szukamy źródeł pewnych efektów presupozycyjnych i stylistycznych związanych z STR.
This paper examines the relationship between the abstractly understood Thematic-Rhematic Structure (TRS) of utterances, a theoretical approach initiated by Bogusławski (1977), and the "online" processing and interpretation of utterances in real time by the hearer. Focusing on three Polish examples, we propose a more dynamic approach to TRS based on ideas from Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson 1995), and redefine the notions "theme" and "rheme" in dynamic terms, from the hearer's perspective. We present a formalism for modeling how the multi-level nature of TRS emerges out of real-time processing mechanisms: different theme-rheme divisions may arise at different (earlier or later) stages of processing. A main claim is that presuppositional and stylistic effects related to the flexibility of sentence stress position and word order in Polish can be explained well in such a dynamic model. On the sub-utterance level, both stress position and word order ("exponents" of TSR) serve to guide the hearer's investment of effort into positing and verifying hypotheses about the explicit and implicit content of the utterance as a whole, while processing by the hearer is still underway.
Relevance Studies in Poland essays on language and communication. Volume 4, 2018
This paper outlines a relevance-theoretic approach to ‘thetic’ sentences (all-new, subject-stress... more This paper outlines a relevance-theoretic approach to ‘thetic’ sentences (all-new, subject-stressed sentences) such as my CAR broke down or JOHN arrived, building on Sperber & Wilson (1995 – hereinafter S&W), Breheny (1996, 1998), and Sax (2010). It claims that a number of the distinctive traits of thetic sentences in English may be productively explained in terms of the relevance-theoretic comprehension procedure and the impact of early focal stress placement on dynamic processing. One conclusion is that the ‘out of the blue’ view of thetic sentences widely assumed in the information-structure literature is misleading; instead, a processing constraint introduced by what I call an ‘expectation for an explanation’ is found to be more explanatory.
Procedural Meaning: Problems and Perspectives, 2011
... Procedural Meaning: Problems and Perspectives Victoria Escandell-Vidal, Manuel Leonetti andAo... more ... Procedural Meaning: Problems and Perspectives Victoria Escandell-Vidal, Manuel Leonetti andAoife Ahern (eds.). ... notation uses the epsilon operator ε (derived from Egli and von Heusinger, 1995) and decomposed Davidsonian event semantics (derived from Parsons, 1990)5 ...
A non-rigorous, popular-science article exploring various ways the job of a translator can be con... more A non-rigorous, popular-science article exploring various ways the job of a translator can be conceptualized, based on the word roots used in various languages. An English adaptation of an article originally published in the Polish edition of the same magazine as "Czy tłumacz musi się tłumaczyć? Metaforyka przekładu i ukryta historia słowa 'tłumacz'"
A Jolanta Słobodzian Film Club presents "80s Again!" -- a collection of essays describing selecte... more A Jolanta Słobodzian Film Club presents "80s Again!" -- a collection of essays describing selected phenomena in culture and society of 1980s.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS / Part 1: In the orbit of politics / Robert Zybrant: "Wrocław’s opposition and counter-cultural organizations of the 1980s and their impact on the formation of the Orange Alternative" | Aneta Jabłońska: "How Witkacy turned into a woman or theatre of the absurd in communist Poland" | Michał Pranke: ">>And that was the exit!<<. 'Maciuś Wariat' by Marcin Świetlicki" | Wojciech Lewandowski: ">>Good evening London…<<. The socio-political revolution in comics, based on the example of the graphic novel 'V for Vendetta' by Alan Moore and David Lloyd"/ Part 2: Crossing musical borders / Dariusz Piechota: "Emancipation according to Madonna" | Paweł Jaskulski: "The origins of oblivion: Nirvana in the 1980s" | Adriana Brenda-Mańkowska: "The Rutles, Medusa, Spinal Tap – musical mockumentary in the 1980s" / Part 3: The past directs the future / Kamil Kościelski: "Pastiche in the shadow of parody – a certain adventure of the American horror fi lms of the 1980s" | Joanna Kostana: "Retromania of the 1980s: on the different faces of neo-noir cinema" | Agnieszka Kiejziewicz: "Dystopia, new society and machines. The 1980s as the period of emergence and development of cyberpunk cinema" | Mariusz Koryciński: "Into the cinema? Yuppie nights, innocent noirball and new classicism"
