1.1 Polish Editorial Context

The history of The Witcher’s publication started in the second half of the 1980s in Poland, and the first wave of publications by Andrzej Sapkowski occurred throughout the 1990s, before the work was transmitted in Europe in the following years. As with every cultural production, the creation of this literary cycle is necessarily influenced by its historical and geographical context, and publishing fantasy in 1980s and 1990s Poland presented its own difficulties: ‘The early 1990s in Poland were a strange time.’Footnote ¹⁴ Culturally, politically and economically speaking, the country was living through a slow decline of Soviet influence after the collapse of the USSR, mixed with the growing impact of Western capitalism. In Poland, it implied radical changes in political and social organisation, with the transition from the Polish People’s Republic that existed from 1952 to 1989. This was a period of political and social doubt, which reinforced the agitated context that had already characterised post-war Europe for several decades. It is in this atmosphere of cultural instability that Sapkowski published his cycle, and we could argue that ‘The Witcher was perfectly and consciously timed for this moment, both by the author and the publisher.’Footnote ¹⁵

The story of Geralt, of course, is set in a fictional medievalist land and does not directly mirror the situation of Central Europe. The Witcher is not about Poland. Nevertheless, Sapkowski clearly wrote with and for a Polish context, ‘reflecting stereotypical Polish national self-perceptions, preoccupations and attitudes to the wider world and the country’s place within it’.Footnote ¹⁶ The general atmosphere of the texts reveals a constant turmoil, mostly seen from outside but lived through its consequences: although most characters keep away from the battlefield, war is always around them, following them in its hardship, its destroyed families and its social and racial tensions. But this is not the main preoccupation of people in charge, be they kings, emperors or magicians. After the Second World War and again after the fall of the Soviet Union, Poland was left to deal with the conflicts’ aftermath, sometimes lost between two cultural empires. The Witcher can be read as a reflection of Poland in the 1980s and the 1990s, that is to say a country that saw itself as other European countries tended to see it, ‘as peripheral, even in areas where this [was] counterfactual’.Footnote ¹⁷ As a result, the end of the twentieth century did not appear as the ideal time to export Polish literature.

However, Sapkowski is far from the first author to gain success in Poland and in other countries. The country already had a long literary tradition, with an important number of books regularly published and read by its inhabitants. Sapkowski himself is a product of this deeply set cultural practice; he has repeatedly stated that he has read several books every week since he was able to read – and his extensive literary knowledge attests to this. The cultural production of the country was thus already rich, and Polish literature was already exported in the twentieth century, especially in Central Europe. A few Polish authors were read and even massively translated, like Henryk Sienkiewicz, author of short stories and epic novels notably about Polish history and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1905. His young adult novel, W pustyni i w puszczy (In Desert and Wilderness, 1912) was an important success in Central and Eastern Europe, and Sapkowski has on multiple occasions been dubbed the ‘literary son of Henryk Sienkiewicz’.Footnote ¹⁸ Others, like Witold Gombrowicz, who used humour to tackle profound existentialist questions and Poland’s troubled history, followed in this international recognition of Polish literature – even though their style could hardly be more different.

When it comes to genre fiction, Poland also had a rich publication tradition, even though it was mostly dedicated to science fiction rather than fantasy. ‘Before the political changes in ’89, it was (Soviet) science fiction that was most commonly read.’Footnote ¹⁹ With a heavy demand from readers and the dynamism of Poland’s editorial market in the middle of the twentieth century, a few Polish authors gained success writing science fiction. The first influential author is probably Jerzy Żuławski, a writer, poet and translator known for his Trylogia Księżycowa (Lunar Trilogy, 1903–11), a story about a human colony established on the moon and developing over the years a religious cult. The trilogy was quickly translated into Russian, Czech, German and Hungarian, and only recently into English. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Polish science fiction scene was also occupied by Janusz A. Zajdel, known for his dystopian worlds and for being a founder of social science fiction (fantastyka socjologiczna) in Poland. His novels include an important reflection on the (often negative) consequences of technology and its impact on society. Many of his books and short stories have been translated into Russian, Belarusian, Slovenian, Bulgarian, Czech, Finnish, Hungarian and German, with once again a late and only partial translation into English.

But the most highly recognised Polish science fiction writer is indisputably Stanisław Lem, the famous author of Solaris (1961) and Ze wspomnień Ijona Tichego Kongres futurologiczny (The Futurological Congress, 1971), among other influential novels. His works reveal his interest in technology and anthropology, questioning the limits of human intelligence and humans’ ability to communicate. Many of his novels and short stories have been translated into more than fifty languages, regularly adapted for the screen and widely read all over the world. Lem received many awards, not only in Poland, including the French Grand Prix de Littérature Policière for his crime fiction Katar (The Chain of Chance, 1976), and the Austrian State Prize for European Literature; interestingly, he also has the honour of having a minor planet, 3836 Lem, named after him. Considered a visionary, he has sold more than 45 million books and remains an acclaimed science fiction reference to this day.

As many other Europeans did at the time, Polish readers expressed a demand for speculative fiction, which led to the development of means of publication, for example with new publishers, series and magazines. In 1982, Adam Hollanek, who was himself a writer of short stories, novels and poetry, created Fantastyka. This Polish magazine, entirely dedicated to science fiction and fantasy, was the first genre fiction magazine in the Eastern Bloc countries, and quickly became ‘an outpost of the international fan movement in Poland’.Footnote ²⁰ While book production used to be centralised by the state, submitted to censorship and was victim of a general paper shortage which limited access to books, the year 1989 saw an important liberalisation of the editorial market. It is in this context, when Polish genre fiction was largely oriented towards science fiction but was in clear demand, and when book production was facilitated, that Sapkowski proposed his vision for a fantasy war-torn world in the 1980s and 1990s.

Even though Polish publishers seem less interested in fantasy, the genre was characterised by a strong and growing community. Books were recommended and exchanged by avid readers, and many people who translated fantasy in Poland were fans of the genre before being professional translators: ‘In the post‑1989 era many Polish translators of Anglophone fantasy have been recruited from the fan community, characterized by insider knowledge and deep attachment to the type of literature; for such translators, reading fantasy, or speculative fiction in general, often precedes translating.’Footnote ²¹ As a result, fantasy was not a new object when Sapkowski started publishing, and its Polish readers enjoyed an increasingly dynamic editorial market. In Poland, genre literature, and especially fantasy, corresponded to a typically Western form of culture that readers were keen to read. Specific facets of the genre were developed, mixing influences and creating hybrid subgenres: ‘Since the beginning of the twenty-first century a new literary genre, combining the features of historical novel with fantasy literature, Gothic (including Gothic crime story) and horror, has been developing in Poland.’Footnote ²² The earlier success of historical novels and the dynamic field of genre fiction in Poland allowed for a great opportunity to publish a new kind of story, associating history and speculative fiction with a dark turn.

1.2 ‘Wiedźmin’ (1986) and the First Short Stories

The literary adventure of The Witcher started with an initially autonomous text. Sapkowski submitted his short story ‘Wiedźmin’ to the second writing competition organised by the Polish magazine Fantastyka in 1985, which was opened to new and unpublished writers. ‘Wiedźmin’ ranked third, probably – according to Sapkowski – because the magazine and its readers expected science fiction rather than fantasy stories, which were more easily understood as children’s stories. It was in any case a first victory for the author, and his text was published in the magazine in December 1986. It was quickly ‘voted the readers’ favourite and thanks to his fans’ support, Sapkowski had the opportunity to write more stories about Geralt and be featured in Fantastyka more often’.Footnote ²³ Polish fans, more than literary critics, helped launch The Witcher as a fantasy cycle, and over the years fans from all over the world have played an important role in disseminating Sapkowski’s work. At the end of the 1980s, the first short story, ‘Wiedźmin’, gathered interest among the readers of Fantastyka and evidenced a collective curiosity about fantasy. ‘It was due to audience demand after the competition that more short stories were written and then published in collections before SuperNowa published the first full novel.’Footnote ²⁴ Indeed, after ‘Wiedźmin’ Sapkowski proposed several short stories to the magazine, with one or two published every year in new editions of Fantastyka, slowly expanding the universe the author had originally sketched in his first short story.

Five texts were then regrouped in a collection entitled Wiedźmin, published by Reporter in 1990: ‘Droga, z której się nie wraca’ (‘The Road with No Return’), initially written as an independent story later adapted by the publisher to fit into the growing Witcher universe; ‘Kwestia ceny’ (‘A Question of Price’); ‘Ziarno prawdy’ (‘A Grain of Truth’), inspired by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve’s Beauty and the Beast (1740); ‘Mniejsze zło’ (‘The Lesser Evil’), a dark rewriting of the Brothers Grimm’s Snow White (1812); and ‘Wiedźmin’ (‘The Witcher’), the original short story which ‘offers a darker revision of Romantic era Polish poet and folklorist Roman Zmorski’s tale Strzyga’, initially published in 1852.Footnote ²⁵

The same year, an opportunity allowed Sapkowski to develop his work even more with publisher SuperNowa. Founded in 1977 as Niezależna Oficyna Wydawnicza NOWA, this independent Polish publisher was renamed SuperNowa in 1989 before being privatised in 1993. It was not a publishing house specialised in genre fiction, nor in one specific literary genre, as it initially published both Polish and foreign literature, as well as niche and underground magazines and, at some point, audio and videotapes. But it allowed Sapkowski to reach a wider audience, with a few hundred copies initially published before reaching ever-growing sales numbers. In 1992, SuperNowa published the collection Miecz przeznaczenia (Sword of Destiny), which included six short stories: ‘Granica możliwości’ (‘The Bounds of Reason’), inspired by C. K. Norwid’s play Krakus, Książę nieznany (1851); ‘Okruch lodu’ (‘A Shard of Ice’); ‘Wieczny ogień’ (‘Eternal Flame’); ‘Trochę poświęcenia’ (‘A Little Sacrifice’), inspired by H. C. Andersen’s The Little Mermaid (1837); ‘Miecz przeznaczenia’ (‘Sword of Destiny’), where Geralt first meets the young princess Cirilla; and ‘Coś więcej’ (‘Something More’), where the destinies of these two characters merge.

Following the success of this collection, SuperNowa published the following year Ostatnie życzenie (The Last Wish, 1993), a collection of seven short stories, with one of them presented in a fragmented form through several chapters interspersed with the other stories, thus establishing a narrative frame: ‘Głos rozsądku’ (‘The Voice of Reason’) is divided into seven parts and describes Geralt convalescing in a temple, while the other texts recount his many adventures. Besides this larger frame, The Last Wish includes four stories already published by Reporter in 1990: ‘The Witcher’, ‘A Grain of Truth’, ‘The Lesser Evil’ and ‘A Question of Price’. This republication implies that, narratively speaking, The Last Wish is considered anterior to Sword of Destiny, even though the collections were published in reverse order by SuperNowa. The Last Wish is thus a new beginning for these texts, completed by the fragmented story ‘The Voice of Reason’ and by two original short stories: ‘Kraniec świata’ (‘The Edge of the World’), a story about monster hunting but mostly presenting the hardship of elves in this fantasy world; and ‘Ostatnie życzenie’ (‘The Last Wish’), a genie story forever bounding the lives of Geralt and the mage Yennefer.

The publication of the initial short stories is not linear, nor is it easy to follow for readers, as it presents repetitions, editorial modifications, additions and withdrawals in three partially similar collections published in Poland, by two different publishers, in four years. Moreover, in 2000, Sapkowski wrote a new collection of short stories for SuperNowa, with two texts associated with The Witcher. In Coś się kończy, coś się zaczyna (Something Ends, Something Begins), the author included ‘The Road with No Return’, already published by Reporter in 1990 but which has rarely been translated in foreign editions; as well as the eponymous short story ‘Coś się kończy, coś się zaczyna’ (‘Something Ends, Something Begins’), originally written by Sapkowski as a gift for his friends’ wedding and depicting the wedding of Geralt and Yennefer. This story is, however, not considered part of the canonical Witcher and has rarely been republished or translated since.

But the fact that publishers proposed several collections in a short amount of time indicates an appeal from their readers. The growing Witcher universe appeared as a new type of story, both innovative in its use of a dark fantasy genre and extremely familiar. The twisted rewriting of traditional fairy tales quickly became Sapkowski’s literary calling card and allowed his readers to experience a new adult interpretation of well-known stories frequently – and probably mistakenly – reserved for children. In Poland, these short stories appeared as a local appropriation of fantasy, with readers pointing ‘to the landscape as an important part of their experience of the books, distinguishing them from the canon’.Footnote ²⁶ These texts convey a typically Polish impression because of the general background described by the author and because of this constant use of folkloric tales, starting with Strzyga by Zmorski. It is a profoundly human story about moral choices, a traditional view of the fantasy genre as it questions the limits of good and evil and an action-packed adventure with supernatural creatures.

Sapkowski’s cycle is built around the character of the wiedźmin, a function defined by this neologism. Most of the time, the word is translated into English as ‘witcher’ by a process of transliteration.Footnote ²⁷ Before the systematic use of this recognised translation, wiedźmin was sometimes translated into English as hexer or spellmaker, especially in the collection A Polish Book of Monsters, edited by Michael Kandel in 2010 for Piasa Books.Footnote ²⁸ In the different languages into which The Witcher is now translated, the neologism has been translated to convey an idea of a man practising magic. For example, in Serbian, wiedźmin is translated as veštac, an unusual male form of the word veštica (witch). The term directly refers to the magical abilities of the character but differs from the traditional female form of the word, creating both an impression of uniqueness and familiarity. This choice corresponds to a descriptor strategy, creating ‘new names that evoke similar impressions or preserve the author’s wordplay’.Footnote ²⁹ The same principle is adopted in English, with the word ‘witcher’ being close to the traditionally female ‘witch’; in German with Hexer, proposed by Erik Simon and derived from Hexe (witch); in Spanish with José María Faraldo’s simple brujo as a masculine version of bruja (witch), and not hechicero (sorcerer) which already existed; in Italian with the more complex form strigo, established by Raffaella Belletti, built from the Latin origin strix (vampire or witch) and close to strega (witch); and in French, where the translation sorceleur proposed by Laurence Dyèvre derives from the noun sorcellerie (witchcraft).

Translations chosen for Sapkowski’s neologism tend to focus on the supernatural talent of Geralt and his association with magic. To create his character, Sapkowski used a modified version of the Slavic myth of the vedmak, a wizard able to fight demonic presence and cure people, but who is also seen as a potential threat. The word itself has pejorative overtones, and in The Witcher the main character is indeed both feared and rejected by the very people he tries to help. However, even though in the cycle ‘the witcher can use residual magic, … it is not his main skill’.Footnote ³⁰ Aesthetically, Geralt is easily recognised within the story by his impressive physique, his white hair and his two swords, all of which insist on his fighting capacities born of rigorous physical training and genetic mutations. The word wiedźmin is also derived from wiedza (knowledge), meaning that the witcher is also characterised by his intellectual capacities and wisdom. Sapkowski pictured a knowledgeable fighter above all else, occasionally using basic magic spells to fight or save monsters. Nevertheless, translators worldwide have mostly insisted, in choosing to adapt the character’s profession, to focus on its magical component. More than a reference to the supernatural abilities of the witcher, it might also be a way to convey the negative connotation usually associated with witches, here transposed to a male character.

1.3 Serialised Novels and Stand-Alones

The short stories quickly proved too limited a format for Sapkowski’s growing fantasy world. As he benefited from the first success of the collections of texts, from an already solid readership and, more importantly, from SuperNowa’s support, he launched into a longer story developed over five serialised volumes. The increasingly longer books were published with regularity in Poland between 1994 and 1999, at a pace explained partly by the readers’ expectation of the cycle, and partly by Sapkowski’s own experience as an avid reader of genre fiction: ‘Motivated by his own past disappointment at the lack of annual offerings by Roger Zelazny … a series of five subsequent novels followed in rapid succession.’Footnote ³¹ Sapkowski did not want to disappoint his readers and therefore completed his cycle with SuperNowa in order to give a definite ending to his story. Indeed, even though he published two other novels years later, every one of them consisted of stand-alone stories inserted in the past of his main characters. The story of Geralt, Yennefer and Cirilla ends with the fifth and final volume of his serial novels published in the 1990s.

