Masaryk University Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Eva Horáčková

Erdrich, Momaday and Silko in the Context of Czech Translation Master ’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Ing. Mgr. Jiří Rambousek

2010

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

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I would like to thank my supervisor for his advice and patience.

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction...…………………………………………………………………………4 2. American Literary and Cultural Context……………………………………………...5 3. The Czechs and the Indians…………………………………………………………...7 3.1. The Last of the Mohicans ……………………………………………………...…….8 3.2. The Education of Little Tree …………………………………………………….....14 4. Translation Analyses………………………………………………………………...17 4.1. N. Scott Momaday: House Made of Dawn ………………………………………...18 4.1.1. Translation of House Made of Dawn …………………………………………….21 4.2. Leslie Marmon Silko: Ceremony ………………………………………………...... 27 4.2.1. Translation of Ceremony ………………………………………………………...29 4.3. Louise Erdrich: Love Medicine …………………………………………………….34 4.3.1. Translation of Love Medicine …………………………………………………....36 5. Cultural Intersections………………………………………………………………...42 6. Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………...45 7. Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………47 8. Notes…………………………………………………………………………………50

4 1. Introduction

The Czech culture and Native Americans has since a century been in a strong connection, despite the geographical and conceptional distance dividing them. This interesting phenomenon is what underlies the following research focused on the Czech translations of House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday, Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko and Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich. The principal question of the research is whether these translations of novels by authors of Native American origin were influenced by the previous translations of fiction dealing with Indians and what place they acquired within the Czech culture. As Erdrich, Momaday and Silko were the first novelists of this kind to be translated into Czech, the comparison had to be made with works of non-Native authors. This inevitably means to deal with the problem of incomprehension of the Native American cultures, established clichés and racial context. For this reason, the position of Native American authors within the American literature will be shortly investigated. Afterwards the relationship of the Czech culture to the Indians will be treated: first in a more general cultural and literary context, then the attention will be focused on concrete translational examples that will represent the situation prevailing in the Czech culture before the translations of Erdrich, Momaday and Silko were published. After this overview, the three translations will be treated respectively. The method of the investigation is based on Peter Newmark’s recommendations on translation criticism (Newmark 1988: 186), nevertheless these were modified so that the analysis has the following structure: a brief analysis of the source text, its peculiarities, narrative mode and story structure, considering attentively cultural words and colloquiality. On the basis of these findings, the translation itself is examined, the cultural words and colloquiality being again stressed for it is often in these cases that the translator’s individual tendencies can be best observed. The translation analyses are accompanied by excerpts from the source and target texts to demonstrate some typical phenomena. No effort was made to assess the quality of the translations in either a negative or positive way: the intention was to maintain neutrality and stick to plain observation of the translational behavior. Finally, the wider cultural context, into which the translations of House Made of Dawn , Ceremony and Love Medicine were introduced, will be considered, as well as the

5 reception the translations received. Then the translations in question will be treated in terms of creating a translational sub-culture and of their place within the Czech literary translation of works on Native Americans.

2. American Literary and Cultural Context

The fate of Native Americans in the American literature is quite well known: although being the aboriginal inhabitants of the continent, their presence in American fiction was more than scarce. This scarceness permitted to shape many erroneous views that created powerful stereotypes hard to be eradicated. As Gretchen M. Bataille summarizes it, “[t]he stereotype of the Indian, usually male, has long been a shadow figure in American literature. Whether invisible in Hawthorne’s forests, a savage in Cooper’s frontier, or a noble red man evoked by Lawrence, the Indian character in fiction was one readers believed they ‘knew’ because popular myths had been made real by constant repetition” (1993: 61). To this admixture, an image provided by the Western genre should be added to complete the position the Indian character held in the American literary and movie culture: an uncivilized being inferior to the majority Americans altering with a silent hero whose undeniable fate is to die. This image might not have been changed without the Native people themselves taking the initiative. Nonetheless, the evolution of literature by Native Americans was very slow, which is not surprising if the historical and social context is regarded: “there were less than a dozen novels published by American Indians prior to 1968” (Bataille 1993: 61). The first of them was The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta by John Rollin Ridge from 1854. Several other novels succeeded, notably those of D’Arcy McNickle or Mourning Dove, to cite the most sonorous names, in the 1920s and 1930s (Bataille 1993: 61). The real breakthrough came with N. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn in 1968. The publication of this work and the acknowledgment of the Pulitzer Prize to it boosted the rise of Native American novels that “challeng[ed] old stereotypes and forc[ed] a revolution in the image of American Indians in American literature” which is since then “[i]ncreasingly […] reflecting the heterogeneous society of America and challenging easy assumptions about the past” (Bataille 1993: 61). The most prominent authors of the period between Momaday and Erdrich, are, as mentioned by Bataille, Paula Gunn Allen, Robert Conley, Michael Dorris, Louise

6 Erdrich, Janet Campbell Hale, Linda Hogan, Thomas King, Louis Owens, Leslie Marmon Silko, Martin Cruz Smith, Gerald Vizenor, Anna Lee Walters, and James Welch. (1993: 62) If a list of the most influencial works is wanted, Robert Silberman suggests that “D’Arcy McNickle’s The Surrounded , N. Scott Momaday’s The House Made of Dawn , Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony , James Welch’s Winter in the Blood and The Death of Jim Loney […] are central texts in Native American literature, bearing a striking family resemblance to one another”, Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich being in an immediate relationship with them (Silberman 1993: 101). Not only the Native American literature is challenging the old stereotypes but it is largely perceived as the voice of the Indian peoples in the political and social sense. Even though the Indians constiture in fact hundreds of distinct nations, the historical situation has forced them to act cooperatively. This is well reflected by Simon J. Ortiz who suggests “that Indian literature is developing a character of nationalism”, which character was raised by the Indian writers’ acknowledgement “of a responsibility to advocate for their people’s self-government, sovereignty, and control of land and natural resources; and to look also at racism, political and economic oppression, sexism, supremacism, and the needless and wasteful exploitation of land and people” (Ortiz 1981: 12). This feature of a certain pan-Indianness can be well observed in the novels themselves: both Momaday and Silko are mixing various tribes’ heritage, Jemez, Kiowa and Navajo for the former, Laguna and Navajo for the latter. The authors seem to be no more concerned with transmitting a particular national tradition but they concentrate on more universal messages of survival of the Native Americans as well as the whole modern world population. The just mentioned thematic of the nowadays society living conditions, with the corrupted values attached to it, correlates well with the postmodern mode of writing, if one defines this as, among other features, a fractured form of narrative and a complicated position of the “heroes”. On this subject, Gerald Vizenor notes that “[t]he postmodern opened in tribal imagination; oral cultures have never been without a postmodern condition that enlivens stories and ceremonies, or without trickster signatures and discourse on narrative chance – a comic utterance and adventure to be heard or read” (1989/1993: x). The Native American literature of the second half of the 20 th century can be thus regarded as a fusion of the ancient traditions and views with the nowadays globalized world issues and attitudes.

7 It is in this canon the three novels focused on here are incorporated. It should be noted that all of them are much analyzed and cited, especially House Made of Dawn and Ceremony . An interesting, yet logical, fact is that they are seldom treated in a purely literary or linguistic context: being the works of Native American authors, they are much analyzed in the context of Native American issues and uneasy social condition. This is true not only for these three novels but for the Native American literature as a whole, out of which House Made of Dawn , Ceremony and Love Medicine constitute an important and remarkable, but smaller, part.

3. The Czechs and the Indians

Despite the physical and cultural distance, the Czech population of the second half of the 20 th century felt much attracted to the Native Americans. This appeal is undeniably connected with the tramping movement that emerged after the World War I and survived, though considerably less thriving, until now. The tramping phenomenon represented a means of retreat from an urban life as well as a sort of escapism from the oppressing political conditions such as World War II and the forty years of totalitarian Communist regime (Pospíšil, Sparling 2001: 76-77), worshiping the image of “the mythic America of individual freedom enjoyed amidst untouched Nature, in the world of the Wild West, among the Noble Savages“ (77). This image was most probably enhanced by and at the same time served good soil for Karl May’s novels which, along with Ernest Thompson Seton books, shaped “Czech’s image of the American outdoors” (Pospíšil, Sparling 2001: 74) as well as the image of its aboriginal inhabitants from the early childhood. It may be supposed that it was in this atmosphere that other depictions of the “Wild West” were perceived, be it such classics as James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans and other Leatherstocking novels or the whole amount of more or less fictional works on the life of the Indians. Among these, the larger part are translations from English, despite the fact that May’s Vinnetou series were renderings from German and that even several original works in Czech appeared. The variety of works where Native Americans are depicted is incredibly large. From the already mentioned The Last of the Mohicans , that was translated several times by different translators throughout the whole course of the 20 th century, works of lesser or greater literary quality can be found. Just to mention some examples: Hugh Pendexter’s

8 and Zane Grey’s adventure novels, John Tanner’s account of his life in Indian captivity, Forrest Carter’s catching tales, or translations of rather historical works like that of Dee Brown. Apparently, Czech readers did not care about controversies some of the works sparked in the American public, as well as academic, debate, as will be indicated below. The Czech audience largely either accepted the works as pure adventure reading or sought the information on Indians in the light of the Noble Savage concept. It is this atmosphere the three modern novels were introduced into. They were the first novels undoubtedly written by Native American authors to be translated into Czech, for all the previous works dealing with American Indians were authored by writers who viewed them from the outside or merely pretended to belong to the Natives by their origin, as Forrest Carter did. To cast some light on the situation in the Czech translation of this literature, two significant examples will be presented: James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans , as the most acknowledged “classic” novel on the early American history with the presence of Indians, and Forrest Carter’s The Education of Little Tree which, while certainly not a part of the literary canon, represents well the widespread presupposition that the Indian traditions are the source of natural wisdom that is to be sought by modern people to avoid complete destruction by the overtechnicized world.