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CONTRIBUTORS | Academic edition: Aneta Jabłońska, Mariusz Koryciński | Academic review: Paweł Tański | Translation: Jacek Wełniak, Agnieszka Piskorska | Copy-editing: Dan Sax, Paulina Plata | Cover project and logotype of the Time Machine Series: Stefan M. Ronisz | Picture of the sky on the cover: Paweł Gołąb | Typesetting and text makeup: Joanna Poroś-Głuchowska
chapter in: "Current Research in the Semantics/Pragmatics Interface" (eds. Victoria Escandell-Vidal, Manuel Leonetti, Aoife Ahern), Emerald, 2011
This chapter develops a relevance-theoretic model – building on and refining the ideas of Wilson ... more This chapter develops a relevance-theoretic model – building on and refining the ideas of Wilson and Sperber (1979), Sperber and Wilson (1995), and Breheny (1998) – of how one aspect of intonation, the position of sentence stress, affects the incremental processing of simple utterances in English. After proposing a notation (adapted from Wedgwood, 2005) for modeling how cognitive effects may be derived from not-yet-fully-decoded utterances, the chapter advances the central tenet that the position of sentence stress should be seen as marking a particular stage in the hearer's incremental processing, encouraging the investment of effort in deriving cognitive effects at that stage. It sketches how this approach compares against other work within Relevance Theory, including efforts to analyze intonational contours or tones themselves in terms of procedural meaning, and it concludes, contra Breheny (1998), that although the position of sentence stress has an impact on the procedures of utterance comprehension, it is not best viewed as constituting a type of “procedural meaning” per se.
Relevance Studies in Poland, vol. 4 (ed. Piskorska, Agnieszka), 2012
This paper outlines a relevance-theoretic approach to ‘thetic’ sentences (all-new, subject-stress... more This paper outlines a relevance-theoretic approach to ‘thetic’ sentences (all-new, subject-stressed sentences) such as my CAR broke down or JOHN arrived, building on Sperber & Wilson (1995 – hereinafter S&W), Breheny (1996, 1998), and Sax (2010). It claims that a number of the distinctive traits of thetic sentences in English may be productively explained in terms of the relevance-theoretic comprehension procedure and the impact of early focal stress placement on dynamic processing. One conclusion is that the ‘out of the blue’ view of thetic sentences widely assumed in the information-structure literature is misleading; instead, a processing constraint introduced by what I call an ‘expectation for an explanation’ is found to be more explanatory.
Teaching Translation and Interpreting: Advances and Perspectives, 2012
This paper examines some of the key words of Polish business language – exemplified by material d... more This paper examines some of the key words of Polish business language – exemplified by material drawn from company websites and business correspondence – from the perspective of their translation into English, analyzing them in terms of the "showing of good feelings" and a conceptual metaphor of BUSINESS IS HOSPITALITY. These genre-marking key words, including współpraca (cooperation), oferta (offer), and a range of verbs such as zapraszać (invite) and polecać (recommend), pose a particular challenge to Polish-English translation despite having seemingly obvious and straightforward equivalents in English. The paper discusses a few ways these key words can be translated unsuccessfully and successfully into English. It goes on to claim that these key words are euphemistic in that they serve to mask the suggestion of self-seeking, profit-driven behavior, which is more stigmatized in Polish culture, and considers why these euphemistic senses are generally not reflected in either specialist or general-purpose dictionaries. As these key words are a source of frequent mistakes in Polish-English translation, the conclusion is that the underlying intercultural-pragmatic issues need to be specifically addressed in supplementary guidelines for translators and in business translation courses, where they are at present unfortunately neglected.