Because they are, by definition, longer, the novels can tackle deeper political, social and fantasy issues, from the invasion of the Nilfgaardian Empire to the prophecy surrounding Cirilla’s heritage. The five novels remain largely centred on the witcher Geralt, although they appear less as monster-hunting adventures and more as a coming-of-age fantasy story focused on his adopted daughter, Cirilla. The first novel, Krew elfów (Blood of Elves, 1994), describes the consequences of the Nilfgaardian attack on the kingdom of Cintra, from which the heir and princess Cirilla is forced to flee. As she is tracked by most of the political and criminal forces in the land, she finds shelter with Geralt, who teaches her how to protect herself using his witcher training, the magical guidance of the sorceress Triss and the religious support of the members of a temple school. This chaotic education is led while war rages on and racial tensions grow, especially towards the oppressed elves who form an armed resistance called the Scoia’tael, in a fantasy interpretation which directly echoes local history:

Sapkowski used fantasy to indirectly question Polish recent history, thus reflecting the impact of warfare and social conflict on young people.

The second novel, Czas pogardy (Time of Contempt, 1995), depicts conflicts speeding up as political and magical coups attempt to shift power dynamics. Social and personal quests merge as Cirilla, refusing to follow a secluded training in a magic school, faces the reality of a world threatened by conflicting ambitions even more than by dangerous creatures. When she is sent to the desert by a faulty magic portal, Ciri learns to survive on her own and to consider magic with caution, in a difficult episode which crystallises many fantasy tropes. In this novel, the growing presence of elvish demands and magical considerations allows Sapkowski to include more words from a fictional ancient elvish language, the Elder Speech, inspired by different Gaelic languages.Footnote ³³

The hardships of the main characters, and of this fantasy continent as a whole, are developed in the third volume, Chrzest ognia (Baptism of Fire, 1996), which increases the consequences of war. Ciri assumes a new identity to survive along young outlaws, while Yennefer on one hand and Geralt and his friends on the other search the continent for her. All of their turbulent itineraries cross paths with refugees, broken families and victims of the recent war, as well as of a long heritage of racism and social tensions.

Sapkowski maintains his association of political context, social issues and magical possibilities in his following novel, Wieża Jaskółki (The Tower of the Swallow, 1997). The story is fragmented and presented to the reader in a somewhat chaotic order as Ciri, gravely injured, recounts her past adventures to the recluse treating her. Taken hostage and tortured for months, she manages to escape when she embraces the supernatural abilities she previously rejected in the desert and is able to take her revenge on a few of her assailants. Her evasion shows the potential as well as the limits of her magical skills, while Geralt and Yennefer go to extremes to be reunited with her. The title of the book refers to a magical portal that eventually sends Ciri to a parallel world of an ancient elvish civilisation that Sapkowski develops in the final volume of his cycle.

Pani Jeziora (The Lady of the Lake, 1999), almost twice as long as the first novel published in 1994, concludes the adventures of Ciri, Geralt and Yennefer through multiple references to the Arthurian legend. The ‘Lady of the Lake’ of the title refers to both Ciri, interpreted as a powerful figure by elves and knights, and to a sorceress living years later, obsessed with the legends surrounding Ciri and the witcher. Once again, the story is recounted in a fragmented form, not only through multiple narrators, as is typical throughout The Witcher, but also through time jumps and a chaotic chronology. Sapkowski reproduces in his text the fundamental abilities of his heroine, as Ciri learns to control her magical leaps through time and space. The narrative structure of The Tower of the Swallow, with its story within a story as Ciri tries to understand her past, has already prepared the reader for this deconstructed story. The Lady of the Lake goes further in the fragmented structure as it multiplies narrators, sources of information, periods of time and even parallel worlds.

Even though the story of Geralt, Ciri and Yennefer ends in the final pages of The Lady of the Lake, Sapkowski kept expanding his literary universe as the success of The Witcher grew worldwide. He published two independent novels, separated by a nine-year gap and both developing side aspects of his cycle and focusing on the character of Geralt. Sezon burz (Season of Storms, 2013) is the longest Witcher novel to this day, with 404 pages in its original Polish version. Most of the story is set a few months before the hero’s adventures described in the initial short story, ‘The Witcher’, as Sapkowski moved back to the beginning of his cycle to deepen Geralt’s background. The witcher loses his precious swords and has to uncover magical conspiracies in order to resume his traditional activities. But the author remains deeply attached to the fragmented narrative structure, and also pictures a secondary character already presented in The Lady of the Lake, the mage Nimue, here as a young girl fascinated by legends, and who seems to encounter Geralt long after his disappearance at the end of the serialised novels. The characters move through time, experiencing the development of their own legend and complicating the timeline for readers. The story is partially a response to the evolution of The Witcher in transmedia form, especially in video games – for the first time, Sapkowski mentions that Geralt fights with two different swords, a concept developed by Polish studio CD Projekt Red. Sometimes deemed more demanding than the first short stories, this volume found nonetheless a certain recognition, and was even adapted as a radio play in Poland in 2014 and broadcasted by Polskie Radio Program I in 2019.

In 2024, Sapkowski published a new addition to his literary cycle, with the independent prequel novel Rozdroże kruków (Crossroads of Ravens). Once again, the author focuses on his main character without altering the ending of the serialised novel by developing Geralt’s past. After his initial training as a witcher, he discovers that the reality of his function is more complex than a supposed fight against creatures. The story includes fewer digressions and side stories than Season of Storms; it is shorter and even more clearly centred on the character of Geralt. After the five serialised novels, which developed a complex supernatural family and Ciri’s coming-of-age story, the following books went back to what garnered the original success of the cycle: dark and surprising adventures led by a tormented anti-hero. In March 2026, the author revealed his plan to publish another volume, completing this exploration of the characters’ past. While at this time the project remains in the early stages, readers could logically expect this upcoming novel in 2028.

1.4 Local Success and Early Diversification

While the cycle kept expanding through Sapkowski’s new stories, Polish publisher SuperNowa regularly proposed new printings of the books, as well as various formats, including audiobooks. Throughout the 1990s, Wiedźmin gained a growing audience in Poland through word of mouth among fantasy readers, which in genre fiction can have a decisive effect. Echoing readers’ acclamation, the cycle gained critical recognition and became a bestselling work, which progressively contributed to a larger appreciation of fantasy in Poland. In the early 1990s, Sapkowski reached an important status as a speculative fiction writer, a recognition confirmed with each new volume of The Witcher cycle. He is now a five-time winner of the Janusz A. Zajdel Prize, a yearly award attributed by the Polish science fiction and fantasy fandom, considered the most prestigious award in genre fiction in Poland: he received the prize in 1990 for The Last Wish and in 1992 for Sword of Destiny, both in the category ‘Short Story’, and in 1994 for Blood of Elves. He also received the award in 1993 for his short story ‘W leju po bombie’, a political fiction that is not part of his Witcher cycle, as well as in 2002 for The Tower of Fools, the first book of his Trylogia husycka (Hussite Trilogy, 2001–6), and he received the Ignotus Prize, a Spanish award for science fiction, fantasy and fantastic literature, for best foreign short story in 2003 for ‘Muzykanci’ (‘Musicians’) – another proof, if needed, that the author’s recognition exceeds The Witcher, especially in Poland: ‘Sapkowski was awarded Polityka weekly magazine’s Literature Passport in 1997 and the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage’s Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis in 2012.’Footnote ³⁴ Sapkowski is seen as a successful fantasy writer, but more generally as an important actor in Poland’s contemporary literature.

The specific field of fantasy fiction has also repeatedly shown its appreciation for his contribution to the genre. In 2010, Sapkowski gained the honorary title of ‘Grand Master’ at EuroCon, a convention organised by the European Science Fiction Society, held in Poland at the time. This acclaim clearly exceeds Polish frontiers nowadays, since the gradual translation and circulation of Sapkowski’s works extended his global recognition as an important fantasy creator. In 2003 and 2004, he received two other Ignotus Prizes, this time for best anthology, respectively for El último deseo (The Last Wish) and La espada del destino (Sword of Destiny). Once Blood of Elves was translated into English, it received the David Gemmell Award for Fantasy in 2009, where Sapkowski was nominated alongside authors Brandon Sanderson, Joe Abercrombie, Juliet Marillier and Brent Weeks. In 2011 and 2012, he won two Tähtifantasia Awards, a Finnish prize created by magazine Tähtifantasia for best foreign fantasy book, for Viimeinen toivomus (The Last Wish) and Kohtalon miekka (Sword of Destiny). In 2016, when The Witcher was supposedly concluded and was already translated into many languages, the author also received a ‘Life Achievement Award’ from the World Fantasy Convention – an important recognition which did not prevent Sapkowski from lengthening his literary universe even more.

This success allowed for the expansion and diversification of The Witcher, which in a few years became a transmedia franchise through adaptation and transposition. As part of the speculative genres, fantasy is inherently built around narrative universes simultaneously extending across various media platforms.Footnote ³⁵ Fantasy developed in its literary form through novels and short stories, as well as illustrations, games, music, movies, et cetera: ‘It is more than texts and objects – it is also a series of communities that work playfully, critically and creatively to curate its wonders. … Fantasy stories sprawl promiscuously across media.’Footnote ³⁶ The Witcher is one of many examples of how a story has been extended, completed or altered through multiple media, generally with different creators. Sapkowski himself contributed to the development of his cycle in various forms, first through illustrated versions of his work. ‘Between 1990 and 2000, the short stories were not only developed into a full-blown cycle, but the story of the Witcher, Geralt, was also turned into a series of comics (co-authored by Sapkowski) and a tabletop RPG game system (i.e. a game manual) Wiedźmin: Gra wyobraźni’ (The Witcher: A Game of Imagination).Footnote ³⁷ The comics, co-written with Maciej Parowski to adapt the short stories, and illustrated by Bogusław Polch, were published in Poland between 1993 and 1995 in the magazine Komiks, edited by publisher Prószyński i S-ka. Even though ‘they did not achieve much publicity and became rather a rarity for novelists’ in the 1990s, the growing success of the cycle in Poland has slightly increased their readership over the years.Footnote ³⁸ In 2001, The Witcher was then developed in a role-playing game, proposed by Polish publisher Mag, founded in 1993 and which has a history of publishing role-playing games, science fiction and fantasy. Two Polish editions were developed, the first one based on the initial short stories, and the second one augmented to include the more complex narrative arcs of the serialised novels. The author did not directly contribute to the game, although he promoted it when it was first released.

The process of adapting The Witcher for various media became central in Poland at the beginning of the 2000s. Most of Sapkowski’s short stories were merged and adapted into a fantasy movie, entitled Wiedźmin (translated as The Hexer), directed by first-time director Marek Brodzki and released on 9 November 2001. The 130-minute movie benefited from a substantial budget, a recognised cast and a great composer, Grzegorz Ciechowski, whose work for the movie received the Best Film Music Award from Polish Film Awards in 2001, as well as the Best 2001 Original Soundtrack by the Fryderyk, the important annual award ceremony for Polish music. Nevertheless, despite these reassuring components, the movie Wiedźmin was generally criticised for its editing and fragmentary scenario, which might be explained by the lack of stability of its production. Wiedźmin was first intended as a TV series when the project was initiated at the end of the 1990s, before being adapted as a movie, with producers facing multiple conflicts over which portions of the narrative they wanted to keep. As Sapkowski’s short stories can be read as independent adventures, the movie had to create some continuity, which caused much difficulty for the team:

Facing resistance from inside and outside of the production team, the screenwriters could not transpose Sapkowski’s stories into a coherent and entertaining fantasy narrative. As a result, Wiedźmin was a commercial failure and ‘the revenues from the film covered only half of its production costs’.Footnote ⁴⁰ To try and salvage the story, Marek Brodzki and Michał Szczerbic transformed the movie back into a TV series, which the writer also produced and which kept the same title. The thirteen 45–50-minute episodes were broadcasted on Telewizja Polska from 22 September to 15 December 2002. Most editing issues and lack of coherence noted in the previous film were alleviated, but the narrative damage and failing image caused by the movie, especially for the fan community in Poland, proved too important.

In a few years, The Witcher had been developed in multiple forms in its country of origin, even though they reached various levels of success, and as a result the cycle gained a growing recognition in other European countries. In its different versions, Sapkowski’s fictional world remains a typically Polish fantasy: the origin of the story and of its author are usually not presented as pieces of trivia, but as central components in the development and circulation of the cycle. Today, among fantasy fans and people interested in pop culture, ‘everyone knows it comes from Poland’.Footnote ⁴¹

1.5 A ‘Polish’ Fantasy?

The Witcher is traditionally considered a Polish fantasy cycle because it develops a specifically Polish view of the world. In Sapkowski’s narrative, characters evolve in an ambivalent world where good and evil are not always what they seem and where the distinction between the two is rarely clear. Several critics have noticed that this type of representation can result from a troubled historical context: ‘It is easy to see how a century of difficult choices where no evil was necessarily “lesser” produced such an existentialist philosophy.’Footnote ⁴² Indeed, Sapkowski wrote and published his texts in a ‘memorial context when Poland’s memory of the Holocaust re-emerged’ and deeply impacted Poles’ views on history and on their own society.Footnote ⁴³ This context of pervasive evil and nuanced moral issues is transposed into the fantasy world of The Witcher and reveals a complex representation of history. More than a troubled time in a recent past, it corresponds to a deeper state of mind, born of decades of instability and social conflicts: ‘Critics have noted not only parallels to Poland’s tempestuous transition from communism to capitalism in the turbulent chaos of Geralt’s hyper-political world … but even earlier seminal events, such as the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland and the expansionist and genocidal policies of Nazi Germany.’Footnote ⁴⁴ Such a harsh situation finds direct echoes in Polish literature and culture, and develops a nuanced approach of the world.

As a result, the importance of ghost and demonic figures in Slavic and especially Polish folklore can be read as an expression of this political ambivalence. ‘According to translator and editor Michael Kandel [who translated and published a collection of Polish fantasy stories in 2010], this moral greyness is the distinctive feature of Polish fantastic worlds; for him, unlike Western monsters, Polish monsters “come from within”.’Footnote ⁴⁵ The main tone adopted in Polish speculative fiction echoes the dark and ambiguous atmospheres also found in gothic and fantastic literature, such as in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), where issues of humanity and monstrosity are always intertwined. In Poland, this conception is not only limited to legends and stories; it is another expression of the country’s history, regarding both recent tragedies of the twentieth century and the general place occupied by Poland in European politics:

Fantasy fiction is a way for Sapkowski to express this typically Polish view of the political world, transposed into issues of various fictional species, conceptions of time and relation to morality. Speciesism is a direct adaptation in literary fiction of a context of systemic violence, racism and anti-Semitism, expressed in our reality as in The Witcher through discrimination, fear, hatred and loss. In the books, the context of violence and the constant menace of expansionist wars directly echo the Polish political context in the second half of the twentieth century, since ‘in some ways Poland was already in a post-apocalyptic state at this time, following the collapse of communism’.Footnote ⁴⁷ It is manifested in the story through a general atmosphere of political instability and social distrust, but Sapkowski also went further by including historical realities such as pogroms in his fantasy story. He did not limit his conception to a universal idea of war transposed into a medievalist context; he described actual processes of social and physical violence towards members of a group based on racial and cultural identification: the Rivian Pogrom, developed in The Lady of the Lake and which concludes the adventures of Geralt, is a direct transposition of a frightening but historical reality. ‘Pogroms are an important and traumatic part of twentieth-century Polish history; it is therefore notable that Sapkowski includes so many examples by name in his fantasy, a fantasy written in Polish originally for a Polish audience.’Footnote ⁴⁸ Indeed, Sapkowski used the word ‘pogrom’ and the term has been maintained as such in most translations of the book. Of course, The Witcher includes narratives centred on elvish prophecies and magical components, but behind these typical fantasy elements lies a social, political and historical context that reflects the particularities Poland experienced in its recent history. Sapkowski fused these aspects into a coherent fantasy narrative which transformed names, places and groups, but maintained a familiar atmosphere of violence and uncertainty. ‘Many of the themes responded to the needs of the Polish audience of the 1990s, portraying forces of politics and economy at work in the fantasy world.’Footnote ⁴⁹ Through its literary origin and because it is a story built around a shared culturally Slavic folklore, as well as a typically Polish history, The Witcher can be read as a ‘Polish fantasy’.

