The aim of the article is to describe a phenomenon of value added and lost at the lexical and semantic level in the literary translation. The study is based on the analysis of the parallel Polish- Italian text of the drama Przed sklepem jubilera [The jeweller's shop] by Karol Wojtyła. The comparison of the original Polish text with its Italian translation made it possible to distinguish semantic nuances lost at the lexical level of the translation, while the results of the reverse operation (comparison of the target text in Italian with the source text in Polish) prove the presence of many "added" lexical elements in the final text. They are mostly multi-word combinations with varying degrees of idiomaticity, i.e. phraseological units. Traces of semantic losses as well as added elements clearly indicate a creative role of the literary translator who becomes in this way the "second author" of a text.
