The evolution of The Art of Translation by Jiří Levý: a contrastive analysis of the Czech original and its German translation
Abstract
This paper deals with the evolution of the book The Art of Translation (Umění překladu), written by the most famous Czech translation theorist: Jiří Levý. The Czech original was published in 1963; in 1969 Walter Schamschula translated it into German, with the cooperation of the author.
Since Levý added new portions to the German version during the translation process, it was the German language edition that became the source text for translations of Levý's work into Spanish and Portuguese. Since the text has a strong relationship to the Czech language and culture, a range of changes needed to be made in the German translation.
This paper presents the differences between the Czech version from 1963, the 1969 German translation, and its 1983 back-translation into Czech by Karel Hausenblas. The research has been informed by personal interviews conducted with Walter Schamschula, who commented on the translation process, answered questions about creative decisions, his cooperation with the author, as well as problems and shifts in the translation.
The discrepancies between the Czech original and its German translation can be divided into two main groups: textual and lexical. The first group includes examples of translation challenges typical for Czech translations that could be replaced by analogous examples in German translations.
Another important part consists of omissions and additions occurring in both versions, due to numerous irreplaceable examples that are based upon Czech language and culture. There are also certain phenomena that were found too specific to be conveyed to the German audience.
These specific parts have entirely different content in each language and therefore are included as changes on the textual level. The group of lexical differences involves particular words that were crucial to understanding the main points, yet could not be translated with one clear German equivalent.
The contrastive analysis is supported by documents from the Archives of Masaryk University in Brno that provide essential information about the evolution and translation process of the text, including examples from Levý's Czech manuscript that were altered in preparation for the German translation and is officially considered lost.