Levý, Jiří: The Art of Translation. Three phases of the translator's work. Translatological analysis of Czech and German editions
Abstract
This paper compares the original version of the chapter "Tři fáze překladatelovy práce" from Czech Theorist Jiří Levý's book Umění překladu, with its German translation. The original was published 1963 in Czech; in 1969 Walter Schamschula translated it into German with the cooperation of the author.
Since the work has a strong relation to the Czech language and culture, a range of changes needed to be made in the German translation. The discrepancies can be divided into two main groups: textual and lexical.
The first group includes examples of translation problems 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 based on Czech language and culture.
There are also certain phenomena that were found too specific to be conveyed to the German readership. These specific parts have entirely different content in both languages 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 provides essential information about the translation process.