However, all these elements that can be read as ‘typically Polish’ are also presented in the story through a fantasy prism. ‘In contrast to The Hussite Trilogy, there are no clear allusions in the novels’ plots to Poland’s (not: Slavic) history or culture other than the usage of language and certain mentality.’Footnote ⁵⁰ The places mentioned are born of fictional creation, even though onomastic components are sometimes inspired by or derived from existing places – which are not necessarily Polish, which the fictional city of Oxenfurt, inspired by Oxford, evidences: ‘The geography uses names from throughout the continent: Polish, Slovene (Maribor), German, Serbian (Yaruga), Dutch, Italian, French.’Footnote ⁵¹ Following the same principle, characters and events do not reproduce specific aspects of our reality, although the fantasy civilisation depicted shares some of our cultural references. Thus, Geralt does meet characters with Polish-sounding names that sound ‘as if they had been invented by a drunk Slavic studies student at a frat party’,Footnote ⁵² but he also encounters ‘Hungarian-sounding dwarves (Zoltan Chivay) and vampires (Emiel Regis Terzieff-Godefroy), Celtic earls (Crach an Craite), and rudely nicknamed Polish peasantry’,Footnote ⁵³ to name only a few examples, without automatically constant associations between our own geography and that of the fictional continent Sapkowski created. Sapkowski has even explained that his inspiration for the name of his troubled rewriting of Snow White, Renfri, came from a Canadian chain store, Holt Renfrew.Footnote ⁵⁴ Inspiration is indeed everywhere, and not only in Poland.

The text itself does not particularly use a Polish background or specifically Polish references. We could argue, as Sapkowski himself has on several occasions, that The Witcher is not particularly a ‘Polish’ or a ‘Slavic’ fantasy cycle, in the sense that the story draws from Slavic folklore as much as many other European cultures. The author clarified his mixed influences:

The global reading of The Witcher as a ‘Polish fantasy’ is not inherent to the texts themselves, nor to the insistence of the author; ‘[It] is rather the discourse around the franchise which adds the nationalistic value to it.’Footnote ⁵⁶ Journalists, critics and after them producers and fans of the video games adapted by CD Projekt Red insisted on this ‘nationalistic origin story’ of The Witcher in order to highlight the originality of the cycle and its prowess at standing out in a fantasy field largely dominated by English-language works.

The short stories that initiated the cycle at the end of the 1980s admittedly use Slavic creatures as Geralt’s main adversaries, as the rewriting of Zmorski’s Strzyga in the very first story suggests. But while The Witcher started with typically Slavic references, it drew from a variety of cultures and folklores throughout its different iterations. As it grew in narrative as well as success, Sapkowski also included more Western European references, such as European fairy tales and the Arthurian legend, thus building a bridge towards a larger audience.Footnote ⁵⁷ For example, critics have established that, if the representation of elves and dwarves in The Witcher can be read as a comment on the situation of the Jewish people in Poland – and, more generally, in Europe – the cycle also draws heavily from issues related to the colonisation of the American continent.Footnote ⁵⁸ By constantly mixing rich literary and artistic references, The Witcher becomes ‘a model of cultural hybridity, a Western fantasy formula saturated with Slav folklore and mythology’ and much more.Footnote ⁵⁹ As a consequence, ‘Sapkowski creates a universe with elements new to both the native and the foreign audience.’Footnote ⁶⁰ Although this multiplicity of sources and the various degrees of intertextuality within the texts can prove more enjoyable for readers, they also tend to render the task of translators even more complex, as references need to be understood to be adapted into different languages.

2.1 A Slavic Story: Between Couleur Locale and Exotic Dissonance

If The Witcher is seen as Polish fantasy, it is also because publishers and translators worldwide have faced the difficulty of transmitting its particularities to readers usually unfamiliar with Slavic culture. Translating the books implied finding balance between maintaining the specifically Polish elements of the texts and making them understandable and interesting to a foreign audience in their own language. For translators, it meant paying attention to the unfamiliar aspects of Slavic culture, since some of them are not only related to the initial language of the texts, but also to the particular story depicted by Sapkowski. The Witcher ‘presents a universe whose worldness is distinct and unmistakable’, which is directly linked to the rich heritage of Central Europe.Footnote ⁶¹ Even though every story is unique, there are traditional codes and tendencies in the fantasy genre established since the 1950s, including a general focus on Western heroes and settings, including in Middle Ages-inspired contexts. In The Witcher, part of the cycle’s originality comes from scenery reminiscent of Central or Eastern European countries: ‘When it comes to the presentation of the world, the forest, plants, and animals presented in the book are endemic to the Slavic lands.’Footnote ⁶² Geralt not only fights specifically Slavic folkloric creatures in Sapkowski’s first short stories;Footnote ⁶³ he also experiences scenery close to what a Polish reader could expect – at least in a pre-industrial world. The author only gives a few descriptions of natural settings, but since numerous scenes of The Witcher occur in the woods, and since the main character regularly uses his environment to find information and concoct potions, flora and fauna become important anchor points throughout the narrative. When translated, these elements can paint a traditionally pre-industrial Slavic picture without any particular insistence on this background but through discreet and regular mentions.

This picture creates couleur locale, the atmosphere specific to a certain place and which, when translated, can remain within the text to maintain the particular localisation of the original story. Since The Witcher is regularly perceived as Polish fantasy, foreign readers should also have a Polish feeling about the text, even though they read it in a translated language. In translations of Sapkowski’s books, couleur locale is notably created through identical proper names: in most countries, the names of the main characters are kept untranslated. The same principle of simple borrowing is generally adopted by translators regarding geographical onomastics: ‘When it comes to the names of places, the source text neologisms are often either translated literally or by means of the process of borrowing.’Footnote ⁶⁴ To readers unfamiliar with Polish, the use of these names, transferred into the target language without explanation, can create an ‘exotic’ effect, with touches of ‘Polishness’ contributing to link the translated text to its original context. However, it is commonly agreed that couleur locale has to remain a limited nuance in a translated text: if the exotic dimension proves too important, it can unsettle the readers and prevent them from identifying with the characters and their adventures.

To prevent this cultural discrepancy between foreign readers and the Polish context of the book, translators can choose to adapt – names, references, descriptions, et cetera – in order to favour relatability for non-Polish readers. In every language, adaptation appears necessary for certain idioms and colloquialisms, which do not always have an understandable equivalent in the target language. In the specific case of The Witcher, it also concerns terms of endearment and other use of diminutives, which are frequent in Polish but rarely find direct equivalents in other languages.Footnote ⁶⁵ Adaptation also becomes an important tool regarding fantasy creatures and concepts born from Slavic folklore: ‘While the Slavic mythical elements are well-understood in Poland, equivalent concepts were developed to resonate with Western audiences, striking a balance between cultural accuracy and relatability.’Footnote ⁶⁶ Translating implies finding a satisfying stability between the exoticness of Polish couleur locale and the understandable familiarity of references for foreign readers. Various approaches have been adopted, depending on translators, publishers and general differences between the target culture and Poland. For example, even though Poland and the United Kingdom share some recent history, they represent two extreme facets of Eastern versus Western European cultures. As a result, ‘preserving the cultural essence of The Witcher without resorting to overly literal translations that might prove confusing for English-speaking audiences’ constitutes a challenge.Footnote ⁶⁷ Translators therefore have to transform enough of the text to make these cultural references available to readers, without reducing the fantasy fiction to a didactic lecture about Slavic culture. This difficult balance might imply an anecdotic treatment of specifically Polish references, since they are part of a larger cultural tendency throughout the cycle: ‘Although the saga requires from the reader a certain insider knowledge about the Slavic culture, the references can be treated as fun facts rather than actual crucial input to the story.’Footnote ⁶⁸ The difficulty to adapt cultural references to target languages implies that translators might treat plot elements with more or less importance.

If, in translation, too many cultural and local aspects of the story are ‘domesticated’ – changed to correspond to the culture of the foreign reader instead of the culture of the original author – the translated text can feel as an adaptation rather than a translation: its local particularity, in this case its Slavic atmosphere, could be reduced or lost. When the first short story was translated into English by Michael Kandel, for example, these repeated adaptations of the context prevented English readers from fully experiencing the nuanced atmosphere Sapkowski had developed: ‘Part of the books’ flavour is lost, if only by recontextualization, which severs the cultural links and renders references unrecognizable.’Footnote ⁶⁹ Maintaining a specifically Slavic atmosphere proves all the more difficult in this first case, as Kandel only translated ‘Wiedźmin’ in a separate volume and did not intend to translate other works by Sapkowski. Cultural elements and folkloric references could not be distilled throughout a long book in order to accommodate readers, but had to be either selected to be part of the translated short story or domesticated to ease their understanding. Since ‘The Witcher abounds in neologisms and culture-bound items’, which are a significant part of its literary atmosphere, their systematic translation can prove challenging for translators.Footnote ⁷⁰

2.2 Translating Fantasy

The process of translating The Witcher supposes some level of difficulty regarding specifically Polish terms and cultural references, which are set into a fantasy context which itself proves challenging. This genre inherently includes references to creatures, monsters and supernatural abilities that by definition are less familiar to the reader – whatever their geographical origin. This is a usual problem of genre fiction and becomes particularly significant with fantasy, as it aims at provoking surprise and awe in the reader: the clashing of realities is a major part of the fantasy genre, in the sense that fantasy is made to transport the reader into surprising worlds of wonder. This inherent and needed change of scenery, which creates a positive disorientation, has to be carefully considered when translating a fantasy story. In any form of literature, especially from little-known cultures such as Poland’s when it is considered outside Eastern and Central Europe, translators might want to adopt a domesticating strategy, preferring terms and references closer to the reader’s own context, in order to make the text more easily understandable to a foreign audience. But with fantasy, domestication is a risk of erasing the supernatural specificity of the genre: ‘While a domesticating approach makes even the most out-of-this-world text feel familiar and easily understood, many of the fantastic texts … do not aim to be easily understood, but rather to delight in the absurd, subversive, challenging, and often intentionally ambiguous elements of the genre.’Footnote ⁷¹ To J. R. R. Tolkien, one of the founders of fantasy, the genre and the fairy stories from which it derives provide a legitimate relief into entertainment, an escape similar to the desire experienced by a prisoner: ‘Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls? The world outside has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it.’Footnote ⁷² The readers find in fantasy an escape from our realistic world, something inherently dissimilar from the walls of the prisoner. It creates awe through disconcerting elements, which when translated risk being overly clarified and rewritten to resemble something more familiar – even if it means rebuilding the prison walls.

Translating fantasy – as with other speculative genres – implies making a story available into another language while preserving its innate strangeness. Translators are faced with a variable degree of clarification in which they have to consider the translation of the story as well as the preservation of the genre:

Fantasy is a linguistic challenge that has to be accepted and, in many ways, respected, even though the history of the genre evidences its depreciation from some critics and publishers, especially before the massive commercial and popular success of the end of the twentieth century. For a translator unfamiliar with the genre, or one who has a negative opinion of it, there is a risk to only consider ‘the fantastic elements functioning as nothing but a conventional costume’ that could be simplified and domesticated, and not as the core structure of the narrative.Footnote ⁷⁴

What could be perceived as an alarmist statement has actually been exemplified in some of the first translations of The Witcher into different languages, including into English. While now, the term ‘witcher’ has been widely adopted as English translation of wiedźmin and is even used in a few other countries’ publications of the cycle since 2019, the US translation of The Last Wish in 2008 simply mentioned Geralt’s role as a ‘sorcerer’. The specificities of his function, fusing fighting skills and supernatural components, are simplified in the adaptation of the character to a generic ‘sorcerer’ role, more easily recognisable to the English-speaking reader. The same principle is regularly applied to Sapkowski’s neologisms, which instead of painting a surprising fantasy world tend to be simplified when adapted. While the location of Thanedd is sometimes qualified as wyspa (island) or as ostrów (islet) by Sapkowski, thus establishing lexical variety within the same semantic field, the British translation does not keep the nuance and systematically refers to ‘the Isle of Thanedd’.Footnote ⁷⁵ As the fantasy cycle introduces many neologisms and supernatural concepts, both inspired by Slavic culture and invented by Sapkowski, English translators prefer, when possible, limiting any confusion for English readers. Concepts are simplified and made more accessible by using more generic terms and by limiting the use of synonyms in the target language. The name of the game of gwint played by many characters of The Witcher is kept in the similar form gwent in many languages, but is simplified as ‘dice’ in the British version of the text.Footnote ⁷⁶ It is not only an issue of domestication, as it does not imply a shift from geographical settings, but also a shift from genres: words used to build a fantasy atmosphere, characterised both by its familiarity and its surprising wonder, are translated to only retain readability.Footnote ⁷⁷

In a few cases, it also implies a modernisation of the text, through a shift in historical settings: in the UK translation, Jaskier plays the guitar, and not the lute, as he does in the original Polish version (lutni).Footnote ⁷⁸ More generally, the British translators favour clarity for the target audience, rather than the medievalist atmosphere of the fantasy source. The Witcher is set in a fantasy and medievalist world, which means a double network of meanings, references and lexicon translators have to account for. The accumulation of these translating choices can transport the narrative into a completely different context, and if the readers can fully appreciate the meaning of the words used, they lose the specificities and interest of Sapkowski’s fictional creation. This process is not confined to The Witcher but finds a larger echo in translating the fantasy genre worldwide. As fantasy is ‘a highly commercial genre, [it] frequently favours readability for a greater number of people’.Footnote ⁷⁹ However, the case of The Witcher is symptomatic of a larger lack of consideration for fantasy from a few translators – which nevertheless seems to have declined with time – and of a tendency to normalise literary references for the readers. Adapting the translated text to avoid fantasy specificities or original contents could over time ‘result in the erasure or simplification of global fantasy cultures into one homogenous Anglocentric view’.Footnote ⁸⁰

Indeed, choosing to adapt The Witcher to a foreign audience means not only translating one literary work, but also taking into account a whole genre with its own tropes: ‘In addition to the source and target languages, many contemporary fantasy texts involve a “third culture” of the fantasy world.’Footnote ⁸¹ When Sapkowski describes elves, dwarves and other fantasy peoples, he does so following an already long-established fantasy tradition, thus echoing, rewriting or questioning previous works by William Morris, Lord Dunsany, J. R. R. Tolkien, et cetera. Fantasy readers share a network of transmedia references and (sometimes) capricious lexicon, which create indirect links between publications and authors. In order to efficiently translate a fantasy story like The Witcher, translators thus need to acquire some ‘genre competence’,Footnote ⁸² which implies ‘both background reading and research but primarily … an understanding of what constitutes fantasy’.Footnote ⁸³ As the supernatural plays a key role in the fantasy genre, translators have to be notably aware that magic is also politics. One of the most important genre characteristics developed by Sapkowski lies in the presence of magical beings and practices; in The Witcher, mages have their own councils and assemblies, and their role also consists in advising kings throughout the continent. But the political role of magic goes far beyond the practices of characters, since the words used to designate magic and its practitioners have themselves gathered political, social and gender baggage over the years. To name one example, the word ‘hex’ used in UK English, or ‘spell’ in US English, have different implications besides the use of an active form of magic. Regularly, ‘hex’ has been seen as part of a negatively connoted lexicon associated with female magic, just like the word ‘witch’ – or its equivalent in many languages, Hexe, bruja, sorcière, veštica, čarodějnice, vrăjitoare, raganius, et cetera – it is a word with a lot of cultural, social and, in some ways, political baggage associated with misogynistic intents. When the Polish word czarodziejka is translated into ‘witch’ instead of ‘sorceress’ or ‘enchantress’, it conveys negative and even misogynist connotations that were not necessarily implied in the original text.

