Abstract
Translators not only create new words or play a role in the domestication of foreign expressions, they also act at a higher level through the introduction of new genres, concepts, poetic forms and stylistic devices into the target culture. When considering translation as a communication process, the analysis must take into account the translator's working conditions.
Among other things it is important to examine the motives writers had to become translators (or vice versa) at some point in their lives, and if and to what extent their literary works were influenced by their translation work, and, last but not least, the external conditions in which their work developed, etc. The theoretical framework of this paper is based on the approach of Czech structuralism and includes an analysis of interviews with the protagonists of literary translation of the second half of the twentieth century as well as a study of the memoires and autobiographies published recently in the Czech Republic.
This paper emphasises the importance of translation activity not only for intercultural relationships between the Czech Republic and Spain and their linguistic communities but also for the analysis of various aspects of the target culture's history.