W pracy najpierw omawia się relacje pomiędzy abstrakcyjnie rozumianą strukturą tematyczno-rematyc... more W pracy najpierw omawia się relacje pomiędzy abstrakcyjnie rozumianą strukturą tematyczno-rematyczną (STR) (Bogusławski 1977 i in.) a procesem przetwarzania przez odbiorcę linearnego toku wypowiedzenia w czasie rzeczywistym. Wskazuje się na pewne problemy z tym związane i potem wykorzystuje wybrane pojęcia teorii relewancji (Sperber i Wilson 1995 i in.), by zaproponować dynamiczne podejście do STR w języku polskim. Struktura tematyczno-rematyczna jest także w tym modelu rozumiana jako zestaw podziałów treści wypowiedzenia, ale z tą różnicą, że te podziały powstają w czasie rzeczywistym jako wynik procedur interpretacji u odbiorcy i pod wpływem inferencji pragmatycznej zachodzącej już podczas samego procesu przetwarzania. Autor stawia tezę, że na poziomie mniejszych fragmentów wypowiedzenia wykładniki STR (tu: miejsce przyłożenia głównego akcentu zdaniowego oraz szyk głównych składników) kierują procesem budowania i weryfikowania przez odbiorcę hipotez o eksplicytnej treści wypowiedzenia i jego implikaturach. W zaproponowanym dynamicznym modelu różne podziały tematyczno-rematyczne mogą powstać na różnych etapach przetwarzania wypowiedzenia, i w tym szukamy źródeł pewnych efektów presupozycyjnych i stylistycznych związanych z STR.
This paper examines the relationship between the abstractly understood Thematic-Rhematic Structure (TRS) of utterances, a theoretical approach initiated by Bogusławski (1977), and the "online" processing and interpretation of utterances in real time by the hearer. Focusing on three Polish examples, we propose a more dynamic approach to TRS based on ideas from Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson 1995), and redefine the notions "theme" and "rheme" in dynamic terms, from the hearer's perspective. We present a formalism for modeling how the multi-level nature of TRS emerges out of real-time processing mechanisms: different theme-rheme divisions may arise at different (earlier or later) stages of processing. A main claim is that presuppositional and stylistic effects related to the flexibility of sentence stress position and word order in Polish can be explained well in such a dynamic model. On the sub-utterance level, both stress position and word order ("exponents" of TSR) serve to guide the hearer's investment of effort into positing and verifying hypotheses about the explicit and implicit content of the utterance as a whole, while processing by the hearer is still underway.
Relevance Studies in Poland essays on language and communication. Volume 4, 2018
This paper outlines a relevance-theoretic approach to ‘thetic’ sentences (all-new, subject-stress... more This paper outlines a relevance-theoretic approach to ‘thetic’ sentences (all-new, subject-stressed sentences) such as my CAR broke down or JOHN arrived, building on Sperber &amp;amp;amp; Wilson (1995 – hereinafter S&amp;amp;amp;W), Breheny (1996, 1998), and Sax (2010). It claims that a number of the distinctive traits of thetic sentences in English may be productively explained in terms of the relevance-theoretic comprehension procedure and the impact of early focal stress placement on dynamic processing. One conclusion is that the ‘out of the blue’ view of thetic sentences widely assumed in the information-structure literature is misleading; instead, a processing constraint introduced by what I call an ‘expectation for an explanation’ is found to be more explanatory.
Procedural Meaning: Problems and Perspectives, 2011
... Procedural Meaning: Problems and Perspectives Victoria Escandell-Vidal, Manuel Leonetti andAo... more ... Procedural Meaning: Problems and Perspectives Victoria Escandell-Vidal, Manuel Leonetti andAoife Ahern (eds.). ... notation uses the epsilon operator ε (derived from Egli and von Heusinger, 1995) and decomposed Davidsonian event semantics (derived from Parsons, 1990)5 ...