Because of its supernatural lexicon transmitted in different literary works, and because fantasy authors are also fantasy readers, fantasy is a highly referential genre. As a result, the worlds depicted ‘are rarely completely autonomous, if only because the language used to describe them relies on the one developed to discuss reality. In fact, often the setting is at least partially meant to be connected to a specific period in history or a shared literary heritage, which require the translator’s attention’.Footnote ⁸⁴ We could also argue, with Bahar Bahmani, that certain cultural aspects of mythologies, which play a structural function in Sapkowski’s narrative, are impossible to translate without a strong understanding of the author’s culture, but also of their specific individual cultural background.Footnote ⁸⁵ In these conditions, however, translating might prove an impossible task, although translators worldwide have worked their best to convey the referential dimension of The Witcher in various languages.

However, it seems that most translators hired by publishers to translate the first books were not specialised in fantasy, nor had they any particular experience reading or translating the genre, even if they were usually experienced translators in literary fiction.Footnote ⁸⁶ Of course, the translation of The Witcher in almost every country presents a different situation, all resulting in various skills and contexts, but the professionals involved in making Sapkowski’s texts available in different languages were rarely associated with fantasy or speculative fiction. According to Dorota Guttfeld, none of the English-speaking translators were ‘both native speakers of the source language and familiar with the genre’Footnote ⁸⁷, although among them Kandel is ‘a writer of speculative fiction himself, with an extensive experience in translating linguistically inventive works by Lem from Polish’.Footnote ⁸⁸ When first involved in this editorial project, Danusia Stok had only scant experience of even reading fantasy fiction, which was less developed in Polish. In Spain, José María Faraldo was not initially specialised in the fantasy genre, although he had taught contemporary history of post-Soviet Eastern Europe at several universities; even though they are not directly associated with the fantasy genre, these skills all echo certain aspects of Sapkowski’s narrative. In France, Lydia Cantin-Waleryszak worked on Blood of Elves as her first complete fiction book translation, before being put in charge of translating The Hussite Trilogy and standardising the translation of every volume of The Witcher, initially translated by different individuals, for publication by the same publisher. Although she had limited knowledge of the genre, she developed her professional experience as a translator with The Witcher. In most cases, translating this fantasy cycle proved an original experience, since Polish fantasy had not yet been widely translated worldwide before Sapkowski’s success. Afterwards, when publishers decided to change translators during the course of the cycle’s publication – or when they had to because of scheduling conflicts with their editorial team – they generally contacted fantasy enthusiasts to continue the work and ensure the continuity of this literary universe, or highly skilled translators: in Serbia, for example, the latest volume of The Witcher was translated by Mila Gravilović, frequent translator of both prose and poetry, and recipient of the Miloš N. Đurić award for poetry translation in 2019, a choice that suggests a growing care from the publisher towards the translation of Sapkowski’s literary style. For many translators throughout Europe, specific fantasy translating abilities were developed with and for The Witcher; but the worldwide reception of the cycle evidenced that having a translator familiar with the genre eventually became a requirement.

2.3 The Specific Case of Monsters

Translating fantasy implies a number of linguistic and cultural trials, especially regarding the omnipresent supernatural bestiary. ‘In fantasy texts and works from related genres, one often encounters the names and terminology surrounding fantastic creatures, which pose a unique challenge to translators. … Creatures specifically lifted from myth and folklore come with their own challenges, often intrinsically connected to their cultures of origin.’Footnote ⁸⁹ Far from being limited to an exotic background, these creatures are usually the main characters, the surrounding figures, as well as the opponents of the heroes. In the case of The Witcher, continuity is built with a particularly diverse cultural background where creatures are fundamental. Monsters are Geralt’s raison d’être, as his witcher role is entirely oriented towards the control and regulation of dangerous creatures. As a mutant genetically altered to gain supernatural abilities, he himself becomes non-human, thus embodying a long reflection on otherness throughout the narrative. The translation of the creatures’ names is thus all the more central in Sapkowski’s texts, as they represent a constant examination of both humanity and difference, experienced by characters in a fantasy world, to reflect the readers’ own concerns.

In many Eastern and Central European countries, the creatures depicted by Sapkowski are usually already known by the readers, especially to readers familiar with the fantasy genre, fairy tales and myths. Some of the creatures mentioned in the first short stories, like the strzyga or leszy, a wood spirit, are part of a shared Slavic mythology and as such have recognised characteristics for most Slavic readers. Poland in particular has a rich tradition of storytelling surrounding these creatures: ‘Noonwraiths, rusalkas, strigas, witches, and such are creatures about which almost every Pole knows a scary legend. Most of these were not as apparent in popular culture abroad, except for witches.’Footnote ⁹⁰ Because of this tendency to picture monsters mostly known in Poland, The Witcher has regularly been perceived by foreign readers as ‘Polish’ or ‘Slavic’ in its specific use of supernatural creatures. Most of the monsters Geralt faces during his adventures were unfamiliar to a non-Polish reader before the success of the cycle. As such, it can be more difficult to translate their names into other languages, when a direct equivalent is not available or is not well known by readers of the target language. Nevertheless, it is important to note that Sapkowski tended to alter the traditional representation of even typically Slavic creatures, so that their appearance in the narrative conveys some surprise even for Polish readers. For example, in Polish mythology, the kikimora is ‘a prankster and a pixie, which Sapkowski turned into a thoughtless and hurtful monster’.Footnote ⁹¹ What is traditionally pictured as an ambivalent female spirit that can take care of the housework but can also make children cry at night is transformed into a huge spider living in swamps. Of course, its name is usually known to Polish readers, but its description and characteristics are entirely renewed by Sapkowski – begging a question of the cultural implications associated with the name itself: is the author referencing the specific folkloric creature, or is he only borrowing its name to create another entity for his story? The choice in translating the word kikimora can be affected by the way Sapkowski used but also changed its cultural implications.

For translators, ‘what’s in a name’ is of course a decisive factor. In The Witcher, the ‘beastionyms’, or the names assigned to creatures, are never a mere detail, since identifying monsters plays an important part throughout the plot.Footnote ⁹² In Time of Contempt, Ciri’s ability to distinguish a wywerna (wyvern) from a bazyliszek (basilisk) is a deciding factor in her visit to Gors Velen and subsequent adventures. And throughout the narrative, Geralt’s role is to identify the creatures he faces in order to know how to interact with them and, when required, how to kill them. In Blood of Elves, the witcher and a scholar debate the existence of aquatic creatures, using not neologisms but rare insect names.

Sapkowski distorted real but lesser-known nouns to apply to the complex bestiary of The Witcher, here evidencing the difficulty of identifying, naming and thus knowing monsters. In the narrative, the names used for creatures tend to be at least partially deprived of their original and cultural meaning, which further complicates the translator’s role. Should the creatures’ names be kept as such in the target languages, to convey an exotic Polish atmosphere, even though they do not refer to traditional Polish interpretations? Should they be translated to foreign equivalents when they exist, even if, as in the original text, the author reinterpreted their meaning and disconnected it from its traditional use?

When translating The Witcher, there is a tendency to domesticate the names of creatures, in order to render their strangeness while maintaining their understandability for the non-Polish reader.Footnote ⁹⁴ To ease the understanding of beastionyms in target languages, translators frequently replace fantasy words with an equivalent that already exists and is more recognisable. The dziwożona of Brokilon Forest, described by Sapkowski with a loanword from Slovak and referring to a female demonic creature of Slavic mythology, has regularly been translated by equivalents of ‘dryad’ in the foreign versions of the text. The Spanish translation, for example, proposes the word ninfa (nymph). All are feminine creatures inherently associated with nature, with a specific link to oak trees in the case of dryads, and are known for their youth and beauty, although contrary to the dziwożony the Greek nymphs are not traditionally said to kidnap children. The word ‘dryad’ constitutes a ‘functional equivalent’,Footnote ⁹⁵ which gives a corresponding example to non-Polish readers, even if the word ‘dryad’ conveys its own cultural nuances. Drawing from multiple mythologies, Sapkowski himself sometimes alternates between the words dziwożonami and driady, and he regularly shows that characters do not necessarily have the same name to designate other people and creatures. This difference in language is also part of the characters’ difficulty in living together as separate species, since words applied to ‘the other’ regularly manifest rejection and ignorance. As a result, linguistic heterogeneity in the narrative is a sign of this particularity of the fictional world created by Sapkowski. Nevertheless, the substitution strategy that translators regularly use ‘has resulted in an international, Anglophone-based “fantasy lexicon”’, reinforced by the worldwide success of other fantasy franchises like Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter.Footnote ⁹⁶ To facilitate the understanding of beastionyms in target languages, translators frequently replace fantasy words with an equivalent that is more recognisable. Specific cultural divergences can be amalgamated into a larger ‘fantasy lexicon’, which highlights the supernatural factors of the genre but tends to erase the originality of each literary work.

How creatures are translated can reveal the attention – or lack thereof – given to fantasy within a text. In one of the English translations proposed in 2010, Michael Kandel ‘introduces more items specific of the target culture, including creatures familiar from target‑culture folklore (changeling, banshee)’.Footnote ⁹⁷ This translation of Sapkowski’s first short story, here entitled ‘Spellmaker’, is conceived as a stand-alone narrative, thus opening further liberties for the translator. In this case, The Witcher is not seen as a complete cycle but as one example of Polish fantasy, among others, and this interpretation directly impacts the choices Kandel makes when translating the creatures’ names:

This approach is all the more problematic when applied to a story in which identifying creatures is key, even though the narrative implications are limited in the specific short story translated by Kandel. The names of the creatures Sapkowski mentions can indeed prove difficult to domesticate without altering their interpretation. Where upiory refers to a ghost, the creature designated as borowik proves more complex for translators, as it mainly refers to a bolete, which is a type of mushroom, but is here used to refer to an old man protecting the forest and its animals. This beastionym has, for example, been translated into German as Waldteufel (forest devil);Footnote ⁹⁹ what is traditionally used as a lever by woodcutters is here distorted to describe a negative and dangerous spirit of the woods. Translating the name implies a change in meaning.

Throughout The Witcher, Sapkowski also used an important number of monsters or mythological references that have strong European resonances, but that are not limited to a Polish context. The cultural association of certain beastionyms can, in those cases, vary from one country to the next when translated. The author used creatures like ‘the vampire and the devil, two creatures very prevalent in Slav folklore’, but that have also been recognisable for centuries in many other cultures.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Sapkowski used the fact that myths and folklore sometimes transcend geographical and cultural borders to form a larger and in some way more flexible reference: ‘Despite not originating in Anglophone folklore, vampires, centaurs, and genies are familiar to regular English readers of fantasy literature, and they can all-too easily be used to replace the names of other, less familiar creatures, losing cultural significance in the target text.’Footnote ¹⁰¹ Even if the names are shared in various languages, they might imply a different meaning or cultural association, which in the case of creatures can mean modified representations. ‘The source of the problem is not encyclopaedic knowledge of the genre (after all, kikimora and żyrytwa as creature names are not typical lexemes), as much as intuition of the way in which the text is likely to be read.’Footnote ¹⁰² Of course, translation is a matter not only of linguistics, but also of cultural reception, which necessarily varies from one country to the next and, in reality, from one reader to the next.

In The Witcher, a final difficulty regarding the translation of fantasy creatures’ names arises from monsters invented by Sapkowski, such as the zeugl mentioned in Sword of Destiny. However, in these neologisms, the author described the appearance and abilities of the creatures at length, especially since the plot often implies fighting them. As a result, translators do not have to choose an equivalent word based on the original zeugl alone; they can adapt their translation according to the physical portrayal of the monster. Some linguistic areas that are the most distant from Polish have adopted strategies to convey the characteristics of the creatures beyond translating their name and the author’s descriptions. For example, Asian readers of The Witcher rarely share the same cultural references, and translators thus face a greater discrepancy to domesticate Sapkowski’s text into their target languages. As a consequence, the mythological aspects and beastionyms, in particular, tend to be accompanied with more details and descriptions in the Chinese translation.Footnote ¹⁰³ The Chinese paperback edition of Sword of Destiny, published in 2015, even includes an illustrated and translated bestiary in the final pages, in order to clarify the appearance of the main creatures: dragon, troll, zeugl, doppler, halfling (niziołek in the original Polish), siren or dryad.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ The strategies adopted to convey the importance and nuances of fantasy monsters in The Witcher thus depends on the translator’s own receptivity towards the genre and on the cultural associations in a target language, which can vary with each creature and background.

3.1 Conquering Europe, One Language at A Time

Before Sapkowski’s success with The Witcher, Poland was not commonly recognised as a country engaged in speculative genre fiction. In most countries in the 1990s and 2000s, when the first translations of The Witcher appeared, most of the fantasy cycles translated were from English-speaking authors; and we could argue that it remains the case to this day. At the turn of the century, a few individual stories from non-anglophone authors were starting to be published in multiple countries, but choosing to translate a complete cycle from a lesser-known language constituted an editorial and thus commercial risk for publishers. Here, it is not only a linguistic issue, which implies finding Polish translators able to tackle such a fantasy cycle; it is also a question of cultural tradition born from the origins of the fantasy genre in Great Britain and in the United States, and of commercial dominance: English-speaking authors benefit from a statistically larger possible readership, so foreign publishers can be reassured of a strong existing fan base when translating an English fantasy story, since ‘in translating speculative fiction, the key is fandom’.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ In the case of Polish fantasy, this reassuring commercial stability is not as developed. Throughout the 1990s, Sapkowski’s name slowly gained popularity in Poland and in Europe, but foreign publishers had to be convinced by the literary and commercial potential of his story to launch the translation of several books in the same fantasy universe.

After its initial publication in Fantastyka, the short story ‘Wiedźmin’ was translated into Ukrainian in 1990 by Mykola Ryabchuk for the magazine Всесвіт, dedicated to foreign literature. The Czech Republic also adopted The Witcher very quickly: ‘Mniejsze zło’ (‘The Lesser Evil’) was quickly translated into Czech in 1991, by František Novotné for the magazine AF 167, and ‘Wiedźmin’ was soon after translated by Jerzy Pilch for the magazine Ikaria. Following the great reception of these texts, the first collection, Sword of Destiny, was published in the Czech Republic by several translators for Winston Smith publishing as soon as 1992, before the complete Polish edition of 1993. If, because of financial conflicts between Winston Smith and the translators, the following books were later translated by Stanislav Komárek for another editorial team, Leonardo Publishing, it remains that the Czech Republic was highly invested in spreading The Witcher to Czech readers. The country was clearly not alone in this process: Sword of Destiny was quickly translated into Russian (1996), Lithuanian (1997) and German (1998) in a span of six years. Every subsequent volume of the literary cycle until the two latest ones, published years later, adopted this publication pattern. A few Central and Eastern European translations quickly followed the original publication in Polish, with Czech publishers like Winston Smith and Leonardo, Russian publishers like AST, and Lithuanian publishers like Dagonas and Fridanas actively involved in offering The Witcher to their readers as soon as possible. The 1990s also saw the quick translation of The Last Wish (Ostatnie życzenie) in Czech, Lithuanian, Russian and German, with the Spanish, French and Portuguese editions following in the early 2000s. The first two collections of short stories were sometimes published in a different order than the original Polish versions, but in less than twenty years, the books had been published in twenty different languages, with distinctions and nuances brought by UK/US English, or by the Portuguese/Brazilian versions, and most countries already had several editions.

