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MASARYK UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF EDUCATION Department of English Language and Literature Translation Analysis of Bohumil Hrabal's Ostře sledované vlaky Bachelor Thesis Brno 2020 Supervisor: Author: Mgr. Radek Vogel, Ph. D. Vojtěch Pavliska Abstract The thesis deals with Bohumil Hrabal's novella Ostře sledované vlaky. It focuses on the translation by Edith Pargeter and examines the translation procedures that were used by the English writer. The theoretical part discusses various translation methods and problems that frequently occur in translation. The practical part analyses the translated text and attempts to determine which translation methods were used more frequently than the others and whether the translator managed to keep the original meaning while using several different methods. Anotace Tato bakalářská práce se zabývá novelou Bohumila Hrabala s názvem Ostře sledované vlaky. Práce se zaměřuje na překlad Edith Pargeter a zkoumá překladatelské postupy, které byly touto anglickou spisovatelkou použity. Teoretická část projednává různé překladatelské metody a problémy, které se při překladu běžně vyskytují. Praktická část analyzuje přeložený text a snaží se určit, které metody byly použity častěji a zda se překladatelce při používání těchto metod povedlo zachovat původní myšlenku. Key words Translation, translation methods, analysis, novella, comparison, Bohumil Hrabal Klíčová slova Překlad, překladatelské metody, analýza, novela, porovnání, Bohumil Hrabal Declaration I hereby declare that I worked on my thesis independently and that all sources mentioned and used are listed in the list of references. Prohlášení Prohlašuji, že jsem bakalářskou práci vypracoval samostatně, s využitím pouze citovaných literárních pramenů a zdrojů uvedených v seznamu literatury v souladu s Disciplinárním řádem pro studenty Pedagogické fakulty Masarykovy univerzity a se zákonem č. 121/2000 Sb., o právu autorském, o právech souvisejících s právem autorským a o změně některých zákonů (autorský zákon), ve znění pozdějších předpisů. Brno, duben 2020 Vojtěch Pavli ska Acknowledgement I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor Mgr. Radek Vogel, Ph.D. for his kind approach, useful advice and patience during the process of writing. Table of Contents 1 Introduction 7 2 The author and the translator 8 2.1 Bohumil Hrabal 8 2.2 Edith Pargeter 9 3 Translation 10 3.1 Equivalents in translation 11 3.2 Translation methods 12 3.3 Problems in translation 14 3.3.1 Cross-linguistic problems 14 3.3.2 Grammatical problems 15 3.3.3 Cultural problems 17 4 Practical part 19 4.1 Specification 19 4.2. Amplification 22 4.3 Transposition 24 4.4 Reordering 28 4.5 Modulation 32 4.6 Explicitation 35 4.7 Equivalence 37 4.8 Caique 39 5 Conclusions 41 List of references 42 1 Introduction The thesis deals with a translation of Ostře sledované vlaky, which is a very well-known novella about a young man Miloš Hrma, who works at a train station during the WWII. Hrabal's book was published in 1965 and was adapted into an Oscar-winning film by Jiří Menzel only a year after its publication. I have known that the topic of my thesis would involve working with translation since the beginning of my studies as I find it fascinating. However, I was not certain how to approach my thesis and which book or film I would like to focus on. It was thanks to my supervisor, who suggested analysing a translation of a Czech book, that I have chosen Hrabal's novella. We are overwhelmed with Czech translations of English texts, which is why I decided to gain different experience. I had not encountered many English translations of Czech texts before choosing this topic, which made me curious and full of expectations. There are a few Czech writers that I was considering, but I finally decided to examine Hrabal's work for his significance in Czech literature as well as for his style of writing. The thesis is divided into a theoretical and a practical part. The theoretical part informs about the writer and the translator of the work. It talks about various translation methods that were defined by different linguists and about obstacles to a perfect translation. I studied several books which I found interesting and helpful, especially the works of Newmark and Knittlová. The practical part then analyzes methods that were used by the translator and shows examples, which are examined individually. The thesis studies these instances and justifies the translation or attempts to give better suggestions. The methods that are present in the thesis were chosen based on their recurrence and curiosity. The main goal is to compare the texts and attempt to determine whether the adaption keeps the original meaning. The thesis should also conclude which translation methods were used more frequently and whether the choice of these methods was optional or forced by differences between the Czech and English language. 