A non-rigorous, popular-science article exploring various ways the job of a translator can be con... more A non-rigorous, popular-science article exploring various ways the job of a translator can be conceptualized, based on the word roots used in various languages. An English adaptation of an article originally published in the Polish edition of the same magazine as "Czy tłumacz musi się tłumaczyć? Metaforyka przekładu i ukryta historia słowa 'tłumacz'"
A Jolanta Słobodzian Film Club presents "80s Again!" -- a collection of essays describing selecte... more A Jolanta Słobodzian Film Club presents "80s Again!" -- a collection of essays describing selected phenomena in culture and society of 1980s.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS / Part 1: In the orbit of politics / Robert Zybrant: "Wrocław’s opposition and counter-cultural organizations of the 1980s and their impact on the formation of the Orange Alternative" | Aneta Jabłońska: "How Witkacy turned into a woman or theatre of the absurd in communist Poland" | Michał Pranke: ">>And that was the exit!<<. 'Maciuś Wariat' by Marcin Świetlicki" | Wojciech Lewandowski: ">>Good evening London…<<. The socio-political revolution in comics, based on the example of the graphic novel 'V for Vendetta' by Alan Moore and David Lloyd"/ Part 2: Crossing musical borders / Dariusz Piechota: "Emancipation according to Madonna" | Paweł Jaskulski: "The origins of oblivion: Nirvana in the 1980s" | Adriana Brenda-Mańkowska: "The Rutles, Medusa, Spinal Tap – musical mockumentary in the 1980s" / Part 3: The past directs the future / Kamil Kościelski: "Pastiche in the shadow of parody – a certain adventure of the American horror fi lms of the 1980s" | Joanna Kostana: "Retromania of the 1980s: on the different faces of neo-noir cinema" | Agnieszka Kiejziewicz: "Dystopia, new society and machines. The 1980s as the period of emergence and development of cyberpunk cinema" | Mariusz Koryciński: "Into the cinema? Yuppie nights, innocent noirball and new classicism"
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CONTRIBUTORS | Academic edition: Aneta Jabłońska, Mariusz Koryciński | Academic review: Paweł Tański | Translation: Jacek Wełniak, Agnieszka Piskorska | Copy-editing: Dan Sax, Paulina Plata | Cover project and logotype of the Time Machine Series: Stefan M. Ronisz | Picture of the sky on the cover: Paweł Gołąb | Typesetting and text makeup: Joanna Poroś-Głuchowska
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This paper examines the relationship between the abstractly understood Thematic-Rhematic Structure (TRS) of utterances, a theoretical approach initiated by Bogusławski (1977), and the "online" processing and interpretation of utterances in real time by the hearer. Focusing on three Polish examples, we propose a more dynamic approach to TRS based on ideas from Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson 1995), and redefine the notions "theme" and "rheme" in dynamic terms, from the hearer's perspective. We present a formalism for modeling how the multi-level nature of TRS emerges out of real-time processing mechanisms: different theme-rheme divisions may arise at different (earlier or later) stages of processing. A main claim is that presuppositional and stylistic effects related to the flexibility of sentence stress position and word order in Polish can be explained well in such a dynamic model. On the sub-utterance level, both stress position and word order ("exponents" of TSR) serve to guide the hearer's investment of effort into positing and verifying hypotheses about the explicit and implicit content of the utterance as a whole, while processing by the hearer is still underway.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS / Part 1: In the orbit of politics / Robert Zybrant: "Wrocław’s opposition and counter-cultural organizations of the 1980s and their impact on the formation of the Orange Alternative" | Aneta Jabłońska: "How Witkacy turned into a woman or theatre of the absurd in communist Poland" | Michał Pranke: ">>And that was the exit!<<. 