Abstrakt
The structuralist sociosemiotic theories of translation originated in the 1950s (Czechia) and 1960s (Slovakia) and were based on domestic structuralisms. Although there was some bilateral communication across the East-West frontier before 1989, most Czech and Slovak works were unaccessible for linguistic reasons in the West, while Czechoslovak scholars were restricted by political ideology based on Marx-Leninism which penetrated philosophy and methodology.
However, the structuralist roots that were established before the communist régime and survived it served not only as a sound backgroung for the development of translation studies but were also quite ahead of the Western turns in humanities arriving later on.