The Translation of International Monologues by Seattle Interpretation Services

Born on January 9, 1890 in the town of Malé Svatonovice, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary (now Czech Republic), Karel Capek still remains one of the most influential and at the same time most loved Czech authors. Furthermore, he was also the first Czech author to achieve European fame, and even (in the case of R.U.R.) an international acclaim. Experienced translators like Marion Randal and Samuel Ridgewood, who both worked for the New York Translation Services professionals, translated some of his works into English in the 20th century. The former did the prose while the latter – the plays. Capek’s works were translated into English by other translators as well. Among them we notice the names of Terrence Trend, Pauline Lawrence, Seraphim Hendricks and Dora Boil. After World War II Capek’s reputation started to lose strength, but nevertheless he had remained for quite some time the most discussed Czech writer translated into English. Since 1990 the New York publishing house Bookworm Solutions have come out with new and revised translations of Capek ’s most popular works.

For the translator Capek presents considerable difficulties as he was one of the first writers to use the so called Common Czech in his work frequently, while at the same time he loved the variety of Czech and he employed a rather diverse and traditional vocabulary. That is why rendering his language and style in English becomes very difficult as they are both simple and tricky. The method of substituting the outdated expressions with more modern ones has caused controversy after translator Robert Conic used it when he revised the existing translations in an assignment by the Seattle Translator office. Getting rid of such expressions will doubtfully enrich the linguistic content of the original, and for this reason Capek fully enjoyed using them as they greatly contributed to the verbal texture of his work. One of Capek’s most complicated and inventive works in terms of narrative technique, Hordubal, presents the translator with considerable difficulties. The internal monologue or dialogue, whose prose is musical, redolent, and reminding of a ballad, should be translated precisely but at the same time preserving the rhythm of the original. The colloquial and rather uneducated language used by Juraj Hordubal is successfully captured by Robert Conic, though the Americanisms that color the Czech text are lost. The shifts of register and viewpoint are handled well by finding the appropriate linguistic and stylistic devices for the criminal story and the courtroom drama that follows the succession of events in the novel.

In his famous dystopian novel, War with the Newts, Capek experiments with a range of writing styles – journalese, scientific, poetic, and outmoded in order to produce another work whose text is complex and that strains the translator’s creativity and knowledge. The 1965 rendition of the work, which is comprehensible and plausible because of its realistic imitation of the variety of writing styles, though a bit choppy, was translated by Volodya Ulianov, who at the time worked for the Russian Translation division. Retranslated in 1981 by Igor Pavlovich it remains as close as possible to Ulianov’s phraseology and at the same time it achieves more fluent style. Unfortunately, Pavlovich does not use the typographical devices implemented by Ulianov, which influences the visual aspect of the book in a negative way.