This initial success can be traced back to the interest in Sapkowski’s stories, and to the motivation of local publishers to discover original fantasy worlds. Publishers keep a close watch on foreign publications to find books that could interest their own readers, and of course that could generate profit. The original success of Sapkowski’s texts in Poland, followed by their thriving circulation in the first countries and the positive word of mouth of readers helped reassure other foreign publishers when translating The Witcher for their own markets. With the first Spanish translation of Sword of Destiny, La Spada del destino, in 2002 – and several editions in the following years – this collection of short stories became available in five languages, besides Polish, several years before the first CD Projekt Red game was released in 2007:

If the cultural atmosphere of The Witcher has clearly been one of the key factors of its success, especially in the first years in Central and Eastern Europe, it is important to note that cultural or linguistic proximity is not enough to explain the translations of the texts all over Europe. The two collections of short stories were indeed translated into Spanish by José María Faraldo as soon as 2002, and The Last Wish was also translated into French by Laurence Dyèvre in 2003.

Even though the announcement of the video game adaptation in 2005 and the intensive marketing campaign around its release in 2007 clearly stimulated the subsequent publication of worldwide translations, the success of the first book grew all over Europe through small publishers, all specialised in fantasy or genre fiction. Afterwards, Serbian, Finnish, Italian and Hungarian translations, as well as a Chinese version, were published in the months directly following the release of the game, slowly transforming The Witcher into a global mass culture product. After 2007, countries which had already started their translating process usually accelerated the publication, like France, where Bragelonne published Sword of Destiny and Blood of Elves, but also reedited The Last Wish in the same year 2008. Several patterns appear in publishing these translations, evidencing different editorial strategies. In some countries, the translations of The Witcher were first published in a hardcover version, then a few years later in paperback or in mass-market pocket editions. For example, Czech publisher Leonardo released a translated hardback version of Sword of Destiny in 2000, which was already the second edition available in Czech after the one released by Winston Smith, and then a pocket version in 2011. The pocket edition corresponds to a paperback and smaller edition, which is traditionally less expensive and allows for a new readership to discover the story. The books cost less to be published and the lowered price is passed on to the readers. The fact that this more financially accessible edition was released in the Czech Republic – and in several countries – in the wake of CD Projekt Red’s second video game in 2011 is a reminder that publishers pay close attention to the promotional advantages of a simultaneous publication: gamers who like The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings can be interested in the original story and may want to learn more about its worldbuilding by reading Sapkowski’s books.

The release of the translations in mass-market paperback editions allows for a greater circulation of various editions and thus for a larger readership. In comparison, we know how much the publication in the United States of the paperback versions of The Lord of the Rings helped fantasy reach a very large audience in the second half of the 1960s.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ Other strategies were also deployed to ensure that The Witcher would find its readers: in Spain, for example, publishers Bibliópolis, Alamut and Circulo de Lectores published and republished several editions of the different books by Sapkowski in a short amount of time, all with the same translation and sometimes in a complete edition including both collections of short stories. La Spada del destino (Sword of Destiny) was published in 2003, 2005, 2006 and 2007 by Bibliópolis ‘Fantástica’, in 2008 and in 2010 in hardback by Alamut, in 2010 in hardback by Circulo de Lectores, including both Sword of Destiny and The Last Wish, et cetera. Several versions of the same text thus became available and helped find different readers. Today, most languages propose numerous editions of The Witcher books, including special, illustrated and deluxe editions, box sets and new covers once the Netflix TV series was first released in 2019. The translating process itself is also continuing in many countries, evidencing the growing success of the fantasy cycle: a Turkish translation by Regaip Minareci was published in 2017, a Hebrew translation by Ilay Halpern in 2021, an Arab translation by Youssef Shahada in 2024, et cetera. The publication of Rozdroże kruków in Poland in 2024 was followed by a simultaneous worldwide publication of translated versions a few months later, in September–October 2025.

3.2 Waiting for an English Translation

Although many translations of The Witcher have been published in most European countries over the years, their very existence has sometimes been problematically regarded as less important by international critics and academics, as if they did not play a decisive role in the global reception of this fantasy cycle. For Sławomir Gawroński and Kinga Bajorek, The Witcher only ‘gained an international dimension’Footnote ¹⁰⁸ because of its video game and Netflix adaptations, even though the books had already been translated, sold and even reissued in several countries before then. The existence of published translations should itself be a sign of editorial and fan recognition, as well as a strong indication of the ‘international’ impact of The Witcher – although limited to Europe until the 2000s – even before it became accessible to gamers, viewers and, maybe more interestingly, English-speaking readers. Indeed, while many European publishers proposed their local translations of Sapkowski’s books, the first English translation appeared belatedly.

The problem is that English is not considered merely one language among others. For many critics, the ‘English translation seemed both more glorious and more challenging’ than Central and Eastern European translations, as it would be able to reach a wider audience.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Having an English translation is important not only because of the English language’s current cultural dominance all over the world, but also in terms of genre dissemination. Although the fantasy genre can now be found in most countries and implies an active production and distribution, including through translations, it was nevertheless born from English-speaking authors. Precursors like William Morris and founding actors of the genre, including J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis and Robert E. Howard, wrote in English and their works have been more easily spread in Europe and in Western countries because of this linguistic dominance. In its origins as in its subsequent interaction with mass culture – if we think of many transmedia franchises that made the genre accessible to an ever-growing audience, including Dungeons and Dragons, The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and Game of Thrones, to name a few of the more easily recognised – fantasy is a genre profoundly influenced by the English language. When a fantasy cycle is published in another language, gaining distribution in English-speaking countries and in most countries through the existence of a translation is a decisive factor in reaching global success. However, contrary to their other European counterparts, English publishers had long seemed uninterested in translating The Witcher.Footnote ¹¹⁰ The refusal to engage with Sapkowski’s material may of course be understood through the lack of translators from Polish specialised in the fantasy genre: ‘In the case of Polish to English translation … there is a scarcity of trained translators specializing in both the source language and the genre, which means there is a much higher likelihood fantasy texts are going to be translated by any available translators from Polish, who may not themselves be very familiar with the genre.’Footnote ¹¹¹ Still, this assessment could be true in many European countries, since apart from Poland, Polish is rarely taught outside of specialised schools and universities. And even though English publishers first showed a clear lack of interest in The Witcher, English readers expressed for their part a strong desire to discover this fantasy world.

Faced with an absence of officially published translations, fantasy enthusiasts in English-speaking countries turned to their own creative force. Indeed, English fan translations circulated on the internet long before publishers proposed their own version: the success of The Witcher gained momentum in other European countries and fantasy readers worldwide showed interest in learning about Sapkowski’s creation. Fans ‘wrote a petition (around a thousand votes online) to “publishing firms”, and when calls did not have any effect, they utilized the official Witcher game forum to crowdsource translations’.Footnote ¹¹² This corresponds to a traditional response from fan communities, who are usually known for their active part in developing and spreading works of fiction they like, especially through participatory culture and DIY practices.Footnote ¹¹³ Since fans were rarely able to translate Polish fluently, they resolved to gain access to the text through other means: ‘These versions were often done by people who did not speak Polish, but used French, Russian or other languages as intermediaries.’Footnote ¹¹⁴ This fan practice of indirect translation is not the only one in the history of translating The Witcher worldwide, since the Chinese–Taiwanese translation published in 2011 was also established based on the English version of the story, just as the first Portuguese translation came indirectly from French, and was not based on the original Polish texts, despite the author’s insistence on a direct work from Polish for each translation.

Several incomplete translations circulated, especially from the collections of short stories: ‘The first translation into English seems to be an undated (but pre‑1998) amateur translation of excerpts from the first story in the series, “Wiedźmin”, made available on the Internet by a certain Istredd 109, linked on the fan website Andrzej Sapkowski Zone.’Footnote ¹¹⁵ The name of this amateur translator, echoing one of the characters of The Witcher, reveals a strong interest in the cycle, as does the engagement in the fan website. Even though this translation was sometimes clumsy, it presented the decisive interest to make the first story available to a new non-Polish-reading audience. A few years later, in 1999, another stimulating case of fan translation was published online: Piotr Krasnowolski translated the short story ‘The Lesser Evil’. Although it was not published by a fantasy publisher, it presented the particular case of being ‘an unofficial translation performed by a fan, who happened to be a professional translator, consulted the author, and obtained his permission’.Footnote ¹¹⁶ This situation proved, if needed, that professional translators interested in working on Sapkowski’s cycle, and able to do so, existed and could help distribute the story to English-speaking readers. Translating was not limited to fans and various editorial projects started to appear, even though they only concerned individual short stories: ‘Technically speaking, the first [published] English translation of a witcher story is Hexer by Agnieszka Fulińska (2000). The text was published along seven other Polish short stories in the collection Chosen by Fate: Zajdel Award Winner Anthology, by SuperNowa, Sapkowski’s original Polish publisher.’Footnote ¹¹⁷ However, despite a translator used to fantasy works and specific attention from the publisher, this text did not spark any larger interest in making The Witcher available in English, and this book was quickly forgotten.

English-speaking publishers dedicated to the fantasy genre started paying a closer attention to the commercial potential of the cycle after the announcement of the first video game adaptation by CD Projekt Red in 2005. The preparation and marketing of this project allowed some time for publishers to work on new translations and publish them alongside the release of the game in 2007. ‘The translations after 2005 are clearly motivated by the games; indeed, many feature the game logo, a stylized wolf’s head, on the cover,’ or visuals taken from the video game’s cut scenes.Footnote ¹¹⁸ It was of course an issue of marketing opportunity, since associating the books with the ad campaign orchestrated by CD Projekt Red was an easy way to reach a wider audience and to reinforce the visual presence of the cycle in the gamers’ and readers’ minds. But it was also, for publishers, a way to respond to a global demand from fantasy fans, as evidenced by the fan petition that circulated in English-speaking countries. Several European publishers indicate feeling in the second half of the 2000s a certain pressure from fans waiting for the video games to translate the books into their own language. In the United Kingdom and the United States, where the marketing around the video game was important but where translations of Sapkowski’s books had not yet been released, the association between the two media is obvious: ‘The Last Wish in its British edition does feature the game logo. (The US editions displays a piece of game artwork instead.)’Footnote ¹¹⁹

As a result, The Last Wish was finally translated into English and published in 2007 – fourteen years after its original Polish release – with the translation of Blood of Elves published the following year. Nevertheless, this editorial enthusiasm in the wake of the game The Witcher was restricted, despite readers’ interest. After the initial translation of books one and three, Gollancz, the speculative fiction branch of publisher Hachette UK, only went back to translating The Witcher in the United Kingdom in 2013. The other translations were then published with more regularity, from 2013 to 2018 – before the release of another volume by Sapkowski in 2024 – but in a process which included a surprisingly late and out-of-order publication of the second collection of short stories, Sword of Destiny, in 2015. During this period, two other video games were released, in 2011 and 2015. This gap in publishing was due to a legal disagreement between author Andrzej Sapkowski, Gollancz and the translator, Danusia Stok. For the first seven books of the cycle, up to The Lady of the Lake, it took on average a little bit less than eighteen years for English readers to find a professionally published translation of The Witcher once they were published in Poland, with a maximum of twenty-three years for Sword of Destiny. This long-delayed and erratic publication complicated commercialising the cycle in English-speaking countries and establishing a solid readership, even though different versions of the texts now exist in English. As it is usually proposed by publishers, the publication of The Witcher in English is split into two versions, with local appropriations in UK English and US English. It mostly consists, in the US translation, in a simpler syntax and grammar, and a greater tendency to use familiar or vulgar terms. The names and their pronunciations may also differ from one version to the next: ‘Variations in phonetics and pronunciation can affect the perception and atmosphere of a text for audiences from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Such differences can trigger different associations and emotional reactions in readers and players and reflect subtle differences in perceptions of language and culture.’Footnote ¹²⁰ The same distinction occurs between Chinese and Classical Chinese, with publications that started respectively in 2015 with 白狼崛起 (The Last Wish), translated by Xiǎo Lóng and in 2011 with 最後的願望 (The Last Wish) translated by Wèi-Yún Lín-Górecka. But even now, when the books have been published both in UK and US English, circulation in the United States specifically remains inferior to the audience of the video games and the Netflix series adapted from Sapkowski’s literary cycle, although actual viewers and players can be difficult to quantify, as well as readership, since it includes sales, library borrowings, second-hand editions, et cetera.Footnote ¹²¹

3.3 Editorial Limits and Obstacles

As we can see, the multiplication of published translations does not prevent some accessibility issues. Choices of publication details and editorial constraints sometimes result in problems in identifying the cycle, especially for readers unfamiliar with The Witcher and who would want to discover it. Indeed, depending on the languages of translations, a few volumes are less clearly presented, as, for example, with the two collections of short stories, which can be regrouped in one volume. German publisher Heyne Verlag, now renamed Heyne, published the two separate books in 1998, Der Letzte Wunsch (The Last Wish) and Das Schwert der Vorsehung (Sword of Destiny), followed in 2000 by a combined volume of both collections of short stories; while another German publisher, dtv Verlagsgesellschaft, published once again the books as separate volumes in 2007 and 2008. The same principle of a double edition was proposed in Lithuania by publisher Eridanas in 2005, under the title Raganius (The Witcher). These editions tend to make each individual volume less recognisable to the readership, although it facilitates access to a greater number of stories in one book. As in Germany, this solution was sometimes adopted by publishers as a way to edit second versions of the volumes: in Spain in 2010 and in France in 2012, publishers Circulo de Lectores and Bragelonne proposed a reorganised version including the two collections of short stories that they both had initially published in separate books a few years before. In an opposite approach, some books originally published as individual volumes have been separated into several books, just like the Czech edition of Meč osudu (Sword of Destiny), published by Winston Smith in 1993, which only contains three short stories from the original collection: ‘Trošku se obětovat’ (‘A Little Sacrifice’), ‘Meč osudu’ (‘Sword of Destiny’) and ‘Něco víc’ (‘Something More’). Czech readers had to wait until 2000 to find a complete edition, published by Leonardo. This choice can prevent a clear identification of the books, and can limit the sales – and the success – of each one: some readers won’t buy the second volume and thus won’t have access to the full extent of Sapkowski’s short stories. The same principle was applied to the Spanish translation of La Dama del Lago (The Lady of the Lake) published by Alamut as well as by Bibliópolis over two years (2009–10). As a result, it appears more difficult to distinguish each volume on an international scale, since books do not necessarily have the same equivalent in Polish and in the various translated languages.

Translations can also increase the problems of unity in the worldwide reception of the cycle, especially when changes are made in the titles. Some publishers have decided to highlight different short stories in their title for the collection: the Korean version, published in 2011 by Jeumedia, adopts the title 이성의 목소리, refering to the title of the fragmented short story that alternates with the other texts of the collection, ‘The Voice of Reason’. Some changes are more subtle but not always clearly identified, as with the change from singular to plural in the English versions of Wieża Jaskółki. Although the fourth novel in the cycle was translated as The Tower of the Swallow in UK English, it appears as The Tower of Swallows in US English. Other languages, including Russian, Czech, Serbian, Ukrainian, Uzbek, Macedonian, French, Italian, Spanish, Arabic, Turkish and Japanese, all adopt a singular form to mention the bird in their title. If this can be considered a minor detail when spreading The Witcher to a worldwide audience, some changes in titles can be more problematic. In the Chinese edition of The Last Wish, the title 白狼崛起 can be translated literally as ‘The Rise of the White Wolf’, which could be felt as over-translating and focusing on different aspects of the story – not on the developing relationship between Geralt and Yennefer through magical events, as is implied in the original title Ostatnie życzenie, but on the supposedly epic journey of the lone witcher. Following the same principle, in Italy, this collection of short stories is translated by Raffaella Belletti for publisher Editrice Nord as Il guardiano degli innocenti, ‘The Guardian of Innocents’. This particularly heroic and altruistic description of Geralt does not reflect the purpose of his mission as a witcher, especially in the first short stories, and presents him as a more traditional knight in shining armour. Finally, titles can be kept closer to the original Polish but present other editorial difficulties: in Spanish, for example, the first volume, La espada del destino (Sword of Destiny), shares its title with the second book of a children’s series, Caballeros del Reino de Fantasía, from the Geronimo Stilton’s series and published in 2013, a homonymous form which can complicate referencing and search engine optimisation for librarians and readers.