3.1. The Last of the Mohicans

One of the James Fenimore Cooper’s most known novels was translated into Czech many times, by many translators, nevertheless in most cases under the title Poslední Mohykán . To examine all of them would be largely exceeding the limits of this work, nonetheless two of the translations will be considered to be able to show better the evolution of the translation in this subject: K řiš ťan Bém’s from 1954 and Vladimír Henzl’s from 1961. The following excerpt can provide a brief insight into Cooper’s particular style and the manner the translators dealt with it:

Source text Translation: K řiš ťan Bém Translation: Vladimír Henzl “The hardy colonist, and “Kolonista a evropský “[…] takže ost řílený

9 the trained European who voják, jenž bojoval po jeho kolonista a evropský voják, fought at his side, boku, často celé m ěsíce který vál čil po jeho boku, frequently expended zdolávali dravé proudy, často museli celé m ěsíce months in struggling nebo p řelézali divoké bojovat s pe řejemi vodních against the rapids of the horské pr ůsmyky, hledajíce tok ů nebo t ěžce se prodírat streams, or in effecting the příležitost, p ři níž by horskými pr ůsmyky, než rugged passes of the ukázali svou odvahu v našli p říležitost, aby mohli mountains, in quest of an mužn ějším boji. Ale prokázat odvahu v opportunity to exhibit their závodem v trp ělivosti a opravdovém boji. courage in a more martial sebep řemáhání s Pon ěvadž se však co do conflict. But, emulating the domorodými bojovníky se trp ělivosti a sebezap ření patience and self-denial of nau čili p řekonávat každou vyrovnali zkušeným the practised native nesnáz; […].” (Cooper domorodým vále čník ům, warriors, they learned to 1954: 7) nau čili se p řekonávat overcome every difficulty; kdejakou obtíž.” (Cooper […].” (Cooper 1986: 11) 1961: 5)

It can be easily seen that Bém’s translation sticks closer to the original syntactically: the sentence disposition is fully preserved in this excerpt, while Henzl’s version cuts into the sentences and recomposes them differently, as at the beginning and at the end of the passage. Cooper’s writing is rich in qualificative adjectives: these, on the contrary, seem to be more respected by Vladimír Henzl who not only does not omit them as often as K řiš ťan Bém does (“ost řílený kolonista” vs. “kolonista”, “zkušeným domorodým vále čník ům” vs. “domorodými bojovníky”) but renders them semantically closer to English, as in “opravdový boj” for “a more martial conflict”, while Bém provides “mužn ější boj”, which may suggest different connotations than simple reference to war. It can be observed then that Henzl’s attitude is freer from the syntactical point of view, nevertheless more precise semantically. The translations’ characteristics briefly overviewed, the attention will be turned to the position of Native Americans and its facets the translation may possibly alter. As Cooper’s view is not unbiased, the traslators’ task is not easy. A description of the young Mohican, Uncas, may serve a good example:

10 “At a little distance in “Trochu dále vp ředu stál “O n ěco dál ve sv ětle advance stood Uncas, his Unkas a celou jeho postavu ho řícího ohn ě stál Unkas. whole person thrown bylo dob ře vid ět. Cestující Cestovatelé se udiven ě powerfully into view. The se dívali úzkostliv ě na dívali na mladého travellers anxiously přímou, pružnou postavu Mohykána, jak tu stál regarded the upright, mladého Mohykána, přirozen ě a nenucen ě, flexible figure of the young krásnou a nenucenou v vzp římený a pružný. M ěl Mohican, graceful and přirozených pohybech.” na sob ě zelenou loveckou unrestrained in the attitudes (Cooper 1954: 41) halenu jako b ěloch. Bylo to and movements of nature. oble čení na Indiána Though his person was neobvyklé. Jeho temné, more than usually skreened nebojácné o či se leskly. by a green and fringed Byly hrozivé, ale klidné. hunting shirt, like that of Tvá ř čistokrevného rudocha the white man, there was byla výrazná a plná hrdosti. no concealment to his dark, Čelo m ěl vysoké a celý tvar glancing, fearless eye, alike jeho hlavy, na níž až na terrible and calm; the bold skalpovací chumá č nebyl outline of his high, haughty jediný vlas, byl ušlechtilý. features, pure in their Poprvé si tak mohli Duncan native red; or to the a jeho spole čnice dignified elevation of his prohlédnout výrazné rysy receding forehead, together obou svých indiánských with all the finest pr ůvodc ů. A p ři pohledu na proportions of a noble hrdou, odhodlanou, t řebaže head, bared to the generous divokou tvá ř mladého scalping tuft. It was the Indiána všichni pocítili, že first opportunity possessed se zbavili t ěžkých by Duncan and his pochybností. V ěděli, že ten companions, to view the člov ěk snad nemá velké marked lineaments of either vědomosti, že se však of their Indian attendants, nesníží k tomu, aby užil and each individual of the svého p řirozeného nadání k

11 party felt relieved from a hanebné zrad ě.” (Cooper burthen of doubt, as the 1961: 46-47) proud and determined, though wild, expression of the features of the young warrior forced itself on their notice. They felt it might be a being partially benighted in the vale of ignorance, but it could not be one who would willingly devote his rich natural gifts to the purposes of wanton treachery.” (Cooper 1986: 52-53)

For unknown reasons, Bém’s translation, still much faithful to the original syntax and even semanticism, does not continue: it rejoins the source text only at Alice’s commentary below the chosen passage. Nonetheless, this phenomen is not unusual in Bém’s rendition, where individual words up to whole passages remain untranslated. The reason for this behavior cannot be but conjectured: the intention not to bore the adventure-desiring reader with lenghty descriptive passages?; translator’s neglect or unwillingness to cope with complicated structures?; editor’s requests (which is the most probable)? Be it any of those reasons or other, Bém’s translation skips the passage of assessing the Indian’s features. However, as was just suggested, the intentionality of this lack cannot be traced back, it might refer to a certain tendency to avoid the problematics of assessing. On the contrary, Henzl’s translation follows the source text more faithfully. Nevertheless, several interesting shifts can be observed. The first one is that of Uncas’ clothing. While the source text plainly states that his “ green and fringed hunting shirt” skreened his person, “like that of white man,” more than usual, Henzl adds that this clothing was not habitual for an Indian: “Bylo to oble čení na Indiána neobvyklé.” If the possibility of misinterpreting the source text is put aside, the sentence may be a mark of certain didacticism, an endeavor of the translator to explain to the reader the probable

12 unclarities. At this place, it should be mentioned that the 1961 edition is equipped with explicatory notes (besides the original Cooper’s notes) that provide translations of the passages in French, explication of some New World natural elements and Native concepts, e.g. “totem”, “wampum”, as well as of the allusions to the Bible, Shakespeare or other literary works. One of the aims of this edition is then undoubtedly to educate the reader. Another element explicitating the difference of the Indian from the other characters of the scene, is certainly the translation of the phrase “the bold outline of his high, haughty features, pure in their native red” as “[t]vá ř čistokrevného rudocha byla výrazná a plná hrdosti.” The expression “ čistokrevný rudoch” does not have a direct counterpart in the source text, despite the ambiguous character of “pure in their native red” and the implication of race it bears. The Czech wording suggests more directly the otherness of Uncas, which for the Czech audience may be rather positive in the context of the Noble Savage and May’s “Red Gentleman”. The most conspicous instance of translating shift is the remark of Uncas’ ignorance. The original “They felt it might be a being partially benighted in the vale of ignorance” is rendered as “[v] ěděli, že ten člov ěk snad nemá velké v ědomosti” which is a perfect example of attenuation. First, the impersonal “it” and the inconcrete, not necessarily human, “a being” is substituted with “ten člov ěk.” Second, the “vale of ignorance”, rather implying general distance between the European standards of behavior and Uncas’ “savagery”, is transformed into “v ědomosti”, i.e. knowledge in more concrete terms of institutional education. Moreover, “nemá velké v ědomosti” implies less passivity and helplessness than “partially benighted in the vale of ignorance”. The translation thus manifests itself to be more favorable to the young Indian than the original. In this manner the translator may try to render Cooper’s text less radical and easier to understand for the Czech reader. On the whole, Henzl’s translation appears to be considerably conscious of the racial issues The Last of the Mohicans assumes. Where Hawk-eye states: “I am not a prejudiced man” (Cooper 1831/1986: 31), Vladimír Henzl produces: “Nemám rasové předsudky” (Cooper 1961: 24), whereas K řiš ťan Bém simply renders: “Nemám předsudky” (Cooper 1954: 18). The awareness of race is also visible in the largely prevailing translation of “savage” as “Indián”. (E.g.: “Montcalm had filled the woods of the portage with his savages, […]” (Cooper 1831/1986: 146) translated as “Lesy, […],

13 byly plné Montcalmových Indián ů” (Cooper 1961: 139); in Bém’s translation, this passage, spanning up to one whole page, is missing.) On the basis of these observations it could be concluded that the translation of The Last of the Mohicans evolved from a close syntactic transfer, with the omission of numerous passages, to a more innovative and race-conscious solution. (It is necessary to repeat though that this conclusion is based upon but two of the large volume of Czech translations effectuated during the 20 th century.) To complete the image, the two editions should be considered in a wider cultural context, as will be attempted now. The 1954 edition was published with a short afterword by Jan Klobou čník who, in a strongly emotional manner, depicts Cooper’s novel as an account of the capitalist exploitation of the American continent and its aboriginal inhabitants. Cooper is viewed by him as a hero who had the courage to tell the truth on the less plausible parts of the American history, as an artist whom “the bourgeoisie, and the American bourgeoisie in particular, has the reason to […] hate, to distort his art and to downgrade the impact of his work” (Klobou čník 1954: 309). i The Native Americans’ issue is used as an uncritical defence of soviet socialism, Cooper being considered an impartial observer who tells a true story. The fervor of Klobou čník and the early socialism era is no more perceptible in the 1961 edition. This one appeared with no afterword or preface, the sole, anonymous, commentary is given at the back of the book cover. This commentary simply summarizes the story, nevertheless suggests that “in the story we are not only caught by the dramatic course of the events, but also by the depiction of the life and customs of the Indian tribes, the description of the beauty of the wilderness and, last but not least, Cooper’s defence and glorification of the aboriginal inhabitants of the American continent”. ii This last statement is in direct contradiction to what Richard Slotkin affirms in his Introduction to the 1831 Edition of The Last of the Mohicans : “That [Cooper’s] ‘manly’ view […] held that the differences between white and Indian culture were fixed in the race or ‘blood,’ and held further that war between differing races was inherent in racial character, inevitable, and central to the process of American national development. This is the underlying theme of The Last of the Mohicans , although Cooper’s critics were sufficiently distracted by the powerful appeal of the novel’s ‘Indian myth’ to misread him as a ‘friend of the Indian’.” (1986: xii) It seems that the Czech editors were mislead in this exact way. While in the case of the 1954 edition, the novel was a welcomed tool to show the dark sides of the American

14 history, in 1961 the prospective audience was directed to enjoy the romantic aspects of the narrative, with Cooper again as a defender of the oppressed. The romanticism of this attitude is even supported by the fact that in 1961 The Last of the Mohicans was published within the series Knihy odvahy a dobrodružství , or “Books of Courage and Adventure”, which places the novel, in a way, into the row of Karl May’s stories and other similar works. This short survey of The Last of the Mohicans translations shows that Native Americans as a concept were part of specific symbolic systems: on the one hand they were used as a terrifying example of capitalist destructionist power’s victims, on the other hand they represented the world of the “ultimate American myth” (Pospíšil, Sparling 2001: 74) of longing for freedom and wilderness. This longtime mythology seems to be deeply rooted in the Czech perception of the Indians, permitting hardly any changes in its structure. Whether some changes happened in spite of this, will be examined from now on.

