TRADITION VERSUS

MODERNITY
FROM THE CLASSIC PERIOD OF THE PRAGUE
SCHOOL TO TRANSLATION STUDIES
AT THE BEGINNING OF THE 21ST CENTURY

Jana Králová, Zuzana Jettmarová et al.

Redakční rada:
prof. PhDr. Ivan Hlaváček, CSc. (předseda); prof. PhDr. Zdeněk Beneš, CSc.;
doc. PhDr. Jiří Buriánek, CSc.; prof. PhDr. Martin Hilský, CSc.;
prof. PhDr. Anna Housková, CSc.; dr. Albert Kubišta;
prof. PhDr. Karel Kučera, CSc.; prof. PhDr. Ing. Jan Royt

Publikace je součástí řešení výzkumného záměru MSM – 0021620825, Jazyk jako lidská činnost, její produkt a faktor,
jehož nositelem je Filozofická fakulta Univerzity Karlovy v Praze.

This title is published within the framework of the institutional research plan MSM 0021620825 Language as
human activity, as its product and factor, whose recipient is the Faculty of Arts of the Charles University in Prague.

Lektorovali:
doc. PhDr. Jiří Josek
prof. PhDr. Bohuslav Mánek, CSc.

Opera Facultatis philosophicae Universitatis Carolinae Pragensis

vol. VII

Jana Králová, Zuzana Jettmarová et al.:

Tradition versus Modernity: from the Classic Period of the Prague School
to Translation Studies at the Beginning of the 21st Century

Vydala Univerzita Karlova v Praze, Filozofická fakulta, nám. Jana Palacha 2, Praha 1
a vydavatelství TOGGA, spol. s r. o., Volutová 2524, Praha 5

© Univerzita Karlova v Praze, Filozofická fakulta, 2008

© TOGGA, 2008
Překlady: Robert Russell, Patrick Corness
Technická redakce: Ondřej Pittauer
Obálka a typografie: Jana Vahalíková
Sazba z písma Fedra: Dušan Neumahr
Jazyková korektura: Robert Russell
Tisk: Tiskárny Havlíčkův Brod, a. s.
Vydání první, Praha 2008
ISBN 978-80-7308-221-5 (Univerzita Karlova v Praze)
ISBN 978-80-903589-2-8 (TOGGA)
CONTENTS

9 Introduction

15 Zuzana Jettmarová: Czech and Slovak Translation Theories:

the Lesser-known Tradition
47 Jiří Levý: The Process of Creation of a Work of Literature and Its
Reception
89 Jana Králová: Proper Names in Inter-cultural Communication:
from Prescription to Description
101 Jana Hoffmannová: The Reproduction of One’s Own Speech
or the Speech of Others: from L. Doležel to Contemporary
Communication and Corpus Research
125 Simona Kolmanová: Czech Plagiaries and Adaptations
of Hungarian Literature from the 1860s: a Hungarian Studies
Perspective on the Translation Theory of Jiří Levý
137 Miloslav Uličný: Translations of Shakespeare’s Sonnets into
Czech and Spanish
149 Martina Bečvářová: Translations of Euclid’s Elements
175 Nike Kocijančič Pokorn: (Post)Communist Censorship
in Translation: Religion as a Taboo

187 Authors
191 Name Index

7
INTRODUCTION

Recent publications in the field of translation studies as well as formal

and informal discussion at international conferences reveal a widespread
lack of awareness outside the former Czechoslovakia of the methodologi-
cal background and the achievements of Czech and Slovak translation
theory, represented mainly by the pioneering work of Jiří Levý and Anton
Popovič. Consequently, introductory textbooks providing an overview of
the field of translation studies, some of which have enjoyed wide circula-
tion, for example Gentzler (1993/2001), Munday (2001), or Valero Garcés
(1995: 5), still do not do justice to this work, in historiographic or in theo-
retical terms. The last-named author refers to Levý as a member of the
Leipzig School in the former East Germany.
The publication of the present volume is motivated firstly by the need
to enhance awareness of the Czech and Slovak contribution to translation
studies and secondly by the occasion of a number of important anniver-
saries occurring in 2006–2007, namely the 80th anniversary of the foun-
dation of the Prague Linguistic Circle, the 40th anniversary of Jiří Levý’s
death and the 50th anniversary of the publication of Levý’s Czech Theories
of Translation (1957), which represents the first comprehensive mapping
of Czech literary translation and its theoretical paradigm, providing an
account of the thinking behind it in an environment where the needs
and practice of translation, on institutional, group and individual levels,
were so firmly embedded in the culture.
The handful of publications by Czech and Slovak scholars available
in English or other languages with a wide readership in the western
world are the source of certain misrepresentations circulating as memes
in our discipline. Historiographic anthologies of writings on translation
tend to present Levý’s Translation as a Decision Process (1967) or Will Translation
Theory be of Use to Translators (1965), Jakobson’s On Linguistic Aspects of Transla-
tion (1959) or his Linguistics and Poetics (1960) as representatives of a now
outdated tradition.
No wonder then that such a dearth of literature in widely read lan-
guages, not only on Translation Studies but on Czech (and Slovak) struc-

