I often see hyphenated adjectives in Polish, and the result is ambiguous. For example, “był dziekan Wydziału Filozoficzno-Historycznego”. Of course, I could translate it as the “Philosophical-Historical Department”, or as the “Philosophy-History Department”, but in fact it is either the “Department of the Philosophy of History”, or the “Department of the History of Philosophy”. I will guess that it is the first, but I wish that Polish writers would be aware of the ambiguity of that construction, which is becoming more and more common. I will post more examples in the comments maybe, because it is pretty common.
Sometimes, it seems that hyphenated adjectives are best rendered by the word “and”, for example “aktualność głównych wątków filozoficzno-theologicznych okresu średniowiecza” — “the relevance and currency of the main elements of the philosophical and theological elements of the period of the Middle Ages”.
2 comments:
Hmm. There's no way it's just "Faculty of History and Philosophy"?
I have never heard of such a faculty, very different things. But here is another one:
"nie z punktu widzenia teologicznego, ale kulturalno-historycznego"
I think, "from the point of view of the history of culture". Maybe there is an unwritten rule - the first is a genitive noun, the second is nominative.
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