Abstrakt
The Old Czech Legend of Saint Catherine, patron of scholars, first published after its discovery in the 19th century, was translated four times into the New Czech. Its translations already became the basis of theoretical translatological reflections.
The translation by Pelán was rightly highlighted. Attention was also given to two other transfers, an archaizing by Hrabák (who was subject of criticism already by Vašica) and a poetizing by Bednář.
This talk aims to revive the debate on the meaning of translating Old Czech works into New Czech, the conclusions of which seem to be somewhat rigid and mechanically repeated, taking into account the changing modes of art reception in the contemporary world, and to use the inspiration given by new papers on the transfer of older Czech works into New Czech. It may not be unnecessary to draw attention to the problem of some of Pelán's translation principles and his partial solutions, in contrast to his predecessors'.
Regarding the details concerning the sound realization of verse, verse semantics, morphological and lexical elements, as well as the substitution of individual means in translation, we will come to the general possibilities of evaluating the translation of the Old Czech text and determine the hierarchy of individual criteria.