Abstract
The paper traces the development of Langston Hughes's image as a writer in the Czech culture from the late 1920s up to the present in comparison to the critical assessment of his work in the source culture. Our analysis reveals that both the selection of texts for translation and the interpretations in paratexts have been strongly influenced by the general sociopolitical context of the target culture and the transformations of this context during the given period.
This is particularly true of the communist era, especially the early 1950s and 1970s, when mainly those texts were translated that could be misused for support and justification of the governing regime's ideology, regardless of their literary value, which inevitably resulted in an unacceptable deformation of Hughes's image.