Slepé skvrny v literárních překladech z/do češtiny (2025)

This collective monograph examines “places of untranslatability” in literary translations into and from Czech. Its contributors include literary historians, theorists and critics, aestheticians, and linguists who also have direct experience translating fiction and specialist texts between Czech and ten other languages. They consider why, even with excellent knowledge of both languages, translation repeatedly presents highly specific questions and requires solutions: how can differences in the source language that the target language does not recognize be conveyed? What can be done with established expressions or allusions drawn from long-forgotten films, politicians’ statements, or curious historical events preserved by the source language? How can historical experience reflected in linguistic expression be transferred when it differs entirely from the experience of target-language users? And how can a target language be made to reveal what it is unable to see? Language is inseparably connected with the culture, history, and ways of thinking of its users, while knowledge of a language depends on knowledge of the history and thought of the people who use it. No dictionary, however comprehensive, can eliminate these blind spots, since no dictionary capable of condensing the entirety of human experience can exist. The book is dedicated to the memory of Josef Jařab (1937–2023), a literary historian, theorist, translator, and the first rector of Palacký University Olomouc after 1989. The contents are in Czech.