9
 TRADITION VERSUS MODERNITY

turalism in general, has given rise to a widespread belief in western

humanities circles identifying structuralism with its French branch
(Striedter 2001: 102), and the famous Saussurean and Russian formal-
ist precursors. Moreover, there is no general awareness of the fact that
Czech structuralism, developed for the whole field of art and thus termed
structuralist aesthetics, formed a unified linguistic and literary theory
and methodology, integrated within a general analysis of art, adopting
a perspective of the socio-cultural embeddedness of art. Misunderstand-
ings then arise from misinterpretations of Levý, Popovič and Miko (cf.
especially Gentzler 1993/2001, Munday 2001), who appear consigned to
the stereotyped old label of formalism narrowed down to linguistic style
and de-automatization, combined with the attribute of the static and
metaphysical concept of linguistic equivalence that was widespread in
other countries.
On the other hand, what remains largely ignored is the fact that their
theories and methodologies focused on phenomenology and reception,
as well as having a socio-cultural basis, thanks to such underpinnings of
the Classical Prague School (1920s–1940s) as Husserl and Durkheim. This
background explains why Czech structuralists, already in the Classical
Period, perceived translation as an integral component of the receiving
culture and addressed many issues that were to attract interest in Trans-
lation Studies only several decades later, such as the concept of language
as an integral part of social relations, the concept of the dominant, the
synchrony-diachrony relationship, the role of the receiver etc. This has
led to further misconceptions, since the Czech and Slovak theories were
interpreted through the prisms of the now criticised Polysystem School,
allegedly devoid of people, or through formal-equivalence linguistic theo-
ries of the 70s. The Czech and Slovak integrated relativistic interpretative
theory of meaning grounded in Prague reception aesthetics¹ unavoidably
slips through the fingers and escapes scholarly attention, the exceptions
being Prunč (2001) and Snell-Hornby (2006)²; thus we read in Gentzler
(1993/2001) that Levý’s relativization traces back to Quine.

1 Cf. Chvatík (1981).

2 For contacts between Prague and Vienna cf. e.g. Daneš (2005).

10
INTRODUCTION

By comparison with paradigm changes in humanities in the west,

particularly in the fields of language and literature, the overall situation
during the twentieth century in the former Czechoslovakia (and since
1993 in the Czech Republic and Slovakia) was different. The impact of the
shift towards pragmatics in western linguistics during the late 60s and
early 70s was merely a focus shift for Czech structuralism, since many
new ideas that were being discovered in western linguistics at that time
had been familiar concepts and approaches, in embryo or developed form,
since the 30s (Vaňková et al. 2005: 33). Similarly, today’s focus on social
and sociological aspects is no more than a change of emphasis, as they
have been present in Czech structuralism since its Classical Period – e.g.
in the work of Jan Mukařovský, Roman Jakobson, Vilém Mathesius and
Felix Vodička - and subsequently in Translation Studies as represented by
the Czech Jiří Levý and the Slovak Anton Popovič, the founders of Czecho-
slovak Translation Studies.
The above considerations have motivated the present volume and the
essays presented in it. Zuzana Jettmarová in her Czech and Slovak translation
theories: the lesser-known tradition establishes the role of the ideas of Levý and
Popovič in the development of Translation Studies during the latter part
of the 20th century, confronting their ideas with current methodologi-
cal conceptions and sociological ambitions. This chapter represents an
indispensable theoretical and methodological background for the inter-
pretation of the seminal study by Jiří Levý, The process of creation of a work of
literature and its reception, which in fact represents a considerably extended
version of his Translation as a Decision Process published in 1967; the former
was published in 1971, but written before Levý’s death in 1967. Although
the chapter published in 1971 had to be abridged for reasons of space,
omitting all interesting and detailed descriptions of Levý’s experiments
as well as the section on the construction of the literary character etc.,
the reader who is familiar with Translation as a Decision Process may be sur-
prised to note how far the somewhat skeletal and speculative study pub-
lished in 1967 was advanced by Levý in such a short time. However, the
major surprise may be a novel interpretation of the structuralist model
with its methodological, socio-cultural and sociological considerations,