In rarer occasions, the translations can also include interpretation errors, especially in cases of hasty translations. In the first French version of L’Épée de la Providence (Sword of Destiny), a confusion led to the description of Yennefer’s ‘rhinocéros parfaitement empaillé’ (‘perfectly stuffed rhinoceros’) as a rhinoceros instead of a unicorn. The Polish word for unicorn, ‘jednoroźec’, is close to its non-magical equivalent, the rhinoceros, ‘nosoroźec’, which can explain the misunderstanding. The error, due in all probability to a hasty reading of the text, was fixed in the following editions. The short deadlines to which translators are submitted originate in competitive publishing markets, contracts and the general demand for the translated books – in 2025, for example, translators all over the world only had a few months to make Rozdroże kruków available in many languages. The success of the cycle becomes itself another form of pressure for editorial teams. This constraint can lead to clumsy translations or errors, which can have a direct influence over the reception of The Witcher in foreign countries: forums, wikis and Reddit topics regularly criticise some of the translations of the cycle. In rare cases but in several languages, entire sentences have disappeared from the translated texts, sometimes altering the meaning of the paragraph.

The difficulties in commercialising Sapkowski’s work also lie in its length and duration of publication. Sometimes, publishers have been able to employ the same translator throughout the cycle: the Spanish version of The Witcher, to only name one example, has been translated by José María Faraldo, which facilitates issues of continuity throughout the different volumes – even though he collaborated with Carmelo Rivero and Fernando Otero Macías for the translation of The Lady of the Lake. However, the willingness of Sapkowski’s team to commission a new Spanish translation – as has, for example, been undertaken in France – has, since 2023, led to difficulties in reaching agreement with the translator and the Spanish publishing house. In practice, this situation has resulted in a publishing deadlock: despite repeated requests from Spanish readers, exemplified by the #QueremosTheWitcher movement on social media, the texts are no longer being published, and earlier editions of The Witcher are thus becoming increasingly scarce pending the outcome of negotiations – whether this leads to the retention of the current translation, the commissioning of a new one or an alternative solution capable of satisfying all parties.Footnote ¹²² The centralisation of the work under a single translator therefore does not necessarily resolve issues relating to the commercial circulation of the work. Regularly, several translators have been working consecutively on the same literary cycle, which can lead to difference in choices of names, places, et cetera. In France, four different translators have worked on The Witcher over the years, with most of the cycle, starting with Time of Contempt, translated by Caroline Raszka-Dewez. As a result, the initial publications of the books face a few coherence problems, and a lack of continuity within the story and its specific lexicon can imply a negative reception from readers. Following the growing success of The Witcher, the French translations were ultimately revised by one translator, Lydia Cantin-Waleryszak, to standardise the translation of all volumes and bring more consistency in the translation of names, creatures, magical and military vocabulary, et cetera. Doing so was also a clear way to expose The Witcher to a new readership, since the initial translations in France were almost twenty years old at that point. The experience of French publisher Bragelonne is an interesting reminder of the implications of such a successful longevity: not only are Sapkowski’s texts published and translated in several countries, they also need to evolve with their time – and their readers. At the initiative of Andrzej Sapkowski’s team, this process of retranslation has now been initiated in several countries. Of course, the involvement of multiple translators does not necessarily mean consistency issues, although it does not facilitate the work of translators or foreign publishers. For the Serbian versions of The Witcher, four different translators worked with publisher Čarobna knjiga: Vesna Milutinović-Đurić translated The Last Wish and Sword of Destiny; Milica Markić worked on Blood of Elves, Time of Contempt and Baptism of Fire; Zorana Lutovac translated the following books – Tower of the Swallow, Lady of the Lake and Season of Storms – and Mila Gravilović translated Crossroads of Ravens. The changes in editorial team were due to conflicting professional projects for the translators, which meant that the publisher had to ensure terminological consistency throughout the publication of the cycle.

The situation is different when the publishing team also varies from book to book. The fact that several partial English translations were proposed before one complete version created discrepancies within the texts, especially between the initial short story translated by Michael Kandel and the following volumes. As noted by Dorota Guttfeld, when translating ‘Wiedźmin’ Kandel used ‘two alternative names to the king of a neighbouring country (rendering Vizimir as Cuthbond and Glothur), and the country’s capital (rendering Novigrad as Kloffok and Globbur); while none of these plays any major role in the story, they feature extensively in further stories and novels by Sapkowski’.Footnote ¹²³ If the readers are unfamiliar with the original Polish version, they might get confused when identifying characters and places. Nevertheless, once the decision to translate the whole cycle into English was made, publishers intended to maintain narrative consistency as much as possible, even when the project changed translators. In the United Kingdom, the complete editorial project was initiated through the work of Danusia Stok, who focused on domestication and direct translations when adapting Polish names. Thus Żyrytwa was translated as Ilycrois, Wyzima was translated as Wyzim, et cetera. ‘However, although she [followed] the Polish text much closer than Kandel, Stok also [lost] track of some of the minor background elements: while bobołaki are initially rendered as bogeymen (which conveys the association with childhood fright), they are later in the same story referred to as spriggans (a term earlier used for browiki), and in another story – as weretots.’Footnote ¹²⁴ Because Stok translated short stories, she seemed to lack the place to describe these unknown creatures to the reader, even though in other occasions she adopted expanding strategies ‘to the point of over-explication’.Footnote ¹²⁵ In this case, the word bobołaki refers to furry anthropomorphic creatures who live in the mountains and vaguely resemble a sort of marmot–human hybrid. Adapting Sapkowski’s short stories presents a greater number of difficulties for translators, as they have to maintain the condensed aspect of the texts and make them readable as independent stories, while also keeping in mind that they open a vast fantasy world where creatures and characters can reappear later in the narrative.

For each translated language, decisions adopted for the short stories’ collections can thus impact the rest of the translating process, such as the preferred term for wiedźmin. In the English version, Stok proposed the name Dandelion for the character Jaskier, an important companion in Geralt’s adventures – and whose Polish name literally means buttercup – and this choice was afterwards kept by the subsequent translator for the English version, David French, in an attempt at continuity.Footnote ¹²⁶ This process of coherently translating subsequent books, despite the general opinion of the previous translations, is part of a ‘tradition strategy’ which becomes essential when dealing with a long fantasy cycle.Footnote ¹²⁷ Readers have to be able to recognise characters, places and monsters, and changes in their translations can lead to misunderstanding or loss of interest from readers. However, the subsequent translation by David French was noted to lack important aspects of Sapkowski’s style, especially its humorous tone.Footnote ¹²⁸ It becomes difficult to follow The Witcher as a complete cycle in its English translation, as issues of consistency appear in both style and onomastics. Paradoxically, while English readers waited many years to finally have access to a translated version, there currently exist multiple translations in one language of the same texts:

English readers can thus get lost between texts more easily, while readers from other countries have had the opportunity to discover The Witcher through quicker and more consistently published translations.

3.4 Sapkowski’s Eclectic Style

Translating a fantasy story written by Sapkowski can become an intense journey since the author draws from a rich cultural background. Compared to his other fantasy cycle, The Hussite Trilogy, The Witcher relies less heavily on knowledge about European history and medieval context, even if cultural and intertextual borrowings remain a substantial part of his literary style. He developed a condensed narrative, with limited descriptions of background, setting or architecture, but with a great attention to military situations and battle scenes. The author spent some time on the physical description of characters, including their clothes and martial equipment, but he remained more discreet about the scenery outside of natural landscapes, which is also a way to invite readers to picture their own setting. In this regard, as in many others, Sapkowski’s style is very different from Tolkien’s, even though the creator of The Witcher has regularly been compared to the father of fantasy, and his fantasy does not necessarily use the same well-established codes. Even though world-building is never neglected, it always appears as a way to strengthen the plot, and Sapkowski seemed particularly interested in developing nuanced characters who feel alive, with all their complexities, including in their language. The main aspects of his literary style, ‘the construction of the protagonist, the complexity of the presented world, its linguistic diversity, and the series’ humour, often based on subverting expectations about decorum and juxtaposing language registers’, all present specific difficulties for translators, as language is a key informational element for the author and within the narrative.Footnote ¹³⁰

The Witcher belongs to the specific subgenre of ‘dark fantasy’, which depicts worlds where magical creatures and abilities are frequent but where social, political and moral issues are all submitted to a negative prism: readers encounter more anti-heroes than heroes, and reaching a happy ending is rarely an option for the characters. Nevertheless, this gloomy atmosphere does not prevent humour, and Sapkowski regularly includes comic traits and reactions. As the author pays particular attention to onomastics, humour also appears in the name of secondary characters: when translated, these names need to retain a funny pronunciation in the target language, while being realistic and coherent within this fantasy universe, but they also can imply specifically foreign consonances, like certain mimiks (doppler characters). For example, Tellico Lunngrevink Letorte is also known as Dudu Biberveldt in the original text, and the humorous aspect of his name should be kept when translating in order to stay close to Sapkowski’s style. ‘The language is also a source of humour, due to witty repartee, register diversity, as well as colloquialisms and vulgarisms subverting expectations about the fairy‑tale, epic or quasi‑Biblical poetics commonly assumed by fantasy.’Footnote ¹³¹ Translating humour is always a challenge, and in this case, it does not correspond to the general tone of the cycle, but only to specific – although frequent – uses. As such, it can be easily forgotten or perceived as less essential when translating The Witcher. For example, the multiple ‘expressions of sarcasm and irony’ regularly disappear in foreign translations, especially the ones conveyed in Polish using diminutives.Footnote ¹³²

Julia Nowak, Agnieszka Mierzejewska and Katarzyna Pelc established that, in the short stories they studied, ‘The Last Wish’ and ‘The Lesser Evil’, Sapkowski often used diminutives, which are frequent in the Polish language and express a variety of emotional nuances, from hypocoristic value to sarcasm and mockery – in this fantasy cycle, those are mostly used by the character of Yennefer – or the indication of irrelevance of something or someone. However, interestingly, most of these diminutives are not used in dialogues but in the narrative parts of the story: ‘This leads to the conclusion that they are useful to set the scene and create a certain image in the reader’s head. … Notably, the use of diminutives diminishes considerably in the descriptions of more brutal and violent scenes across both stories.’Footnote ¹³³ The diminutives used in narration contain less emotional implications, but they still help bring nuance to a war-torn fictional world. Using diminutives can convey different degrees of interpretation and bring the characters more depth. Sapkowski’s narrative style is emblematic of this nuanced writing, as it ‘is characterised by the sophisticated use of syntactic structures and grammatical devices, which requires translators not only to translate words accurately but also to carefully reproduce the linguistic style and sentence structure’.Footnote ¹³⁴ This issue isn’t that Sapkowski used grammatical or syntactic archaisms, besides technicisms in medieval lexicon; other fantasy writers, such as George R. R. Martin with A Song of Ice and Fire, have been known to convey a medievalist atmosphere through this use of voluntarily dated syntactic structures. But Sapkowski conveyed important interpretational elements through the way his characters talk. Grammar, including the choice of registers, has a direct impact on the representation of characters and their relationship.

This attention to language is all the more important as The Witcher is mostly built on orality: dialogues, rumours and legends, understood as oral stories transmitted over time, are the fundamental structure of the cycle.Footnote ¹³⁵ Characters focus on their reputation and that of others, information is mostly transmitted orally and the whole narrative revolves around legends and prophecies, especially in the serialised novels. Oral language is a way to create a more dynamic story, with versatile characters sharing incomplete information, and to develop the social and cultural background of the protagonists through their speech.

Sapkowski lets the readers hear his characters, with many of them engaging in this old oral tradition. The protagonist, Geralt, interacts almost effortlessly with every branch of society, from kings to hardened criminals, from magicians and scholars to artists. Through his perspective and through many other chapters following secondary characters, Sapkowski develops a world of social and cultural diversity: ‘This is reflected in the language of his foils, whose register varies from formal, modern, scientific, to stylized, rustic and archaic.’Footnote ¹³⁷ Although entertaining and socially complex, this aspect of Sapkowski’s style presents another pitfall for translators, who have to adapt to various registers, sometimes within the same conversation. Indeed, ‘linguistic diversity is crucial in the amalgam world of Sapkowski, who likes to mix familiar and unfamiliar terms as well as proper names derived from a variety of cultures’.Footnote ¹³⁸ In The Witcher, this principle is illustrated by the concept of the Conjunction of the Spheres, a cataclysmic event which created the world, as the characters know it, through the collision of planets. This episode provoked forced exodus for entire civilisations, as well as monsters, that all brought with them their past, their history and their culture – an idea that also implies, noticeably, their language. Even if most characters in The Witcher share a common tongue, their language maintains traces of their origin. As such, translating The Witcher does not only imply translating words and cultural elements from Polish; it also implies conveying this richness of lexicon and grammar through the characters’ speech. Sapkowski gives most plot-advancing elements through his characters, with long and often complex dialogues. The various linguistic aspects that constitute Sapkowski’s literary style are not specific details of couleur locale, nor are they associated with a precise group of people in the story; they make the story, in content as well as style.

3.5 Judging a Book by Its Cover

Publishing fantasy, especially in translation, thus implies an important number of points of attention. And once the text is translated and adapted to a foreign audience, publishers still have to adopt a particular marketing strategy to reach fantasy readers – and, ideally, an even larger readership. Like every cultural production, fantasy has its codes and tendencies, including when it comes to visual presentations. When publishing The Witcher in various countries, the choice of covers may have had a direct influence over the reception and ultimately the success of the cycle. If, according to the popular saying, one should not judge a book by its cover, in the book industry, it remains a decisive factor. A cover has to illustrate the intention of the book and give a general idea of its content, while creating desire: it has to reveal as well as to hide, in order to suggest the tone of the narrative without disclosing too much of the plot. It should similarly be attractive, as a cover is also part of the reason readers buy books, especially in cases of impulse buying.Footnote ¹³⁹

The original publisher of The Witcher in Poland, SuperNowa, currently tends to limit the representation of physical violence on their book covers for the cycle, and it prefers epic scenes generally depicting a solitary character: ‘On the first original cover Geralt stands alone in a scene that lacks true violence, which is a tradition that SuperNowa would continue on their covers as they published Sapkowskis’ series.’Footnote ¹⁴⁰ For the most recent editions, at least one sword – or, in the case of Chrzest ognia, a bow – appears on most of the Polish covers, but it is rarely in a directly confrontational posture: on the image selected for Ostatnie życzenie, Geralt uses his sword to defend himself against the genie, pictured as a grimacing red and yellow face in the sky, coming out of a brandished bottle; and similarly on the cover of Rozdroże kruków he is armed and facing a clawed creature standing menacingly over a tombstone. The Polish covers also highlight the setting through natural landscapes: lakes, vegetation and mountains occupy most of the different covers. The epic atmosphere is brought by the posture of the characters, the presence of supernatural creatures – such as the golden dragon in Miecz przeznaczenia and the unicorn in Wieża Jaskółki – and dramatic scenery, like the wall of fire on the background of Czas pogardy and the flashes of lightning surrounding the characters on the cover of Sezon burz. The disposition is mainly centred and not particularly busy, which gives an impression of epic elegance. Such covers clearly identify each book with the fantasy genre, except maybe for the cover of Krew elfów (Blood of Elves), which does not picture any fighting nor supernatural elements, but a broken bust surrounded by white roses in the ruins of Shaerrawedd: a reader unfamiliar with the story might not associate the cover with the elves, although the title itself seems to be enough of an indication. As such, the different covers ‘fit right in with what the Polish fantasy audience expects’.Footnote ¹⁴¹

The situation is different with the first covers SuperNowa selected in the 1990s. The first Polish edition of Wieża Jaskółki, in 1997, did not present the unicorn Ihuarraquax in front of a tower, but a magic longship with a wide sail and a horned and fanged skull for its prow, floating over a parted sea. Although it refers to the supernatural travels of the White Hunt, a group of ancient elves living in a separate world, the reference to the longship seems out of place in The Witcher. Other choices in the first Polish editions also limited the epic atmosphere of the story, like in the case of Pani Jeziora in 1999, which pictured a figure seen from the back, lost in vegetation. At this point in its publication, the cycle did not yet have highly recognisable characters or episodes, which made choosing a cover all the more difficult to sell it to Polish readers. Afterwards, in the different countries where The Witcher has been translated and published, most covers have highlighted the association of the cycle with the fantasy genre, especially in first editions. This might sometimes imply limiting the specificities of each book, or of The Witcher as a complete story, to insist on more general fantasy tropes which would be easily identifiable for fantasy readers.