3.2. The Education of Little Tree

While James Fenimore Cooper’s novels are widely considered as a part of the American literary canon, Forrest Carter’s The Education of Little Tree is certainly not. The reason why it is examined here is its position at the other pole of the Czech translations on Native Americans: the first Czech edition is, in comparison with The Last of the Mohicans , relatively recent, i. e. from 1997. It is not a nationwide known classic, nonetheless among the particular part of the Czech public that indulge themselves in seeking the Indian wisdom the book can be judged very popular. The last, but not unimportant, argument to treat The Education of Little Tree here is the controversy it raised in the United States and its reflection in the Czech conditions. The Education of Little Tree is a perfect example of faked authorship. The author pretended to be a half-breed Cherokee and the book to be based on his childhood experience. It turned out later that his origin was a feigned one, as well as his name which was a sort of pseudonym for Asa Earl Carter which shocked the American public (Carter 1991). The real motivation of his acting may remain unknown, nevertheless the phenomenon of pretending to be a Native American writer is an interesting one. David Treuer, an Ojibwe writer, argues that the aura of tragedy, connected undeniably with the

15 Indians, is “a shortcut that sells, and the particular tragedy of being an Indian has an amazing ability to make readers lose their capacities to discern good writing from bad, interesting ideas from vapid ones” (2008). He suggests also, alluding to several concrete works, The Education of Little Tree included, that “[o]nce you remove the author’s Indian identity, the bad writing reveals itself” (2008). This endeavor to attract the attention of the readers may be the reason to pretend the Native American origin: for the American public, this procedure was an effective one. It seems that the Czech audience was reacting in a similar way: the above mentioned phenomenon of Indian tragedy as an important appeal is vividly supported by the American myth which combination, in accordance with what was indicated above, makes the book particularly attractive for the Czech readers, as well as editors: the Czech version was published twice, in 1997 and in 2000. As for the authorship and Indian authenticity scandal, it did not mark the Czech readership and editors but little: a certain naivety can be even noticed, such as in a Literární noviny review where it is affirmed that “it is probably an autobiography, for in every sentence we can feel personal experience” iii (Šlajchrt 1997: 16). The translator himself, Lubomír Mi řejovský, in the “factual note” to the second Czech edition mentions the Carter’s origin and name controversy, nevertheless marginally and with an apparent bias in favor of Carter. All this illustrates sufficiently the prevailing feelings the Czech audience still showed at the end of the 90s. Nevertheless, the translation itself is completely different from what was observed in The Last of the Mohican ’s case, as the source texts themselves are absolutely dissimilar. The text of The Education of Little Tree is the one of an ordinary story, the narrator being the author himself at the age of six. His story is the one of a half-breed Cherokee boy who is brought up by his Indian grandparents in the mountains. The everyday stories contain remarks on nature and its harmony, in which the main characters live. The language is standard with occasional colloquial expressions and sentences, especially in the direct and semi-direct speech. This may be a device to make the reader more sympathetic to the story’s heroes, i.e. the Indians and other characters representing the society’s margin. The translator’s task is inevitably to cope with this:

“The mourning dove calls late at night and “Truchlivá holubice se ozývá jen v noci a never comes close. He calls from far back nikdy se nep řiblíží. Volá ze vzdálených

16 in the mountain and it is a long, lonesome hor a má dlouhý, osam ělý hlas, jako by call that sounds like he is mourning. měla smutek. D ěde ček říkal, že skute čně Granpa said he is. He said if a feller died truchlí. Říkal, že když n ěkdo umírá a nemá and didn’t have anybody in the whole nikoho v celým sv ětě, kdo by na n ěj world to remember him and cry for him, vzpomínal nebo pro n ěj plakal, vzpomíná the mourning dove would remember and na něj a truchlí práv ě truchlivá holubice. mourn. Granpa said if you died Děde ček řekl, že každej horal ví, i když somewheres far off, even across the great um ře hodn ě daleko, t řeba i za Velkejma waters, that if you was a mountain man vodama, že si holubice na n ěj vzpomene a you would know you would be bude pro n ěho truchlit. D ěde ček říkal, že remembered by the mourning dove. He to v ědomí dodá každýmu klid duše. I mou said it lent a matter of peace to a feller’s duši to upokojilo.” (Carter 2000: 80) mind, knowing that. Which I know it did for my mind.” (Carter ????/2004: 106)

The source text’s colloquiality lies in familiar form of words, such as “feller”, “somewheres”, and constructions, e.g. “you was”. The Czech translator creates the colloquiality mainly with the familiar adjective endings: “v celým”, “každej”, “Velkejma” etc. While the semi-direct speech is marked in this way, the rest of the text remains standard. In the direct speech, the colloquiality is more conspicuous, in the source as well as in the target text:

“Howsoever,” Granpa said, “iff’n ye taken „Jenže,“ pokra čoval d ěde ček, „dybys vzal a knife and cut fer half a day into that nůž a proš ťoural celý vole toho politika a politician’s gizzard, ye’d have a hard time hrabal se v něm t řeba p ůl dne, nenajdeš finding a kernel of truth. Ye’ll notice the tam ani zrnko pravdy. Všim sis, že ten son of a bitch didn’t say a thing about zkurvysyn ne řek jediný slovo vo zrušení gitting’ the whiskey tax taken off… ’er the dan ě z whisky nebo vo cenách kuku řice price of corn… ’er nothin’ else fer that nebo v ůbec vo n ěč em takovým?“ (Carter matter.” (Carter ????/2004: 85) 2000: 66)

The original implies the familiar speech of narrator’s grandfather mainly on the phonetic plan, the spelling following as closely as possible the colloquial pronunciation. This is transferred to the Czech version again with the aid of familiar adjective endings,

17 colloquial word forms, such as “dybys” and “vo”, and less formal vocabulary, e.g. “proš ťoural”, “hrabal se”. The translation of swear words is particularly interesting throughout the whole text: the strong English expressions “son of a bitch” or “bastard” are translated literally as “zkurvysyn” and “bastard”. These expressions are not much common in spoken Czech and may be considered, to a certain degree, calques from English. It is highly probable that the translator opted for this solution in order to preserve the image of the tough inhabitants of the American West the Czech readers are well acquainted with from earlier literature and movies. These examples imply that the source text itself acts rather in a demythologizing manner towards the Noble Savage and other similar concepts, nevertheless enhancing another myth, that of a simple but harsh country life, which sometimes even clashes with the law, the Indians lead. In connection with the moving story of a small boy, the Native Americans are presented as victims who should be sympathized with, also for their resistance. This corresponds well to the Czech Vinnetou-like image of the Native Americans as the ones who are undefatigably fighting for freedom: the fact that in Carter’s version they are, on the linguistic plan, deprived of their “nobleness” may rather have an effect of freshness and back the presupposition about the wisdom rooted in a simple life in a close relationship with nature.

4. Translation Analyses

It is evident now that the cultural mood into which Momaday’s, Silko’s and Erdrich’s novels were born was considerably different in the U.S. and in the Czech Republic. Both of the environments were burdened with many clichés, nevertheless the Czech one seems to be more naïve and romantic. The Native Americans represented a multifaceted symbol of freedom and the striving for it, of the harmonious life in the heart of nature and of noble heroism. The canonical novelistic works of Indian authors were unknown. The three novels were, as was indicated above, the first of that kind to be translated. In this following part, these novels will be treated in greater detail and the analyses of their Czech translations will be effectuated.