'Maciuś Wariat' by Marcin Świetlicki" | Wojciech Lewandowski: ">>Good evening London…<<. The socio-political revolution in comics, based on the example of the graphic novel 'V for Vendetta' by Alan Moore and David Lloyd"/ Part 2: Crossing musical borders / Dariusz Piechota: "Emancipation according to Madonna" | Paweł Jaskulski: "The origins of oblivion: Nirvana in the 1980s" | Adriana Brenda-Mańkowska: "The Rutles, Medusa, Spinal Tap – musical mockumentary in the 1980s" / Part 3: The past directs the future / Kamil Kościelski: "Pastiche in the shadow of parody – a certain adventure of the American horror fi lms of the 1980s" | Joanna Kostana: "Retromania of the 1980s: on the different faces of neo-noir cinema" | Agnieszka Kiejziewicz: "Dystopia, new society and machines. The 1980s as the period of emergence and development of cyberpunk cinema" | Mariusz Koryciński: "Into the cinema? Yuppie nights, innocent noirball and new classicism"
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CONTRIBUTORS | Academic edition: Aneta Jabłońska, Mariusz Koryciński | Academic review: Paweł Tański | Translation: Jacek Wełniak, Agnieszka Piskorska | Copy-editing: Dan Sax, Paulina Plata | Cover project and logotype of the Time Machine Series: Stefan M. Ronisz | Picture of the sky on the cover: Paweł Gołąb | Typesetting and text makeup: Joanna Poroś-Głuchowska
This paper examines the relationship between the abstractly understood Thematic-Rhematic Structure (TRS) of utterances, a theoretical approach initiated by Bogusławski (1977), and the "online" processing and interpretation of utterances in real time by the hearer. Focusing on three Polish examples, we propose a more dynamic approach to TRS based on ideas from Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson 1995), and redefine the notions "theme" and "rheme" in dynamic terms, from the hearer's perspective. We present a formalism for modeling how the multi-level nature of TRS emerges out of real-time processing mechanisms: different theme-rheme divisions may arise at different (earlier or later) stages of processing. A main claim is that presuppositional and stylistic effects related to the flexibility of sentence stress position and word order in Polish can be explained well in such a dynamic model. On the sub-utterance level, both stress position and word order ("exponents" of TSR) serve to guide the hearer's investment of effort into positing and verifying hypotheses about the explicit and implicit content of the utterance as a whole, while processing by the hearer is still underway.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS / Part 1: In the orbit of politics / Robert Zybrant: "Wrocław’s opposition and counter-cultural organizations of the 1980s and their impact on the formation of the Orange Alternative" | Aneta Jabłońska: "How Witkacy turned into a woman or theatre of the absurd in communist Poland" | Michał Pranke: ">>And that was the exit!<<. 'Maciuś Wariat' by Marcin Świetlicki" | Wojciech Lewandowski: ">>Good evening London…<<. The socio-political revolution in comics, based on the example of the graphic novel 'V for Vendetta' by Alan Moore and David Lloyd"/ Part 2: Crossing musical borders / Dariusz Piechota: "Emancipation according to Madonna" | Paweł Jaskulski: "The origins of oblivion: Nirvana in the 1980s" | Adriana Brenda-Mańkowska: "The Rutles, Medusa, Spinal Tap – musical mockumentary in the 1980s" / Part 3: The past directs the future / Kamil Kościelski: "Pastiche in the shadow of parody – a certain adventure of the American horror fi lms of the 1980s" | Joanna Kostana: "Retromania of the 1980s: on the different faces of neo-noir cinema" | Agnieszka Kiejziewicz: "Dystopia, new society and machines. The 1980s as the period of emergence and development of cyberpunk cinema" | Mariusz Koryciński: "Into the cinema? Yuppie nights, innocent noirball and new classicism"
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CONTRIBUTORS | Academic edition: Aneta Jabłońska, Mariusz Koryciński | Academic review: Paweł Tański | Translation: Jacek Wełniak, Agnieszka Piskorska | Copy-editing: Dan Sax, Paulina Plata | Cover project and logotype of the Time Machine Series: Stefan M. Ronisz | Picture of the sky on the cover: Paweł Gołąb | Typesetting and text makeup: Joanna Poroś-Głuchowska