For example, the first Lithuanian edition of The Last Wish, published by Eridanas under the general title of Raganius (The Witcher), adopts a very busy and generic cover. It depicts a superimposition of unidentifiable rocky setting at sunset, a knight in armour on a horse brandishing a shiny sword, a close-up of a long-haired blonde man with a silver crown, a dark-haired – also crowned – woman, a small menacing shadowy figure, and on the left side a silver wolf-head medallion. The cover thus includes several sizes and scales, heterogeneous lightning and various cultural atmospheres. The general tones of warm colours seem discordant with the setting developed for the first short stories, and the cover is more reminiscent of Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian or Frank Herbert’s Dune, with no clear references. While it depicts Geralt’s specific medallion, the other elements do not clearly correspond to the adventures featured in the book, and as a result the cover seems to correspond to a non-specific fantasy story. Although the following volumes published by Eridanas are less busy, they all adopt covers which are not specifically designed for The Witcher, and have little to do with the contents of each book, as evidenced by the Lithuanian cover for Ežero valdovė (The Lady of the Lake): it presents a confident dark-haired woman with a white strand of hair, holding a white owl and standing in front of a huge tree. One might struggle to associate this image with the narrative of The Lady of the Lake, and even more generally to The Witcher, and for a good reason: this picture was created by Keith Parkinson to illustrate the 1997 novel Polgara the Sorceress, by David and Leigh Eddings, for Del Rey Books. Eridanas reused the image to illustrate the cover of The Witcher, although the two stories have nothing in common and although the character depicted does not appear in Sapkowski’s story. Here, The Witcher is conceived as a fantasy cycle among others, without taking into account its particularities nor the interests of its readers. The same principle of surprising and out-of-place covers has been used in a few countries – such as with the French edition of Le dernier vœu (The Last Wish) by JC Lattès in 2024, which presents a close-up of an antler over a unified grey-green background – although they remain a minority.

When publishing The Witcher abroad, most covers highlight the violence of the story by depicting fighting scenes. On this aspect, the difference between the UK English version and the US English version of the books is particularly interesting, since editorial marketing in the United States has oriented The Witcher towards Geralt’s fighting abilities. While the UK cover by Gollancz for Blood of Elves features a portrait of Jaskier, recognisable with his luth and feathered hat, the US version by Orbit is an image inspired by the video games, where Geralt appears from behind in a low-angle shot typical of heroic poses. The character is shirtless, which reveals a heavily injured back – probably with whiplash – with a massive quantity of blood, while he carries an axe and a sword, both bloody, in his hands. In the background, the sun is partly blocked by an imposing crenellated fortress, around which crows fly. The image does not refer to a specific part of the book, but all the tropes of death and fantasy violence are gathered: even though the witcher does not appear fighting on the cover, his posture, his weapons and the abundant presence of blood clearly indicate that a gory battle has begun and will continue in the castle, as if Geralt was attacking by himself. This representation is typical of sword and sorcery, a fantasy subgenre dedicated to devasted lands where lonely anti-heroes survive through sheer violence and determination. Although it might be one way to interpret the character of Geralt in some of the initial short stories, where most of his action is solitary, it is a clearly biased view of the whole cycle. In reality, throughout the story Geralt is rarely alone, and fighting is only one of his many skills – he also acts as an investigator, a diplomat, a friend and a lover. However, the cover illustration and the back cover only focus on one aspect of the character: ‘Geralt de Rivia is a witcher. A cunning sorcerer. A merciless assassin. And a cold-blooded killer. His sole purpose: to destroy the monsters that plague the world.’ This presentation, published by Orbit in 2008, was the very first appearance of The Witcher in its literary form in the United States, and oriented the reception of the cycle through this prism of fantasy violence. ‘The text contrasts how Sapkowski views his own works, especially on the front of Geralt’s character. According to Sapkowski’s interviews, Geralt is not a “merciless assassin and a cold-blooded killer” as Orbit portrays.’Footnote ¹⁴² Choosing a cover and a back cover is a way to indicate to future readers the general tone and the specificities of the book, and in this case, the presentation might appear slightly misleading.

Differences in cover choices also appear according to the format of the books, be they published in hardcover versions or paperbacks – which refers to the material used for the cover of the book, with a direct impact over the retail price – or in large or small formats.Footnote ¹⁴³ Some countries do not necessarily adopt a classification of book types based on the material of the cover, but based on the size of the book. The ‘large format’ corresponds approximately to an octavo book size, but it rarely includes a rigid protective cover; the ‘small format’, or ‘pocket format’ is of course smaller, as if able to fit inside an admittedly large pocket. Traditionally, large formats are used for first editions as well as illustrated and luxury versions of texts, while pocket formats and paperbacks are conceived to reach a wider readership. Thus, large and small formats published in the same country, with the same translated text, usually have different covers since they are created for various types of readers. To address multiple readerships, one editorial proposition can thus address a public more interested in traditional fantasy tropes, while another insists on the medievalist action of the story, like with Spanish publisher Artifex’s cover for La Espada del Destino, or even on the political narrative of The Witcher, like with the large format prestige edition proposed in Italy and France. Indeed, through pre-existing associations between European publishers, the covers can be shared in multiple countries. For example, French and Italian publishers Bragelonne and TEA share the same illustrations for their paperback and prestige editions of The Witcher, with ethereal paintings of small characters in an impressive background for the small format books, and with coats of arms over parchment for the prestige version. Other illustrations of individual characters were sometimes used as covers by Gollancz for the second UK English version, as well as by Serbian publisher Čarobna knjiga, Lithunian publisher Alma Littera, et cetera, although this shared process is not systematic.

Following the same principle, most European publishers adapted their cover choices once The Witcher became a transmedia fantasy universe. After 2007, in many countries, book covers for the cycle presented visuals taken from the first video games, especially for their small and paperback versions. The books have clearly been marketed to gamers, which explains this convergence in aesthetics. Fantasy is part of the ‘convergence culture’, as analysed by Henry Jenkins, in which many connections can be found between works of different mediatic form and their audiences.Footnote ¹⁴⁴ Fans of fantasy books also frequently play tabletop and/or roleplaying fantasy games, watch fantasy movies or TV series, et cetera. It is rare to find fans who only engage in one occurrence of the genre, which also implies that many fantasy fans play different parts within the genre: not only are some of them readers, viewers or gamers, they can also be artists, authors, game developers, et cetera. Aware of this fact, and willing to benefit from the success of CD Projekt Red’s games after their release, many foreign publishers of The Witcher used images from the video game as their covers, thus picturing close-ups of Geralt or scenes of him and magicians – usually Triss Merigold – fighting various creatures, in bright settings reminiscing of fire and explosions. These cover choices stress the fighting action of the cycle, following the dynamic established by the first two video games; the third opus, while still including numerous fighting sequences for the main character, dedicated a greater part of the gameplay to mystery solving and psychological development. Adopting a cover inspired by the video games for the books is a way to capitalise on the success of the transmedia franchise, but doing so blurs the differences between both media and tends to insist on narrative characteristics that are more typical of the games than the books.

The same principle was repeated after 2019, when the Netflix series adapting The Witcher was first released. European publishers reedited their translations with covers inspired by the TV series, picturing actors Henry Cavill as Geralt, Anya Chalotra as Yennefer and Freya Allan as Ciri. It was mostly proposed to readers for the first volumes of the cycle, and not necessarily for all of them. For example, after Serbian publisher Čarobna knjiga already proposed medium-format books – 14.4 x 20.5 cm – with illustrated covers, as well as a special hardcover edition with inner illustrations by Alejandro Colucci, they later released one large format volume with an image of Netflix’s show. The box set of the cycle, ‘Komplet Saga o Vešcu’, published before Sapkowski published a new volume in 2024, includes the eight books translated at the time, but only the first one, Poslednja želja (The Last Wish), has a Netflix-inspired cover. All the other books of the set kept their first illustrated covers, picturing different characters of the cycle: Ciri, Yennefer, Cahir, et cetera. Borislav Pantic, publisher of Čarobna knjiga, explains:

The idea is not to publish a complete and unified version of the cycle with a coherent design, but to promote the first book in keeping with the other transmedia successes of The Witcher, hoping that new readers would discover the books after their video game or TV series experience. This promotional convergence is frequently organised with new illustration covers as well as special back cover indications: for example, the French reeditions by publisher Big Bang indicated ‘The cycle that inspired the videogame and Netflix’s series The Witcher!’. Even when the covers were kept unchanged by publishers, the books were usually marketed to mention the other versions of the fantasy franchise: the Italian version by Nord added an advertising strip across the cover with visuals from the TV series – pictures of the main characters, the title of the series and Netflix’s logo – and the indication ‘An original Netflix series’. When the covers of every book were transformed to echo the release of the TV series, it was usually with symbols: since 2022, the covers of US English paperback editions refer to the Netflix series with the depiction of simple stone imagery inspired by its opening credits.Footnote ¹⁴⁶ The head of the wolf, as it appears on Geralt’s witcher medallion, had already been used as a cover in many countries; after Netflix’s release, it became all the more present in the visuals associated with the extended Witcher universe.

4.1 Video Games and TV Series: A Global Phenomenon

The story of translating The Witcher and the story of its transmedia adaptations are closely linked: in the case of CD Projekt Red’s video games, the fact of whether, in each country, an already published translation of Sapkowski’s books existed before the release of the games had a direct influence over the localisation choices made to produce them. Localising a video game implies translating and adapting its original content, here produced in Polish but proposed in several languages for its international release, to a target audience’s own cultural and linguistic context, as well as local sensibilities, without losing too much of the specificities of the original work.Footnote ¹⁴⁷ It is a frequent and expected process in the video game industry, which goes further than linguistic translation. The aim is to create an adaptable content that responds to the local audience’s references and values, in order to increase the gamers’ immersion in and engagement with the story, which in turns facilitates the game’s distribution worldwide: ‘a properly performed localisation allows players from different countries and cultural backgrounds to enjoy the game … while retaining the original mood and meaning of the work. Without localisation, a game or film may lose its appeal to the audience due to incomprehensibility or lack of relevant local elements, which can lead to market failure and negative user feedback.’Footnote ¹⁴⁸

While in the first video game The Witcher (2007) by CD Projekt Red, Geralt collects seduction cards after each sexual encounter – a narrative element completely absent from Sapkowski’s books – their appearance was modified in the US version of the game in order to reduce the female characters’ nudity. Here, it is not an issue of literal translation, but a question of moral values and social preferences. The same reduction of nudity and explicit physical violence was applied to the Middle Eastern and Japanese versions of the third game, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015). The game developers aim at limiting any risk of rejection from gamers and critics, and, on the contrary, at helping their immersion within the universe pictured by the game. The idea is for the game to include enough cultural elements familiar to the gamers so that they will feel at home within the story, even though the characters are set in a faraway or fantasy world. It is particularly important in role-playing games where gamers are not able to customise their avatar, following a Japanese tradition: in the games adapted from Sapkowski’s world-building, the gamer is only able to portray Geralt and Ciri – the former in the first and second game, the latter in the upcoming fourth game, and both alternatively in the third – without being able to choose their race, gender, name, et cetera. As the gamer is not able to change the character, at least in its main exterior aspects, the world in which they perform has to feel somewhat familiar in order to reduce the strangeness of the story. In the case of The Witcher, and notably The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, which was simultaneously released in seven languages – Polish, English, French, German, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian and Japanese – and which includes seven additional languages for interface and subtitles – Italian, Spanish, Arabic, Czech, Hungarian, Korean and Chinese – it implies translating dialogues and every written interaction, but also adapting some architectural and cultural elements. As a result, changes are not only auditive and written, but also cosmetic, even though they tend to remain minor.Footnote ¹⁴⁹

These changes also vary depending on the existence of a published translation of The Witcher volumes in each country. Mikołaj Szwed, in charge of localising the video games, explained: ‘If in that specific country the books had already been released, then we would have a particular translation we would want to follow … where there was no book, we had to make the decision to pick the English or posteriorly translated versions of that terminology.’Footnote ¹⁵⁰ Some players report facing adapting difficulties when they discovered the game in their own language, for example in Brazilian Portuguese, when they had already read the English version of the books – mainly because a local translation was not yet published.Footnote ¹⁵¹ Changes affect mostly onomastics as well as creatures’ names, which are numerous and decisive within the video games’ dynamics. Interestingly, even when a translation was already available, CD Projekt Red took naming liberties, including in the English version of the game:

The game developers regularly departed from Sapkowski’s story and from the published translations to create coherence within their own world-building. Despite the localising process, it also implied highlighting the Slavic atmosphere of the narrative, whereas Sapkowski’s books use an inherently strong international cultural background: ‘In computer games based on Sapkowski’s prose, the Slavic character is quite clear. Flags, emblems, and coats of arms seem to be similar to Poles and other Slavic nations. The place names sound familiar to Slavic people, and the in-game landscapes are very “Eastern European”.’Footnote ¹⁵³ This geographical and cultural orientation became more obvious in the third video game, which ‘returns to a more Slavic aesthetic, after a departure towards a more generic fantasy art style of The Witcher 2’.Footnote ¹⁵⁴ This Slavic atmosphere seems to be an inherent part of the game, expected by the players, even though it could be argued that the various transmedia adaptations of The Witcher ‘consciously showcase what creators believe to be Slav culture’.Footnote ¹⁵⁵

The story of publishing The Witcher is influenced by the creation of various adaptations, which helped highlight the interest of fantasy fans for Sapkowski’s universe. After the initial translations proposed in several European countries, ‘[the] next wave of interest in the world coincides with the success of a series of three computer games (2007–2015), followed by card games, board‑games, another series of comic books (2011–2015).’Footnote ¹⁵⁶ Today, the cycle is also developed in Poland through the role-playing game Wiedźmin: Gra Wyobraźni (2001) edited by Wydawnictwo MAG, as well as a musical (2017–18). Internationally, it is now available as a digital collectible card game, Gwent: The Witcher Card Game (2017), derived from the video games and also offered with a single-player expansion since 2022; as the role-playing game The Witcher (2018) developed by R. Talsorian Games and published by CD Projekt Red; as the board game The Witcher: Old World (2023) created by CD Projekt Red and Go On Board, both with several expansions, et cetera. Each iteration of the growing franchise sparked a new attention to the cycle and boosted the sales of the translated volumes, although with mixed results.