18 4.1. N. Scott Momaday: House Made of Dawn

N. Scott Momaday’s novel House Made of Dawn (1968) was the first novel of a Native American writer to win the Pulitzer Prize and “the recognition it received signaled a change in the perception of critics, teachers, and students about the fiction by

American Indian writers” (Bataille 1993: 62). The story of Abel, a young man of mixed- Native origin and a World War II veteran, is the one of alienation and quest for identity. Abel, whose father is unknown, “which made him [Abel] somehow foreign and strange” (Momaday 1989: 11) in the heart of the Pueblo community, is trying to find his place at his hometown, then in Los Angeles among other Native Americans who survive there on the verge of permanent drunkenness in the hope of finding jobs and making money. The story structure itself is highly elaborate, caring scarcely any marks of linearity. Though the respective chapters are dated chronologically, they usually consist of several layers of narrative. Those layers differ not only in the time they are situated in but also in the voice or perspective that dominates them. For the larger part of the novel, the third person narrative prevails, focused on different characters, not only Abel, and happenings. Nevertheless, the parts related in the first person are not of lesser importance. Among these first person voices the most represented is Ben Benally, a Los Angeles friend of Abel, Tosamah, the “Priest of the Sun”, or, in lesser extent, Milly, Abel’s temporary girlfriend. Abel’s voice does not appear almost anytime, except for several sentences and exclamations and several specific passages, which will be mentioned later. The important fact is that the voices are not easily identified: it can be only after having read the whole passage that the reader recognizes its narrator. In several cases, a Native American myth or folk tale is integrated into the discourse of a character, notably Tosamah’s. An interesting case is Ben Benally’s grandfather’s voice insinuated into the speech of the former when remembering a traditional story of a bear and a maiden (Momaday 1989: 188-9). Besides this, other various instances of first person speech can be found, like the journal and letters of a 19 th century white priest (Momaday 1989: 47-53) or direct citations of a ceremony attendants (Momaday 1989: 113-4). Very often the first person parts (where the voices alter) are printed in different characters then the rest of the text. A remark should be done about the term “first person”. However in some cases it is evident that it is one of the characters that speaks, not the “outside” narrator, the

19 pronoun “I” never appears. It is particularly the case of the passages obviously voiced by Abel nevertheless the syntactical means are quite impersonal: the most striking feature is the use of the second person pronoun where the first person would probably be expected, e.g. “You had been away at school, and it was the first time and you were homesick and it was good to be out there again” (Momaday 1989: 166). It can be supposed that this method was employed by the author in order to emphasize the alienation Abel is going through. Nevertheless the voice of this passage is Abel’s, expressing his view of some events: the first person is present rather semantically than morphologically. It is worth remarking that the language of these first person discourses vary considerably. Thus Ben Benally speaks in a rather colloquial, uncomplicated English, using extensively expressions of the type “you know”, nevertheless his language is clear and easy to follow. Tosamah’s language is similarly uncomplicated but devoid of highly colloquial “you know” items. However simple on the syntactical level, his vocabulary is richer, more lyrical and more educated than that of Benally. (“I began my pilgrimage on the course of Yellowstone” (Momaday 1989: 129).) As for the other first person passages it can be stated that they do not differ much from the two mentioned above, especially the one of Tosamah: their language is syntacticly and lexically uncomplicated, even neutral and unmarked. Some exceptions to this can certainly be found: the most conspicuous example are the directly cited speeches of the prayer meeting attendants. These range from the Benally’s lightly familiar tone up to Napoleon Kills-in-the-Timber’s language reaching even the level of ungrammaticality. (“They are become lazy […]” (Momaday 1989: 114).) To summarize the problem of voices in the novel in Gérard Genette’s terms iv , the text is constructed on the basis of several numerous intradiegetic homodiegetic narrators’ alternance, this being enveloped in the voice of one extradiegetic narrator. Nevertheless, the question whether this extradiegetic narrator is heterodiegetic or homodiegetic is difficult to answer. However this voice dominates, it can hardly be claimed to be omniscient, as is typical for a heterodiegetic narrator: apparently, this extradiegetic narrator’s voice changes perspectives according to the character that is momentarily focused on in the plot. As far as cultural words are concerned, they are numerous. Besides the lexis of Native origin designing various elements of the Pueblo culture like “kiva”, “ketoh”, various words of Spanish origin can be found: “mesa”, “culebra” etc. Moreover, the

20 presence of other languages than English, i.e. Spanish and a Native American language v, is manifest in entire phrases, even sentences incorporated into the English text. Thus e.g. “Abelito… tarda mucho en venir…” (Momaday 1989: 7); “[…], telling me about Esdzá shash nadle , or Dzil quigi , yes, just like that.” (Momaday 1989: 187) It is worth remarking that the novel begins with “Dypaloh” and finishes with “Qtsedaba” which words “announce that the story being framed is a specifically Towan or Jemez story” (Nelson 1993: chapter 2). This may indicate that while written in English, the novel is deliberately rooted in a Native American tradition. The elements of Native cultural heritage are of great importance throughout this piece of fiction, let it be parts of legends or descriptions of ceremonies. The author creates a mixture of Jemez, Kiowa and Navajo constituents (Nelson 1993: chapter 2)vi that can cast some light on the culture of these nations as is passed on for generations. Nonetheless, the novel is far from being a kind of anthropological or historical account. This seems to be even confirmed by the fact that the above cited cultural words and Spanish and Native expressions are not explained in any notes: apparently, the reader, i.e. the majority-culture reader, is not required to understand these expressions in detail. The author’s main concern may be indicating the overall setting and essence of the story rather than educating his audience. Quite on the contrary, the story is primarily a work of fiction, entirely (post-)modern in its form and style. It depicts in an original manner the situation of the 1950s’ young Indians but, as the author claims himself, the text is no more a social novel: “I don’t care about changing attitudes. That’s not the sort of writing I do. I don’t make any sort of social comment. I like to tell a story” (Givens 1985: 83). The novel is not concerned with the political issues of this kind explicitely nevertheless it functions as an important factor in “the preservation of the culture and self-determination [of Indian people]” in the way all literature does (King 1983: 71). Besides, as one of the first modern novels by a Native American writer, “the recognition it received signaled a change in the perception of critics, teachers, and students about the fiction by American Indian writers” (Bataille 1993: 62), therefore its position within the canon of American literature is truly exceptional. Finally, one of the key features of the text is its lyricism. Not only the text is full of vivid descriptive and sensual images but the fragmented structure of the story may be considered a lyric device as well. The fact that the author himself has always viewed himself as “basically a poet” (Givens 1985: 79) is clearly visible in his writing.

21 4.1.1. Translation of House Made of Dawn

The Czech translation of House Made of Dawn was rather late: it did not appear sooner than in 2001. It was effectuated by Lucie Cenková Simerová under the title Dům z úsvitu . No preface or postface was added to the body of the novel. First of all it should be noted that the source text is particularly favorable to translation, especially on the level of syntax. While the intricacy of the novel lies in the story structure and the highly lyrical lexis, the uncomplicated and rather short sentences make the text easy to grasp on the syntactical level. The Czech translator seems to have profited from this fact:

“He had to get up. He would die of “Musel vstát. Um řel by na podchlazení, exposure unless he got up. His legs were kdyby se nezvedl. Nohy m ěl v po řádku; all right; at least his legs were not broken. aspo ň že nohy nem ěl zp řerážené. P řitáhl He brought one of his knees forward, then jedno koleno, potom druhé, a poda řilo se the other, and he managed to get to the mu dostat se k plotu.” (Momaday 2001: fence.” (Momaday 1989: 125) 101)

The source text’s language of this passaage is a good example of a rather simple syntactic structure. The sentences are not long, the compound ones do not consist of more then two parts. The translator, logically, does not complicate them either. She keeps the simple vocabulary as well, just in one case she uses two different Czech expressions for the same word in English: “get up” rendered once as “vstát”, then as “zvednout se”. As this example presents a rather factual content, let us examine another passage, more abstract and of richer lexis:

“And now the silent land bore in upon him “A tichá zem ě te ď úto čila na jeho smysly, as, little by little, it got hold of the light jak se kousek po kousku zmoc ňovala and shone. The pale margin of the night sv ětla a zá řila. Bledý okraj noci ustupoval receded toward him like a rising drift, and sm ěrem k n ěmu jako stoupající p říliv a on he waited for it. All the rims of color stood čekal, až k n ěmu dosp ěje. Na kopcích se out upon the hills, and the hills converged ost ře rýsovaly všechny zabarvené hrany a

22 at the mouth of the canyon. That dark cleft kopce se sbíhaly u ústí ka ňonu. Ona temná might have been a shadow or a pool of rozsedlina mohla být jen stín nebo plazící smoke; there was nothing to suggest its se kou ř; nebylo nic, podle čeho by se dala distance or its depth, but it held the course odhadnout její vzdálenost nebo hloubka, of the river for twenty of thirty miles. The tok řeky však sledovala n ějakých dvacet town lay out for a time on the verge of the nebo t řicet mil. M ěsto chvíli leželo za day; then the spire of the mission gleamed hranicí dne; pak však zazá řila v ěž misie, and the Angelus rang and the riverside za čali zvonit klekání a domy u řeky houses flamed. Still the cold clung to him zaplály sv ětlem. P řesto Abela neopoušt ěl and the night was at his back.” (Momaday chlad a v zádech mu stála noc.” (Momaday 1989: 25) 2001: 28)

In this passage, the translator respects fully the original disposition of sentences, similarly as in the example above, and their coordination character, she even preserves the semicolons. The syntactic structure of the source and the target text corresponds maximally even on the theme-rheme level, nevertheless several exceptions are to be noticed: it is the case of “all the rims of color stood out upon the hills” rendered as “na kopcích se ost ře rýsovaly všechny zabarvené hrany” and of “then the spire of the mission gleamed and the Angelus rang” translated as “pak však zazá řila v ěž misie, za čali zvonit klekání”. A similar phenomenon is: “P řesto Abela neopoušt ěl chlad a v zádech mu stála noc.” The rheme precedes the theme in the target text as is more natural to the Czech language, nevertheless if the translator insisted, she could have even opt for e.g. “p řesto chlad Abela neopoušt ěl a noc mu stála v zádech”. The reason for the solution chosen might be the fact that after having rendered “tichá zem ě te ď úto čila”, “bledý okraj noci te ď ustupoval” and “m ěsto chvíli leželo za hranicí dne”, the translator wanted to avoid the impression of translationese or somewhat violent stucking to the original. However, the just mentioned phrases bear strong marks of poetic language by their functional personification of land, night and town and their close translation helps to keep this poetic imprint in the Czech text. This could be then conceived of as an effort to maintain author’s personal style as “basically a poet” (Givens 1985: 79). The poetic vein is also present in the chants. Here, the translation is even more obvious: as the verses are short, they are apt to be translated as closely as possible:

23 “House made of dawn, “D ům celý z úsvitu, House made of evening light, dům celý z ve černího sv ětla, House made of dark cloud, […]. dům celý z temného mraku, […]. […] Happily I go forth. […] Š ťastn ě jdu vp řed. My interior feeling cool, may I walk. […] V nitru klid, mohu krá čet. […] (Momaday 1989: 146-147) (Momaday 2001: 118-119)

