A Czech translation of Holy Scripture "for the common folk": František Polášek's New Testament, 1791/2
Abstract
The article deals with an almost unknown text of the New Testament from the period of the early Czech national revival. Its author, František Polášek (1757-1818), was a professor at the University of Olomouc, he also worked as a rural priest for many years and was one of Josef Dobrovský's closest Moravian friends.
Based on a comparative analysis, the article shows a number of peculiarities of Polášek's translation in contrast to the official Czech biblical text (the so-called Imperial Bible). Most of them are systemic changes, demonstrating considerable modernization in language and style, simplification of constructions and removal of many "semitizing" structures.
Within the tradition of the Czech biblical translation, this is a completely unique work, which (in the interest of conveying the New Testament text to the "ordinary man") implemented a number of translation and stylistic solutions beginning to penetrate Czech mainstream biblical translations only after the turn of the 20th century.