7 2 The author and the translator 2.1 Bohumil Hrabal Bohumil Hrabal was born as Bohumil František Kilián on 28 March 1914 in Brno- Zidenice, which was then part of Austria-Hungary, today's Czech Republic. Hrabal spent a reasonable amount of time with his grandparents in the early years of his life as they took care of him. However, Marie, Hrabal's mother, married František Hrabal, who later became the manager of a brewery in Nymburk. He accepted Bohumil and treated him as well as his own son Slávek, who was born in 1917. The family moved to Nymburk in 1919. Hrabal attended a local primary school and a grammar school after that. He was not a very successful pupil and struggled throughout his student life. However, he managed to graduate from his law studies in Prague in 1946, after having to wait for 6 years for the school to reopen as it had been shut down because of the Nazi occupation. Even though he studied to become a lawyer, he worked as an industrial worker, a waiter, and a dispatcher in Kostomlaty, which is reflected in his Ostře sledované vlaky (Closely Observed Trains). He was also a travelling salesman, a paper packer and a stagehand at the S. K. Neumann Theatre in Prague ("Bohumil Hrabal," n.d.). Hrabal worked as a writer from 1963 until his tragical death in 1997 when he fell out of a window. He started to create poetry in his university days. His first collection of lyrical poetry Ztracená ulička was withdrawn because of the communist regime. Some of his verses that were written before the war and influenced by surrealism were only published in 1991 in collections Básnění and Židovský svícen. Hrabal's first published work was Hovory lidí in 1956, which was a supplement in the annual Zprávy spolku českých bibliofilii. His collection of stories Skřivánek na niti was nearly Hrabal's first published book, however, it was dismissed by the communist regime once again. The Czech author finally managed to publish his own book Perlička na dně in 1963, being 49 years old. The book received an immediate acknowledgement, which led to him producing another book Pábitelé only a year later. Hrabal's original style of narrating that is used in these books was developed even more in his following work Taneční hodiny pro starší a pokročilé, where his uncle Pepin talks about his life experience in one sentence. One year after that, Hrabal published Ostře sledované vlaky ("Bohumil Hrabal," 2006). Hrabal's work is typical of using colloquial Czech, long sentences, irony, humour, and switching between philosophical thoughts and cultural wisdoms or propositions. He had a great 8 influence not only on Czech literature, but also on theatre and film production in the 20 century. However, Hrabal was not allowed to publish any of his works for several years after the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. Even though he was unable to publish his books, Hrabal wrote some of his famous novels during this period, e.g., Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále and Postřižiny. The writer made a self-critical interview with magazine Tvorba in 1975, which slightly improved his situation and enabled him to publish some of the works ("Bohumil Hrabal," 2020). 2.2 Edith Pargeter Edith Pargeter was an English writer and translator, who was born on 28 September 1913 in Horsehey, England. She was the youngest in the family as she had an older sister Margaret and an older brother Ellis, whose name she used as her penname later in her writing career. Her father, Edmund Valentine Pargeter, worked as a clerk, nonetheless, it was the mother who had a major influence on their children. They were surrounded by music and encouraged to read since their early childhood. Pargeter attended school in Dawley. She was a talented writer from her early days and won first prize for the Wellington area NSPCA writing with her essay Kindness to Animals. The writer then attended Coalbrookdale High School for Girls, where she passed the Oxford local examination and a year later, in 1931, the Oxford Higher examination (Wolfe, 2010). Pargeter worked as a chemist's assistant at Dawnley, where she was learning about medicines, using the acquired knowledge in her future writing career. Her first novel Hortensius, Friend of Nero was published in 1936, but it was not very successful, which cannot be said about the upcoming book The City Lies Foursquare as it received positive acknowledgement. Pargeter worked in administrative for Women's Royal Navy Service in Liverpool during the Second World War and was awarded with the British Empire Medal for her devotion. She kept publishing new books even during the war, Ordinary People (1941) and She Goes to War (1942). The writer is well known for her famous characters Sergeant George Felse, who first appeared in Fallen Into the Pit in 1951, and Brother Cadfael, whose introduction did not come before 1977 in A Morbid Taste for Bones.

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