Another important feature of the source text mentioned above is the immediate presence of other languages than English. All these expressions remain untranslated into Czech in the target text, nevertheless explicatory notes are provided at the end of the book. These notes are, firstly, translations of Spanish and Native, but also several Latin, words, secondly, explications to those concepts that might be unknown to the audience, even those in English/Czech, in several cases even their significance within the context of the novel is given, e.g. “Dzil quigi: Zp ěv hory (Mountain Top Chant). Vzývání krásy na straně 148 je sou částí tohoto zp ěvu” (Momaday 2001: 167). The Czech translation then gains a slightly more educational character than the original. The problem of voices being concerned the translator had to tackle several registers of language. The biggest part of the text is related in the third person, the language of these parts being of rather unmarked vocabulary and syntax. So is its Czech version as was visible in the excerpts above. The challenge for the translator comes with the first person narrative. These are represented in particular by the voices of Ben Benally and Tosamah, in lesser extent also those of Milly, Abel and several others. As was already mentioned, Ben Benally’s discourse is rather colloquial, nevertheless it does not contain any mistakes of grammar or spelling. The colloquiality manifests itself in the frequently repeated expressions “you know”, “I guess” etc. For the Czech version, the translator opted for colloquial Czech vii :

“He left today. It was raining, and I gave “Dneska odjel. Pršelo, a já mu dal sv ůj him my coat. You know, I hated to give it kabát. M ůžu říct, že jsem z toho nem ěl up; it was the only one I had. We stood žádnou radost; byl jedinej, kterej jsem m ěl. outside on the platform. He was looking Stáli jsme venku na nástupišti. Díval se k down, and I was trying to think of zemi a já se snažil p řijít na n ěco, co bych something to say. The tracks were all wet řek’. Koleje byly úpln ě mokrý – znáte to,

24 – you know how the rails shine in the rain jak se koleje lesknou, když prší – a všude – and there were people all around, saying kolem byla spousta lidí, který se lou čili. goodbye to each other. He had a sack and On m ěl papírovej pytlík a kufr – znáte to, a suitcase – you know, one of those little takovou tu malou plechovou krabici se tin boxes with three stripes on it.” třema namalovanejma proužkama.” (Momaday 1989: 139) (Momaday 2001: 113)

The colloquial effect in the Czech text is achieved particularly by using the “-ej” suffixes for masculine singular adjectives, “-ý” instead of “-é” for feminine plural adjectives, the informal declination of “-ema”, “-ama” type or the apocope of final “-l” in the past tense form of a verb (“ řek’” instead of “ řekl”). The instances to use these means were numerous and the translator does this systematically. The target text creates thus an impression of naturalness, but it should be noticed that the degree of colloquiality seems to be higher in the target text than in the source text. The voice of Milly, on the other hand, does not show any conspicous marks of colloquiality neither in the original nor in the translation, nonetheless the discourse is far from being formal, especially due to expressions like “some kind of” or “Daddy”. The sentences are longer even though the syntax and vocabulary remain uncomplicated: “The earth where we lived was hard and “Tam, kde jsem bydleli, byla tvrdá, suchá dry and brick red and Daddy plowed and a cihlov ě červená p ůda, a táta oral a sázel planted and watered the land, but in the a zaléval, nakonec z toho ale byla jenom end there was only a little yield. And it malá úroda. A rok za rokem, po řád dokola was the same year after year; it was to bylo to samé, a nakonec táta za čal p ůdu always the same, and at last Daddy began nenávid ět, za čal ji brát jako n ějakého to hate the land, began to think of it as nep řítele, svého vlastního, osobního some kind of enemy, his own very nep řítele na život a na smrt.” (Momaday personal and deadly enemy.” (Momaday 2001: 99) 1989: 123)

The more extended length of the sentences may be a sign differing Milly’s discourse from the other, generally Native, voices. Nonetheless, this cannot be proven properly. In every respect, the translator tends to reflect this feature of longer sentences and concept repetition (especially “it was the same year after year; it was always the same” rendered as “rok za rokem, po řád dokola to bylo to samé” and “began to think of it as some kind

25 of enemy, his own very personal and deadly enemy” transferred as “za čal ji brát jako nějakého nep řítele, svého vlastního, osobního nep řítele na život a na smrt”). Abel being the central character of the story, his voice, however not much present explicitely, is one of the most important. It is interwoven into the third person narrative in the Priest of the Sun part, later on it alternates with Ben’s discourse. Abel’s personal accounts can be, as suggested above, detected by the use of the second person where the first person of singular would rather be expected. As for the overall style of Abel’s speech, it is unmarked and simple in contrast with Ben’s passages, the typical features of colloquial spoken language are missing:

“It didn’t snow much out there, but when “Moc tam nesn ěžilo, když už ale sníh it did the whole land as far as you could napadl, celá zem, kams až dohlédl, jím see was covered with it. It went on byla pokrytá. N ěkdy sn ěžilo celou noc, a sometimes all night, and you could see it otvorem na kou ř jsi vid ěl, jak venku outside through the smoke hole, swirling poletují vlo čky a ví ří proti černé obloze. A around in the black sky. And sometimes některé vlétly dovnit ř, tály na zemi kolem the flakes came in and melted on the floor ohn ě, a tys byl rád, že ohe ň ho ří.” around the fire, and you were glad there (Momaday 2001: 124) was a fire.” (Momaday 1989: 154)

The translator choose to use unmarked Czech language except for one element: she extensively employs the colloquial short form for the second person singular preterite, i.e. the –s suffix that can be joined not only to the verb itself but also to pronouns, adverbs and particles occupying the first stressed place of the sentence (Karlík et al. 1995: 314) which results in e.g. “kams dohlédl”, “tys byl rád”, “m ěls”, “byls”, “rozhlížel ses”, “abys vid ěl” etc. Again, the Czech text is thus invested with more colloquiality and is more marked than the original. As for the use of the second person, the translator had to choose between “ty” and “vy”. This act of choosing comprises the understanding to whom Abel speaks: is it himself or an audience? The translator decided to stick to the first possibility, therefore it is natural to use “ty”. Nonetheless apart from this reason there might be also the one of subconscious perceiving Abel’s discourse as rather familiar, as was showed previously with the preterite form of the Czech verbs. This would then contribute to the

26 observation that the Czech translation inclines towards more colloquiality than the source text. Other instances of first person speech are those of direct speech. This is the case of all Tosamah’s talks that, however considerably long, are always framed by quotation marks. Certainly, the direct speech is a current phenomenon in the novel, extending from several pages, like in Tosamah’s case, to paragraphs or mere exchanges in a dialogue. Out of these, a very interesting case can be found at the prayer meeting conducted by Tosamah where several Native men speak, each of them expressing himself in a different kind of colloquial idiom. Particularly challenging for the translator are contributions of Cristóbal Cruz and Napoleon Kills-in-the-Timber because of their ungrammaticality and high degree of familiarity, emphasized by the spelling, and the problem whether this should be regarded as one of the rare moments of humour or not:

“Cristóbal Cruz: “Cristóbal Cruz: “Well, I jes’ want to say thanks to all my “No, já bych jenom rád řek’ dík tady všem good frens here tonight for givin’ me this kámoš ům, že mám dneska ve čer tu čest here honor, to be fireman an’ all. This here starat se vo vohe ň a tak v ůbec. Řek’ bych, shore is a good meetin’, huh? […]” že jsme se tu p ěkn ě sešli, ne? […]” Napoleon Kills-in-the-Timber: Napoleon Zabíjí v lese: “Great Spirit be with us. We gone crazy “Veliký Duchu, bu ď s námi. Blázníme, for you to be with us poor Indi’ns. We aby ty jsi byl s námi chudáci Indiáni. been bad long time ’go, just raise it hell Dávno jsme byli špatný, d ělali binec a an’ kill each others all the time. An’ that’s po řád se zabíjeli. A proto jsi nás opustil a why you ’bandon us, turn you back on us. oto čil na nás záda. […]” (Momaday 2001: […]” (Momaday 1989: 113) 92)

Evidently, the translator decided to render these passages as lightly humorous which is in profound contrast with the serious and solemnly tragic character of the text that precedes and follows. The manner Cristóbal Cruz and Napoleon Kills-in-the-Timber speak in may evoke a spirit of mockery targeted not only at bad use of English caused by lack of education but also, and on the contrary, at the misconceptions about the Indian English. viii For Cristóbal Cruz, the target text corresponds more or less to real language that could be possibly encountered among Czech people. For Napoleon Kills-in-the-Timber,

27 apparently the Czech text is not based on any real model: the translator created her own form of broken language. It is questionable whether this form corresponds to the source text situation, whether the degree of Napoleon’s ungrammaticality would be perceived as such by the English speaking public. Nonetheless, the translator’s solution is definitely creative. Generally speaking, the translation can be considered as extremely close to the original, nevertheless natural. A certain tendency to render the target text more colloquial than the source text was observed. Similarly, in some cases the lyrical elements are more conspicuous in the Czech translation, as might have been seen in the second excerpt: “tichá zem ě te ď úto čila na jeho smysly” and “v zádech mu stála noc” are more marked than the English “the silent land bore in upon him” and “the night was at his back” The translation appears thus to be more marked in every respect.

4.2. Leslie Marmon Silko: Ceremony

Ceremony was published in 1977 and until now it is one of the most analyzed and most cited Native American novels. Its hero Tayo, a mixed-blood Laguna Pueblo young man, returns to the reservation as a World War II veteran who cannot overcome the horrors he experienced in Japan. His mental and bodily sickness not being healed by alcohol, he finally goes through a traditions-based ceremony designed by a Navajo medicine man Betonie. One of the key ideas of the novel is the presupposition, worded by Betonie, that the witchery of this world (i.e. not only the evil cast by whites on the Indians but also nuclear weapons and such) is to be defeated by renewed ceremonies corresponding to the “elements of this world [that] began to shift” since the white people came. For “things which don’t shift and grow are dead things” (Silko 1986: 126). The structure of the novel is considerably complicated: the main line of Tayo’s story, i.e. of his sickness and healing, is narrated with many flashbacks not only into Tayo’s but also other people’s past. Moreover, the course of the story is interwoven with traditional tales modified by the author (Evasdaughter 1988: 87), these being intricately constructed one within another, a story within a story is not an exception. For this element of Silko’s work, Ceremony was often viewed as “an excellent example of how the oral literature was incorporated into a modern novel” (Hunter 1981: 84).