The relationship between books and adapted – or inspired – material is of course complex. Sapkowski himself has argued that the close association of his books with the video games, for example, has had a negative impact on the reception of his work:

For the author, it is not as much an issue of sales rather than a question of the general consideration over his creation. Nevertheless, each new adaptation brings its own potential readership, and after the release of the Netflix series ‘the new wave of audience skyrocketed Sapkowski’s The Last Wish into the tops of the bestseller lists’.Footnote ¹⁵⁸ With the games and the series, The Witcher went from a fantasy cycle, admittedly recognised and translated throughout Europe, to ‘an even stronger element of pop culture, on a global scale’.Footnote ¹⁵⁹

Although it is difficult to gain access to the actual sales figures throughout Europe, several publishers indicate a spike in book sales when new transmedia contents are produced in The Witcher extended universe, especially in 2015 with the release of the third video game, and in 2019 when the TV series debuted. It might not only be linked to the narrative contents themselves, but to the global marketing campaigns organised respectively by CD Projekt Red and Netflix to promote their creations. Advertising campaigns can have some influence over related contents, people turning to the books in anticipation for the games or the TV series, or wanting to complete their fantasy experience in literary form after enjoying the multimedia aspects of the cycle. In this transmedia concept, highlighting one aspect of the work can help promote the others, without, however, necessarily being a definite or quantifiable rule. We can also note that academic studies have grown considerably around The Witcher video games, especially since the acclaimed third opus. Most of these papers focus on the games themselves, separating them from the original texts. In Mariana Cardoso Ribeiro’s master’s thesis dedicated to storytelling and translation issues in The Witcher III: Wild Hunt, the name of Sapkowski only appears twice – and that includes one occurrence in the acknowledgements of the study.Footnote ¹⁶⁰

4.2 Various Literary Adaptations

The Witcher is now available in dozens of countries in original and translated versions, in multiple editions that adopt various divisions and presentations. In 2014, British publisher Gollancz even proposed an ebook titled Andrzej Sapkowski Sampler, containing ‘Sapkowski’s Arthurian short story “Maladie”, translated by Wiesiek Powaga as “The Malady”, as well as “The Witcher, The Edge of the World” and the first chapter of Blood of Elves, all in Danusia Stok’s version, and also the first chapter of Baptism of Fire by Gollancz’s new translator David French’.Footnote ¹⁶¹ This surprising literary mix of the author’s writings, mainly centred on The Witcher, juxtaposes fragments but failed to find its readership, even though it allowed for the discovery of a lesser-known short story. These publications all consist of Sapkowski’s texts, translated and regularly divided or reorganised; however, the success of The Witcher also launched a series of various literary and multimedia adaptations, which contributed to diversify this fantasy universe and its readership.

Adaptations are conceived as a way to develop and thus exploit the narrative created by Sapkowski. New stories and new presentations for previous versions help transform the literary cycle into a franchise, thus providing additional and related contents to readers interested in this fantasy universe. Adapting is also a way to extend its audience: people who did not read or know about the novels and short stories might discover the universe of The Witcher through games or comic books, and then might want to explore it by reading the books – although this form of crossover remains difficultly quantifiable. In return, adapting, like translating, is a way to reinforce a cycle’s popularity, by showing readers its dynamism and diversity of contents. Three main approaches have been proposed by other authors and creators to expand Sapkowski’s fantasy universe, depending on the degree of faithfulness or freedom each iteration takes regarding the books.

The first type of adaptation, not chronologically but in terms of coherence with the original narrative, is a direct transposition of Sapkowski’s texts into another artistic work. It concerns many comics adapting the short stories from The Last Wish and Sword of Destiny in various countries. Even if some of them were initiated by Polish studio CD Projekt Red to complete the franchise after the success of the video games, they remain based on Sapkowski’s texts. That is, for example, the case with the comic adaptation of ‘Ziarno prawdy’ (‘A Grain of Truth’) by Jacek Rembiś and Travis Currit, with art by Jonas Scharf and colours by José Villarrubia, published in the United States by Dark Horse Books in 2022 and subsenquently translated into several languages. Each translation of this adaptation took into account the existing published translation of the short story, in order to maintain consistency between each version – illustrated or not. These types of adaptation stay close to the original story but can bring a few nuances in the use of drawings and settings, as well as in the selected text: although the comic versions directly adapt Sapkowski’s short stories, only parts of the text, and especially dialogues, are transposed into the illustrated version. Adapting implies selecting, which in turn can influence the reception or general understanding of the story. This first approach creates for readers a pleasure of recognition, allowing them to rediscover a familiar story in a different presentation. It also presents a risk of repeatedly exploiting the same stories, in particular when the longer serialised novels published by Sapkowski prove more difficult to adapt into illustrated or animated versions. As a result, it is usually the first two books published in The Witcher universe, and more rarely parts of Sezon burz (Season of Storms), that are adapted into comics and animated versions.

The second adaptation approach contributing to diversifying The Witcher consists of adaptations that make important changes. It implies transforming the media form, but also the story itself to fit another publication or broadcasting pattern, as well as another audience. It is mainly the process adopted by Netflix in its extended Witcher universe, which currently includes the main TV series that debuted in 2019, two animated movies, one movie and one mini-series. The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep (2025) adapts into an animated movie the short story ‘Trochę poświęcenia’ (‘A Little Sacrifice’), which was itself conceived by Sapkowski as a rewriting of Hans Christian Andersen’s tale The Little Mermaid (1837). Netflix builds on the same artistic tradition, although the studio adopts an opposite perspective. In his first texts, Sapkowski proposed dark rewritings of traditional fairy tales, usually highlighting the characters’ ambivalence and twisting the ending to create nuanced and grim rewritings. In ‘A Little Sacrifice’, the happy ending is possible but tarnished by the compromise the mermaid eventually has to make, and by the tragic separation of Geralt and Essi, followed by her death. When adapting this complex love story for The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep, director Kang Hei Chul and writers Rae Benjamin and Mike Ostrowski reinjected hope within the narrative. The tragic ending was rewritten to propose an alternative story, different from both Andersen’s and Sapkowski’s versions, in a movie drawing from epic fantasy as well as Disney’s animated film (1989). Doing so, Netflix intends on reaching an audience not limited to The Witcher fans, but also consisting more generally in fantasy fans and in viewers who grew up with Disney’s interpretation of the classic tale. This approach allows for retellings from different perspectives, without necessarily altering the core narrative. For example, the French illustrated book Les Chroniques de Ciri (Ciri’s Chronicles, 2024) retells the story of Sapkowski’s serialised novels by only focusing on the character of Ciri: it divides the narrative to bring out the heroine’s perspective, separating it from the more complete version of The Witcher, and thus highlighting’s its Bildungsroman dimension. These new perspectives can be aimed at new readers, but they mostly address people already familiar with Sapkowski’s work, whose reading experience can be enhanced. It is also a way to insist on how the cycle resonates with larger issues, so that the perspectives developed throughout the story can echo other contexts. That is what Russian author Vladimir Vasilyev established in his parodic retelling set in a futuristic dystopian world, Ведьмак из Большого Киева (The Witcher of Grand Kiev, 2002).

Finally, the third main approach goes beyond transposition and adaptation, to develop original stories inspired by the world of The Witcher. It is, to a certain extent, the process adopted by CD Projekt Red for its video games, exploring the universe without directly following Sapkowski’s narrative. Regularly, new tales and short stories have been published by various authors. The Polish collection Opowieści ze świata Wiedźmina (Tales from the World of the Witcher, 2013) consists in eight original short stories by Ukrainian and Russian authors – including Vladimir Vasilyev – in a literary project initiated by translators Wojtek Sedeńka and Paweł Laudański and published by Solaris. To this day, it remains untranslated and unpublished outside of Poland, just like the collection Wiedźmin. Szpony i kły (The Witcher: Claws and Fangs, 2016): this tribute to Sapkowski’s work, initiated by Marcin Zwierzchowski after a literary contest by Nowa Fantastyka magazine, includes eleven original short stories inspired by The Witcher. However, this publication was heavily criticised, not for the quality of its texts, but because the book itself gave the readership the false impression that it was written by Andrzej Sapkowski: his name appears clearly on the cover, unlike the names of the contributors, even though the author was not directly involved in this edition.Footnote ¹⁶² The goal of these creations is to propose more stories within a well-known and well-loved fantasy universe. Usually, artists remain close to the world depicted by Sapkowski but develop details or aspects of the narrative that the author left out: in the illustrated Manuel du Sorceleur (Witcher’s Manual, 2023), Alain T. Puysségur proposes a biographical volume, such as the one a witcher could have written to help new recruits. Other examples take more liberty with the original material, diversifying not only the stories but also the context: the manga The Witcher: Ronin (2022), created by Rafat Jaki and illustrated by Hataya, transposes characters and patterns from Sapkowski’s medievalist universe into an Edo-period Japanese world. Geralt is not only a witcher, he becomes a ronin, a masterless samurai, in a reorientation that transforms the context but maintains the character’s fighting ability and social rejection. This process expands stories and characters from The Witcher, although these creations are rarely considered canonical within the narrative. Just like fan fictions, these texts evidence a large enthusiasm for Sapkowski’s creation and an appetite for more stories.

Alongside literary and artistic creations inspired by Sapkowski’s texts, CD Projekt Red also develops its own rewritings and adaptations, including diverse literary productions – besides books and wikis, created by the studio or by fans, to detail the characters, creatures and quests that appear in the video games. It notably includes a cookery book, The Witcher Official Cookbook: Provisions, Fare, and Culinary Tales from Travels across the Continent (2023), with original recipes inspired by numerous countries pictured in the cycle. Even if this edition is closer to the video games, it broadens Sapkowski’s world-building while remaining coherent with his stories, as evidenced by the fact that the author wrote the book’s preface. Following this derivative production, the Polish studio also developed an illustrated children’s book, The Little Witcher (2025), illustrated in light pastel colours by Giada Carboni. The book distances itself with the original narrative as it transposes the childhood of Ciri into short and funny adventures, thus concealing the trauma of the heroine’s youth. It gives another take on her past and her relationship with Geralt, possibly reorienting the reader’s interpretation of the rest of the cycle. All these writers and creators translate the fantasy world of The Witcher into their own media, adding their interpretation and hopes for the story. CD Projekt Red’s games and Netflix’s series are just a few examples, among the most widely diffused, of interpretations and original creations based on Sapkowski’s stories, proving how much The Witcher has partly grown beyond its author.

4.3 Questioning Genre Barriers in Fiction

While another adventure of Geralt, created by Sapkowski in Rozdroże kruków, was translated and marketed all over the world for a simultaneous publishing in September–October 2025, many other Witcher projects keep being proposed to an ever-growing audience: Netflix’s TV series is still in production for its fifth season, although the studio seems to have revised its ambitions downwards regarding the fantasy franchise; CD Projekt Red’s fourth opus, centred on Ciri and launching a new trilogy, is gaining recognition and should allow the studio to develop other games and spin-offs; comics adaptations are regularly published and, of course, new translations keep being proposed in various languages. The franchise is recognised worldwide and Sapkowski is considered one of the most important fantasy writers of our time. The only problem is that this international and transmedia recognition remains circumscribed to speculative fiction, and more specifically to the fantasy genre. While this still is a considerable literary achievement, it implies a limit set on the reachable audience of The Witcher stories, despite their multiplicity and artistic diversity. Over the course of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first, only a few speculative fiction authors have reached the glass ceiling imposed on the genre, and even fewer have managed to break it. Among them appear H. G. Wells, H. P. Lovecraft and J. R. R. Tolkien, although their acknowledgement outside the traditional definition of classic literature strongly varies from one country to the next and, we might argue, from one reader to the next. Transmedia franchises and adaptations have regularly helped question the division of authors and literary works into ‘non-genre fiction’ and ‘genre fiction’, without absolutely erasing the barrier.

This distinction would not be problematic in itself if genre fiction was not regularly deemed inferior because of its attachment to non-realistic tropes. The study of The Witcher’s international translations, among other examples, is a reminder that fantasy is not always as valued as non-genre fiction, and that its specificities can be interpreted as expendable. For some authors, the very concept of fantasy has been questioned: when publishing A Song of Ice and Fire (since 1996) and promoting its subsequent TV adaptation Game of Thrones (2011–19), George R. R. Martin has repeatedly explained wanting to write fantasy for people who did not like fantasy – or, maybe, for people who did not know it well enough and built their judgement on a stereotypical view of the genre. The idea is to make fantasy available to a wider audience, including readers who would not at first glance be interested in the genre. Ultimately, it would imply breaking down the barriers separating genre and non-genre fiction, both in editorial markets and in readers’ opinions.

The works of Andrzej Sapkowski and their publishing process take part in this long questioning: since 2024 in France, for the first time in the history of The Witcher, the cycle is being published by a non-genre fiction publisher. Historically, Sapkowski’s texts have been translated and edited by the publisher Bragelonne, specialised in speculative fiction since its creation in 2000. Nevertheless, since 2022, this publisher has belonged to a larger media corporation, Hachette, which besides a structural reorganisation, created the possibility for diversified editorial cooperation: another French publisher from the same corporation, JC Lattès, was approached to begin publishing The Witcher in a non-genre fiction collection, thus existing alongside the fantasy-oriented editions proposed by Bragelonne. The editorial project is not to separate The Witcher from the fantasy genre, but to complete this initial literary proposition with another one, created for people who do not traditionally read fantasy. Once again, the clear aim is to increase the number of readers of the cycle, but also to slowly question the genre barrier in literary fiction. The first collection of short stories was published in 2024 in JC Lattès’ collection ‘Littérature étrangère’ (‘Foreign Literature’) under the usual title, Le sorceleur: Le dernier vœu (The Witcher: The Last Wish), with the exception that publisher JC Lattès adopted a complete French translation of the title, whereas Bragelonne switched a few years ago to a bilingual The Witcher: Le dernier vœu in order to highlight the affiliation of the cycle with the transmedia franchise. No other volumes of the cycle have currently been published in this new collection.

This non-genre fiction edition implies a different approach when it comes to choosing the cover, in order to distance the story from its traditional fantasy association. On the cover of the first book, no fighting witcher nor supernatural creature appears, but a close-up of an antler. JC Lattès’ catalogue includes an important number of historical novels, and this simple design might be a way to orient the reader towards nature, hunting or a medievalist context. The text itself is strictly the same as Bragelonne’s previous editions: the translation has not been edited, and the work of the translator is recognised in the book. Indeed, on the inside back cover appears a short biography of Sapkowski, followed below by a similar presentation of translator Laurence Dyèvre, who worked on the first volume in 2003. In other publications of The Witcher, although the names of the translators are of course mentioned in the first pages, they are rarely acknowledged alongside the author, with details about their life and career. However, while JC Lattès’ edition indicates that this translation has been revised, following the process launched by Bragelonne, the name of the second translator who revised the text, Lydia Cantin-Waleryszak, is only mentioned on the left inside page with the details and rights information. In this edition, a specific care is thus given to the French version of the text. Double publishing, in a fantasy collection as well as in a non-genre fiction collection of foreign literature, is conceived as a way to double the chances for the book to be discovered by various readers. Nevertheless, one limit remains: since the name of Sapkowski and the title Le sorceleur (The Witcher) are closely associated with speculative fiction, several generalist bookstores have set JC Lattès’ copies in their ‘Genre Fiction’ sections.Footnote ¹⁶³ In many cases, the nature and traditional positioning of the publisher seems to matter less than the already established classification of The Witcher as a fantasy cycle. As this publishing experience has just begun, with the first books being proposed in a non-genre fiction edition in one specific country, one might wonder if and how the genre barrier associated with Sapkowski’s work will recede.

Legitimising genre fiction, especially fantasy, is thus a long and uncertain process. The author himself, supported by his editorial teams all over Europe, plays a part in it. For example, fans of The Witcher have detailed the universe through wikis, creating timelines for the books’ events, family trees for its main characters, et cetera, and Sapkowski himself sometimes reinforces this collective work: ‘While Sapkowski has given his blessing to a map created by Stanislas Komárek, the Czech translator of his works … more recently Marcin Wereszczyński of the University of Warsaw created a detailed map as part of an atlas project funded by the Polish government.’Footnote ¹⁶⁴ Various atlas and background literary support are created in many countries, thus highlighting the richness of the fantasy universe created by Sapkowski and a need to give it a more accessible structure. Although the author can take an active part in this process, and has regularly done so, eventually the legitimising process erasing the genre barrier rests on the readers’ appropriation of his literary material. Their engagement with The Witcher through its different iterations and the global development of extended contents highlight the importance of the cycle in pop culture, and slowly contribute to its larger recognition. Simultaneously, academic studies have grown around The Witcher, mainly as a transmedia franchise, but these studies also necessarily include the original and literary versions of the story. As the first publication of ‘Wiedźmin’ is now forty years old, various scholarly and editorial plans worldwide propose to analyse Sapkowski’s works, as another sign of its literary interest. If Poland has long led scholarship on The Witcher, the country’s academics are now followed by multiple international projects that prolong the many master’s and doctoral theses already developed: in the United Kingdom, André Cowen is editing a collective ‘Companion’ volume, gathering researchers from many fields and from all over the world around The Witcher, et cetera. Diversification around the cycle also includes academic studies, which slowly contribute to transmitting and legitimising the fantasy genre.