11
 TRADITION VERSUS MODERNITY

facilitating our grasp of Levý’s methodological principles and his contri-

bution to translation theory.
The third chapter, by Jana Králová, Proper names in inter-cultural communi-
cation: from prescription to description, is based on the application of a key con-
cept of the Classical Prague School, namely the relationship in transla-
tion theory and practice between the centre of a system and its periphery.
The centre-periphery concept, recently adopted by cognitive linguistics
(Vaňková et al. 2005: 34) seems to have significance for the conceptuali-
sation and explicitation of certain translation phenomena. The fourth
chapter, by Jana Hoffmannová, The reproduction of one’s own speech or the speech
of others: from L. Doležel to contemporary communication and corpus research, offers a
contribution to current structuralist methodology by drawing on Lubomír
Doležel’s conception of style, grounded in Prague School poetics.
The subsequent chapters represent applications of the Czech struc-
turalist analytical model and concepts to empirical research in both liter-
ary and non-literary translation. Simona Kolmanová’s Czech plagiaries and
Adaptations of Hungarian literature from the 1860s: a Hungarian studies contributes
to a historical overview of Czech translation in the 19th century while
stressing the social aspect of Czech literature of that period. Miloslav
Uličný, in his Translations of Shakespeare’s Sonnets into Czech and Spanish, exam-
ines the trends in methods of translation of Shakespeare’s sonnets into
Czech, a ‘minor’ culture, comparing these with the methodological de-
velopments in the ‘major’ Spanish culture.
Martina Bečvářová presents her elaborate and comprehensive analy-
sis of non-literary translation reception in her Translation of Euclid’s Elements.
With its prominent social focus on institutional and personal interrela-
tionships and interactions her study represents a unique contribution
to the understanding of the Czech translation milieu of the 19th century.
Socio-cultural and social aspects are also the pre-eminent focus in Nike
Kocijančič Pokorn’s (Post)Communist censorship in translation: religion as a taboo.
Although this scholar is affiliated to the University of Ljubljana (Slov-
enia) and although she refers to the Manipulation School in her study
of translations of children’s literature during the communist regime in
former Yugoslavia and after its dismantling accompanied by the estab-
lishment of sovereign states and languages on its former territory, her

12
INTRODUCTION

study implicitly brings to the fore two important methodological and

theoretical aspects. Firstly, that the Czechs and Slovenes shared some
common structuralist ground, and secondly, that this ground was quite
compatible with the one established by the Manipulation School, known
for its ideological and socio-cultural dimensions.
This collective volume is therefore the first attempt to present the
above issues to international scholarship in our discipline. This could not
have been possible without the contributions by Robert Russell (Institute
of Translation Studies, Charles University, Prague), who translated the
chapter by Simona Kolmanová and revised the chapter by Nike Kocijančič
Pokorn, and by Patrick Corness (Centre for Translation Studies, Univer-
sity of Leeds, England), who translated all the other chapters from the
original Czech and revised the Introduction and the chapter by Zuzana
Jettmarová. We are also greatly indebted to Jiří Levý’s heirs for their gen-
erosity in granting their permission for the translation and publication
of Levý’s work published in 1971.

Jana Králová and Zuzana Jettmarová

Editors

References

CHVATÍK, KVĚTOSLAV. 1981. Tschechoslowakischer Strukturalismus. Theorie und Geschichte.

München: Wilhelm Fink.

DANEŠ, FRANTIŠEK. Úvahy o Mathesiově pojetí vědy, jazyka a gramatiky.

Slovo a slovesnost, 66/2005, No. 2, pp. 83–97.

GENTZLER, ERWIN. 1993/2001. Contemporary Translation Theories. London: Routledge.

JAKOBSON, ROMAN. 1959/1966. On Linguistic Aspects of Translation. In.

BROWER, R. (ed.). On Translation. Cambridge, MA: HUP/OUP, pp. 232–239.
— 1960/1978. Linguistics and Poetics. In. SEBEOK, T. (ed.). Style in Language.
London: Wiley & Sons–Cambridge MA: MIT Press, pp. 350–377.

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