28 The text is related in a third person narrative, the narrator being heterodiegetic and homodiegetic. In some cases, the focus is shifted on particular characters and their thoughts, nevertheless most of the time the narrator stands above the happenings. The language used is fresh and swift, based on everyday lexis and structures. Where the characters interact, direct speech is employed, often in a colloquial style. The style of the retold traditional folk tales does not deviate much: they are effectuated in everyday language without pathos, even such expressions as “Okay” can be found. This would be in perfect agreement with what could be called Silko’s program, i.e. to tell stories and point out the power of words. This is expressed at the very beginning of the novel: “You don’t have anything if you don’t have the stories.” (Silko 1986: 2) The storytelling is then palpable throughout all the components of the novel, as was indicated above. The cultural words are not as abundant as in Momaday’s novel. Several expressions occur though, like “tortilla”, “menudo” or “hogan”. On the contrary, the inventory of toponyms, names and trade marks is much richer. The most “exotic” ones are those of Native origin, these being the most often names of people like “Ku’oosh”, “Iktoa’ak’o’ya” and toponyms, e.g. “Tse-pi’na”. In some of these cases, the English equivalent is provided. For names it is their translation, or rather explication, like “Ts’its’tsi’nako, Thought-Woman” (Silko 1986: 1) or “Iktoa’ak’o’ay-Reed Woman” (Silko 1986: 13), “ck’o’yo Kaup’a’ta, Gambler” (Silko 1986: 172), for toponyms, they are followed by the term used in English, e.g. “Tse-pi’na, Mount Taylor” (Silko 1986: 96). Other cultural words are various products’ brands, drinks in particular, such as “Coors”, “Garden Deluxe Tokay” or other socially known concepts, such as “Purple Hearts”, “Victrola” etc. Besides these, expressions in other languages than English are rather scarce. For Spanish, it is the beginning of the Spanish song heart at Night Swan’s, “Y volveré” that appears several times. For Native languages, except for the names, only several exclamations can be found, like the one opening the old hunter’s song: “Hey-ya-ah-na- ah! Hey-ya-ah-na-ah! Ku-ru-tsu-eh-ah-eh-na! Ku-ru-tsu-eh-ah-eh-na!” (Silko 1986: 206). However, this case should be considered with caution because the average reader cannot be even sure whether this is rather a kind of onomatopoeia or not. On a few occasions, the participants of a scene are said to use another language than English, e.g. “He spoke softly, using the old dialect full of sentences that were involuted with explanations of their own origins” (Silko 1986: 34) or “Betonie spoke to him in Navajo” (Silko 1986: 128) but that language is never quoted explicitely.

29 A point that should not be neglected is certain presence of humour, for “although Ceremony is serious, offering a number of valuable propositions for our consideration, the narrative also spins a web of jokes in the morning sun” (Evasdaughter 1988: 83). These jokes occur on the overall plot level, e.g. the fleeing cross-breed cattle as an image of mixed-blood Tayo’s problems, as well as situationally. Nevertheless, as Evasdaughter points out (1988: 83) these items of humour might not be even registered because of “the picture of the humorless Indian ... so common in so much of the literature, in so many of the film and television depictions of Native Americans” (Bruchac 1987: 22). Silko’s novel can be then, among other things, thought of as destroying this cliché, i.e. destroying, in a way, the cliché of the “Noble Savage”.

4.2.1. Translation of Ceremony

Ceremony was translated into Czech as Ob řad by Alexandra Hubá čková in 1997 with a postface by Josef Ja řab included. The translator was challenged with the easy flowing language of the narrative as well as with the direct speech parts marked with oral colloquiality. To demostrate her procedures, several exerpts of the source text and its translation will be provided.

“Tayo didn’t sleep well that night. He “Tu noc Tayo moc dobře nespal. Házel tossed in the old iron bed, and the coiled sebou na staré železné posteli a sto čená springs kept squeaking even after he lay péra nep řestávala vrzat, ani když pak ležel still again, calling up humid dreams of klidn ě a hlavou se mu honily vlhké, dusné black night and loud voices rolling him sny temné noci a hlu čné hlasy si s ním over and over again like debris caught in a pohrávaly jako s kusem d řeva, které unáší flood. Tonight the singing had come first, proud. Dnes ve čer to za čalo zp ěvem, squeaking out of the iron bed, a man linoucím se ze sk řípotu postele; n ějaký singing in Spanish, the melody of a muž si špan ělsky prozp ěvoval melodii familiar love song, two words again and známé milostné písn ě a znovu a znovu again, “Y volveré.” (Silko 1986: 6) opakoval dv ě slova, „Y volveré“ . (Silko 1997: 13)

30 This passage, opening Tayo’s story, can be considered a typical example of the third person narrative that prevails in the novel. The lexis is neutral, rather of everyday use, nevertheless it flourishes with vivid imagery based on qualificative adjectives (“humid dreams of black night”) and simile (“like debris caught in a flood”). The translator seems to be well aware of all these facts: she uses a common language vocabulary and expressions, like “moc dob ře nespal”, “házel sebou”, “hlavou se mu honily” that refer to orality rather than to a stiff literary style. The qualificative adjectives are punctually respected in their semanticism (“humid” rendered as “vlhké, dusné”). Several cases of explicitation ix are encountered: “linoucím se ze sk řípotu postele” for “squeaking out of the iron bed”; “znovu a znovu opakoval dv ě slova” while in the original the man’s repeating of the two words is not as explicitly expressed. Nonetheless, the translation achieves to maintain the naturally flowing language of storytelling and the lyrical elements simultaneously. The dialogue passages, as was already mentioned, often consist of colloquial language direct speech interactions insinuated into the body of the third person narrative:

“He […] sat back on the seat with his eyes “[…] sedl si zpátky na sedadlo, zav řel o či closed, breathing hard. a zt ěžka oddychoval. “Hey! Are you sick or something?” „Je ti blb ě, nebo co?“ Tayo shook his head. Harley must have Tayo zakroutil hlavou. K Harleymu se heard the rumors Emo had started. ur čit ě donesly ty řeči, co roztrušoval Emo. “Just tired, that’s all.” „Jsem jenom utahanej.“ […] “Goddamn it, Harley!” Leroy yelled. […]„Zatracen ě, Harley!“ za řval Leroy. “I can’t open it when you drive that way!” „Jak to mám takhle otev řít?“ “Shit! You’re too drunk to open it! Here! „Jdi do háje! Nejde ti to, protože jseš Let me!” namol. Dej to sem! Já to otev řu!“ […] […] The truck was swaying from one side of Nákla ďák se kymácel z jedné strany the road to the other, spinning up rocks silnice na druhou a od kol odletovaly and gravel that struck the underside of the kamínky a št ěrk a narážely na spodek auta. truck. „Hodláš to vypít, nebo vybryndat?“ “Hey! You gonna drink it or spill it?” Leroy se smál, když se Tayo pokoušel

31 Leroy laughed while Tayo tried to get the dostat plechovku k úst ům a snažil se, aby can to his mouth without spilling it or nerozlil pivo a nenarazil do palubní desky. being thrown against the dashboard. The Pěna byla teplá, pálila ho na jazyku. foam was warm; it stung his tongue. „Máte náskok, co?“ “You guys got a head start on me, don’t „Táhnem to celou noc,“ řekl Leroy a you?” zamrkal, jak se snažil zaost řit na Tay ův “We been at it all night,” Leroy said, obli čej. “Celou noc jsme projezdili, co, blinking his eyes, trying to focus on Harley?“ Tayo’s face. “Driving around all night, „Nikdy neposlouchej opilce,“ řekl Harley huh, Harley, didn’t we?” Tayovi. „Prd si pamatuje. V čera ve čer “Never listen to a drunk,” Harley said to jsme byli v Gallupu.“ (Silko 1997: 256- Tayo. “This guy doesn’t remember 257) nothing. We were in Gallup last night.” (Silko 1986: 239-240)

The exchanges between Tayo and his friends are generally the most informal as for the register throughout the whole novel. They are marked by the use of familiar vocabulary as “buddy”, “damn” and by constructions like “gonna”, multiple negation etc. that are commonly recognized as marks of non-standard English (Wolfram 1981: 65). Nevertheless, the degree of colloquiality does not excede the border of general comprehensibility and does not manifest itself in the spelling. Despite the fact that these direct speech items differ from the surrounding narrative in the phenomena mentioned, the difference is not shocking. Apparently, this general feature was reflected in the Czech version as well. The translator keeps the standard orthography with some modifications of verb and adjective forms felt as informal, such as “jseš”, “táhnem”, “utahanej”. For the English question tags, the Czech colloquial “nebo co?” or “co?” is used. To complete the impression of youths’ careless speech, several expressions that in the context in question have a familiar effect are employed, e.g. “blb ě”, “namol”, “vybryndat”, “prd”. Nevertheless, any effort to exaggerate the colloquial effect is not perceptible. In the other cases of direct speech, the source text does not exhibit virtually any signs of explicit colloquiality, however marks of oral discourse are present, i.e. question tags, short forms of verb constructions etc. An example of this is Tayo’s conversation with Betonie:

32

“They took almost everything, didn’t „Vzali nám skoro všechno, vi ď?“ they?” Sta řec vzhlédl od ohn ě. Pomalu zakroutil The old man looked up from the fire. He hlavou a rozeklanou v ětvi čkou obrátil shook his head slowly while he turned the maso. „Nakonec u toho vždycky meat with a forked stick. “We always skon číme. P řichystali to tak pro nás. come back to that, don’t we? It was Všechnu tu zlobu a zklamání. A taky pocit planned that way. For all the anger and the viny. Celý život mají Indiáni, když se ráno frustration. And for the guilt too. Indians probudí, p řed o čima zemi, kterou jim wake up every morning of their lives to ukradli; po řád je tady, na dosah, jako see the land which was stolen, still there, nestydatá p řipomínka té loupeže.“ (Silko within reach, its theft being flaunted.” 1997: 139) (Silko 1986: 127)

Comparing this passage with the previous one, question tags are the common phenomenon to both of them. The tranlation treats them differently though. While in the former excerpt they were uniformly translated as “nebo co?” and “co?”, in the latter case they are either completely disregarded in the translation or rendered in a less rude way, i.e. “vi ď?”. Similarly the rest of the text: the orthography, the structures and vocabulary are fully standard, however e.g. the adverb “taky” may still possess some marks of informality when compared with its other form “také”. Betonie’s discourse being rather a part of the surrounding narrative, it is translated as such as well. Tayo’s story is, as mentioned above, interspersed with traditional tales, retold by the author who is probably acting as the narrator when pronouncing: “The way I heard it was in the old days long time ago […]” (Silko 1986: 37). The arrangement of these stories, out of which the central one is that of the people’s effort to overcome starvation and drought, is interconnected with Tayo’s destiny so that at the end the witchery is defeated. These parts of the text are printed in narrow columns, as is typical for poetry. Their language is simple, close to that of oral storytelling:

“So they flew “A tak vylétli all the way up again. znovu nahoru. They went to a place in the West Vydali se na jedno místo na západ ě.

33

(See, these things were complicated…) (Jak vidíš, bylo to složité…) They called outside his house Před jejím p říbytkem zavolali: “You downstairs, how are things?” „Ty tam dole, jak se da ří?“ “Okay,” he said, “come down.” „Dob ře,“ řekla, „poj ďte za mnou dol ů.“ They went down inside. Vešli dovnit ř. “Maybe you want something?” „Pot řebujete n ěco?“ “Yes. We need tobacco.” „Ano. Tabák.“ Caterpillar spread out Housenka rozložila dry corn husks on the floor. na podlahu suché kuku řičné listí. He rubbed his hands together Zamnula rukama, And tobacco fell into the corn husks. a do listí napadal tabák. Then he folded up the husks Pak listí srolovala and gave the tobacco to them.” a podala jim ho. (Silko 1986: 180) (Silko 1997: 194)

Typographically, the translation preserves the original’s disposition completely, as well as the distribution of sentence units into the lines. The source text containing some marks of orality and colloquiality, the translator tried to transfer this into Czech, e.g. “ty tam dole” or by the one-unit sentence “Tabák” for the source text’s “We need tobacco”. Nevertheless, the Czech translation tends perhaps to introduce the elements typical for the Czech folk tales, notably the word “p říbytek” is not much that of the everyday speech register. As for the narrator’s addressing the audience (“See, these things were complicated…”), the translator opted for “ty”, however in many written tales the readers are treated as a whole and therefore “vy” is employed. The use of “ty” may then be an attempt to distinguish the Indian legend style from that of the Czech fairy tales. Generally speaking, in the case of traditional folk tales, the target text is a compromise between the common everyday speech and a more solemn ancient-stories-telling style. The cultural words and expressions of Native and Spanish origin are not translated or explained, “tortilla”, “menudo” or “hogan” remain the same in the Czech text however they may not be always fully understood by the Czech reader. Similarly for the Spanish song words “Y volveré”. Where the Native concepts or names were explained in the original text, so they are generally in the translation, e.g. “Iktoa’ak’o’ya-Reed Woman” (Silko 1986: 13) is rendered as “Iktoa’ak’o’ya-Rákosová žena” etc. The English

34 toponyms are, logically, maintained, e.g. “Mount Taylor” remains “Mount Taylor” in the target text. As for the names of products, the translator explicitates them x but with omitting the actual name of the product. “Coors” then becomes simply “pivo”, “Garden Deluxe Tokay” is “tokaj”, “Victrola” is rendered as “gramofon” etc. The translator’s goal seems to be comprehensibility and natural flow of the text rather than instructing the Czech audience about American cultural concepts. This may reflect the intention not to draw attention to the majority American culture while on the other hand the Native notions tend to be explained in most cases. Moreover, the readers of the translation are then in a similar position as the American ones: what is known to the American reader does not disturb the Czech reader either. It can be concluded that the translation maintains the storytelling character of the source text. It combines the standard Czech with the features of everyday language, nevertheless the informal elements are not excessive and therefore can be considered in harmony with the original. In rendering the traditional folk tales it exhibits some characteristics of traditional written Czech tales. As suggested above, the transference (Newmark 1988: 96) happens in the cases of words in other languages than English while the American cultural words are rendered, in Newmark’s terms, via componential analysis (1988: 96) xi or, in terms of translation universals, explicitated. The cultural focus then does not shift. On the whole, the Czech translation is fluent and enjoyable to read.

4.3. Louise Erdrich: Love Medicine

The novel, published in 1984, is in many aspects different from the two previous ones, yet it “partly continues to work within the older conventions and share many of the same concerns: the consequences of an individual’s return or attempted return to the reservation, the significance of home and family, the politics of language and the relation between speaking and writing” (Silberman 1993: 103). In contrast with the other two works, Love Medicine lacks a clear central character, as the story does not concentrate on a single person: the novel is a part of a complex history of Kashpaws, Nanapushes and Morriseys that Louise Erdrich elaborates in her other novels, Tracks (1988), The Bingo Palace (1994) etc.

35 The author uses the narrative technique of multiple voices: each chapter is related by one of the chosen characters or by a third person narrator. In Genette’s classification, two types of narrator occur: the intradiegetic-homodiegetic and the extradiegetic- heterodiegetic. The chapters are situated in different years, spanning from 1934 to 1984, nevertheless they do not succeed chronologically. The reader is to compose the whole puzzle progressively, nevertheless this is, in comparison with the House Made of Dawn and Ceremony much easier: the years are indicated under the title of each chapter as well as the name of the character who is to relate the particular part of the plot. As for the styles of the respective narrators, they do not differ much. Standard unmarked language predominates, nonetheless some narrators tend towards a certain degree of colloquiality, which is not particularly conspicuous though. In several cases, a narrator switches the register throughout their discourse, as e.g. Marie Lazarre/Kashpaw. On the other hand, the style of one narrator is coherently standard, as Albertine’s, or moderately colloquial, as Lipsha’s. In general, the female narrators use less informal, more literary style than the male narrators whose language inclines towards orality. The presence of an audience which the narrators would address is expressed sometimes by the sentences as “Just ask…” (Erdrich 1989: 89) or “I’m going to tell you about […]” (Erdrich 1989: 217). Lipsha even suggests the act of writing when reporting on the unanswered question whether Gerry “killed the trooper”: “I’m sorry but I just don’t trust to write down what he answered, yes or no” (Erdrich 1989: 269). Taking this into consideration, the novel overtly displays its intention to hold the reader’s interest. The style of the third person narrator does not deviate either from those of e.g. Albertine or Marie. Its language is standard nevertheless not stiffly literary. Its vocabulary is based on everyday use lexis, the syntax is closer to spoken language. It is, however, far from being too simple or primitive: on the contrary the vocabulary is rich and enables the author to create colorful images, similes and metaphors. (Which is, it should be noticed, also the case of the other narrators’ voices.) In the direct speech, the colloquial style is largely prevailing. Nonetheless, it could be rather defined as a lack of formality than a high degree of informality. The direct speech is marked by some typical features of spoken English, e.g. “them” instead of “the”, as in “You had them beads on” (Erdrich 1989: 82), the auxiliary “do” in unchanged form for the third person singular as in “It don’t look good” (Erdrich 1989: 207) etc. In several cases, especially in Gerry’s, the degree of colloquiality is higher,

36 emphasized by the spelling: “S’very nice” (165), “She asst for you” (167). This case of Gerry’s may indicate author’s interest to introduce certain social variation, Gerry being a person who spent much of his life in prison and in the crime surroundings. On the other hand, Albertine’s standard language would then be the sign of her education which the other characters did not attein, like Lipsha who “never did well in school” (Erdrich 1989: 36). Nonetheless, all these marks are not sufficiently conspicuous to serve a sustainable hypothesis. The cultural words are not especially densely distributed throughout the text, expressions in other languages than English are virtually missing. The cultural words that are present concern general American culture: car brands, drinks etc. The only words of Chippewa origin are family names and several other words, as the name of Chippewa gods and mythical beings, like Nanabozho and Missepeshu mentioned by Lipsha. (Erdrich 1989: 194) On the whole, Love Medicine differs largely from Momaday’s and Silko’s novel on the level of explicit integration of traditional Native tales into the text. Louise Erdrich does not intersperse the story with ancient myths and stories, the only remarks on this are by Lipsha when comparing the Catholic and the Chippewa beliefs and religious attitudes and when designing the love medicine for his grandparents, verging on a humourous and ironic side. If seaking for a myth level in Love Medicine , the myths are of a different kind: the legend created around Gerry Nanapush and his claim that “no steel or concrete shitbarn could hold a Chippewa” (Erdrich 1989: 160), the reputation Lulu Lamartine has on the reservation, Lipsha’s touch etc. The novel is wholy concentrated in the time span indicated by the years under the chapter titles, that is between 1934 and 1984, with the focus on the problems of Native people of that time. From this point of view, the novel could be characterized by a prevailing realism which is connected with a particular narrative style “characterized by the use of multiple narrators and a relaxed, informal approach that is […] good-humored and graceful yet hard-bitten.” (Silberman 1993: 103)

4.3.1. Translation of Love Medicine

In 1994, the Czech translation of Love Medicine by Alena Jindrová-Špilarová appeared under the title Čarování s láskou . As in the case of the Czech translation of Ceremony , a postface by Josef Ja řab was included. The above mentioned fact that

37 Louise Erdrich’s style is particularly original and rich present the translator with many challenges. To begin an analyze of the translation, a third person narrator excerpt will be examined:

“Of course, Lulu was not made of flour “Lulu ovšem nebyla hadrová panenka. To sacking and yarn. Beverly had realized si Beverly uv ědomil, když ho pevn ě that in the immediacy of her arms. She objala. Popadla ho a p řitiskla si ho, sotva grabbed him for a hug when he got out of vystoupil z auta, a jak byl po dlouhé cest ě his car, and, tired by the long trip, his head unavený, na chvíli se mu zato čila hlava a whirled for a moment in a haze of yellow před o čima se mu ud ělala mlha, plná spots. When she released him, the boys žlutých mžitek. Když ho pustila, sauntered up, poker-faced and mildly přiklackovali se tam chlapci, tvářili se suspicious, to stand in a group around him lhostejn ě a mírn ě podezírav ě, postávali v and await their introductions. There kroužku kolem n ěho a čekali, až je máma seemed to be so many that at first he was představí. Bylo jich tam tolik, že zpo čátku speechless.” (Erdrich 1989: 80) ztratil Beverly řeč.” (Erdrich 1994: 74)

In this passage, the translator respects the sentence disposition, she does not try to divide them into smaller units. Inside the sentences, considerable changes of semantic as well as syntactic character were effectuated though. The source text abounds with inventive combinations of words, like “the immediacy of her arms” or “his head whirled […] in a haze of yellow spots”. The translator rendered them rather as more common expressions which required several syntactical modifications: the “immediacy of her arms” is verbalized into “když ho pevn ě objala”, which transfers the notion of immediacy approximately, nevertheless the connection to the immediacy in its sense of a present moment is lost; she grabbed him for a hug was transformed into two separate verbs “popadla ho a p řitiskla si ho”; “his head whirled for a moment in a haze of yellow spots” was divided into two Czech phrases “na chvíli se mu zato čila hlava a p řed o čima se mu ud ělala mlha, plná žlutých mžitek”. This solution though results in certain normalization: where in the source text a common expression of whirling head is poeticized by the phrase “in a haze of yellow spots”, the translation provides an entirely standard image. Similarly “poker-faced” was rendered as “lhostejn ě”. However, the translator’s task in these cases was not an easy one: she had to choose between comprehensibility and naturalness of language on one side and originality preserving on

38 the other, out of which she opted for the former. On the other hand, the expression “p řiklackovali” can be considered as quite original for the English “sauntered”. Another narrative level are the voices of particular characters. One of them is Lulu Lamartine:

“And so when they tell you that I was “A když vám říkají, že jsem byla bezcitná, heartless, a shameless man-chaser, don’t nestydatá koketa, nezapome ňte na tohle: ever forget this: I loved what I saw. And milovala jsem to, co jsem vid ěla. Je ovšem yes, it is true that I’ve done all the things pravda, že jsem d ělala i všechno to, co se o they say. That’s not what gets them. What mn ě říká. To jim ale nevadí. Žere je, že aggravates them is I’ve never shed one jsem nikdy neprolila ani jedinou slzu. Že solitary tear. I’m not sorry. That’s nelituju. To je nep řirozené. Všichni víme, unnatural. As we all know, a woman is že žena má plakat.” (Erdrich 1994: 187) supposed to cry.” (Erdrich 1989: 217)

The source text bears several marks of informal language, such as the verb “get” in the sense of “annoy”, nevertheless besides this there are not many signs that would indicate a high degree of colloquiality. What can be stated is that its style is close to oral discourse, which is atteined by the use of short verb forms and short sentences. These properties are rendered into Czech by the use of fully standard language with several informal devices: the “-uju” ending of the verb litovat, which can be still considered as less formal than the “-uji” ending. The other manner to achieve the impression of light informality is the lexical choice: here, the expression “žere je” can be perceived as such. As for the colloquiality level, Lipsha’s voice is more affected by informality than the others, the previous excerpt included:

“I jumped out, not knowing what on earth “Vysko čil jsem. Nev ěděl jsem, co si o tom to think. I thought there was some animal proboha myslet. Nemohlo by tam být t řeba trapped inside there. I wouldn’t put it past zav řené n ějaké zví ře? Kingovi by to bylo King to throw a dog or something in his docela podobné, aby do kufru hodil psa back trunk. The night was so dark. I didn’t nebo n ěco takového. Kolem tma jako v know that it might not spring for my pytli. Co když mi to sko čí po krku? Byl throat, so I held the key out very ginger jsem teda celej napruženej, když jsem vzal

39 when I put it in the trunk latch. I turned the klí ček a strkal ho do zámku v kufru. Oto čil key and jumped back. The hood sprang jsem klí čkem a usko čil. Kryt vylet ěl up.” (Erdrich 1989: 267) vzh ůru.” (Erdrich 1994: 231)

Lipsha’s discourse is on the whole densely interspersed with familiarity and orality features, let it be expressions as “what on earth” or the use of rather basic verbs, such as “put”. The translator again preserved the length of the sentences but she reshaped two of them into questions, perhaps out of the effort to retain the natural oral-like flow of Lipsha’s talk. The other similar devices are the informal adjective endings on “-ej” in “celej napruženej”, the adverb form “teda” instead of more formal “tedy” or translating “the night was so dark” as “kolem tma jako v pytli”, which recalls more popular daily language while something like “noc byla tak temná” would refer to a more serious, even lyrical, style. On the other hand, the majority of the text of this excerpt, as well as in the whole Lipsha’s part, is morphologically standard. This phenomenon could be possibly explained by the translator’s intention to insure good comprehensibility, which might be disturbed by excessive use of familiar language, and at the same time let Lipsha sound informal in Czech too. It was already said that in the direct speech colloquiality is a common phenomenon, regardless of the participants of a conversation. The following example is a dialogue between Lyman and Henry Lamartines:

“Lyman,” he says, walking in one day, „Lymane,“ povídá jednou, když za mnou “that red car looks like shit.” přišel, „z toho červenýho auta je p ěkná “Well it’s old,” I says. “You got to expect kraksna.“ that.” „Však má leta,“ odpovím. „To se dalo “No way!” says Henry. “That car’s a čekat.“ classic! But you went and ran the piss „To teda ne!“ odsekne Henry. „To je right out of it, Lyman, and you know it prvot řídní auto! Jenomže tys ho takhle don’t deserve that. I kept that car in A-one zřídil, Lymane, a víš, že si to nezaslouží. shape. You don’t remember. You’re too Já jsem ho udržoval v perfektním stavu. young. But when I left, that car was To už si nepamatuješ. Na to jseš mladej. running like a watch. Now I don’t even Ale než jsem odešel, tak b ěhalo jako know if I can get it to start again, let alone hodinky. Te ď nevím, jestli bude ešt ě

40 get it anywhere near its old condition.” vůbec n ěkdy jezdit, natož jestli ho dokážu “Well you try,” I said, like I was getting dát aspo ň p řibližn ě do takovýho stavu jako mad, “but I say it’s a piece of junk.” dřív.“ (Erdrich 1989: 149-50) „Tak to zkus,“ řeknu, jako by m ě naštval, „ale povídám, je to starej k řáp.“ (Erdrich 1994: 133)

The translator transfers the informality of the dialogue into Czech by using the colloquial endings of adjectives (“mladej”, “takovýho” etc.), verb forms (“jseš”, “tys ho zřídil”) and spelling (“leta”, “ešt ě”) on the morphological level. On the level of vocabulary, the employment of familiar expressions as “kraksna” and “k řáp” completes the impression. Obviously, the translator’s purpose was as high naturalness of speech as possible, not an exact rendering of all the details. (E.g. “if I can get it to start” as “jestli bude ešt ě v ůbec n ěkdy jezdit”.) Nevertheless, the sentence disposition follows the original faithfully, as usual. It remains to mention the case of addressing the audience by the narrators where the translator had to choose between “ty” and “vy”. In contrast with the Czech version of Ceremony , the translator of Love Medicine opted for “vy”. Thus Lulu’s “I’m going to tell you about the men” (Erdrich 1989: 217) is rendered as “Budu vám vypráv ět o mužích” (Erdrich 1994: 187), Lipsha’s “I’ll tell you” (Erdrich 1989: 252) becomes “to vám teda povím” (Erdrich 1994: 218) etc. The “vy” refers directly to the written literature world, which is emphasized by the several remarks of writing as suggested above, however the language of the novel is exploiting the field of orality. Nonetheless, whereas “ty” in Ceremony may indicate an imaginary listener to a traditional Native legend, “vy” in Love Medicine makes the reader aware of their appartenance to a large public which is to learn the whole story of the few Indians as well as the more general message on the 20 th century situation of Native Americans. Despite the general scarceness of cultural words, several ones can be found, such as “kinnikinnick”. This word, defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “a mixture of dried leaves and bark and sometimes tobacco smoked by the Indians and pioneers especially in the Ohio valley” xii is one of the very few marks of the “Indian West”: nevertheless, this case may be perceived as touched with light humour for the word is part of Lipsha’s reference to his father, Gerry Nanapush, which is sentimental and, by the means of exaggeration, describing the aureole of a well known criminal: “[…] Gerry

41 Nanapush, famous politicking hero, dangerous armed criminal, judo expert, escape artist, charismatic member of the American Indian Movement, and smoker of many pipes of kinnikinnick in the most radical groups. That was… Dad” (Erdrich 1989: 248). The word “kinnikinnick”, together with the reference to the American Indian Movement, makes the typical criminal aura more “Indian” and unique. Nonetheless, the translator choose to transfer the expression in question as “domácí ku řivo”, perhaps out of the worry that the Czech readers might not understand the word. Yet it is worth attention that the Czech counterpart of the American Indian Movement is typed in low characters, thus “hnutí amerických Indián ů” (Erdrich 1994: 214). The absence of a capital letter at the beginning of the name of the movement then does not imply its official status. This sort of normalization may nevertheless be justified by the fact that, as in the case of “kinnikinnick”, this expression is not filled with a particular significance for the Czech audience. As for the brand names, the translator either provides an explicitation (“mátová čokoládová ty činka” for “stick of Doublemint”) or a more or less literal translation (“Blue Ribbon” as “Modrá stuha”, “Lucky Charms” cereals as “vlo čky Št ěstí čko”). This procedure may ensure to preserve the context play, as in the case of “Lucky Charms” used as a stake in Lipsha’s and King’s card game. Unfortunately, this symbolism play was partly lost with the “Blue Ribbon” beer where the significance of the blue ribbon award is with high probability not clear to the Czech readers. On the other hand the name of the car “Firebird” is transferred as “firebird” which, again, does not render the semanticism of the word for the readers who are ignorant of the English language. At the same time, it is perfectly usual to keep cars’ names in the original shape in everyday speech: the low capitals then make the name sound more familiar and personal. To summarize the analysis, the Czech translation of Love Medicine tries to maintain the extremely good readability of the source text, sometimes at the expense of exact rendering of the semanticism of the original. The informality of the narrative voices is respected and transferred into colloquial Czech with the aim to preserve the naturalness and therefore the capacity of the narrating characters to gain the reader’s sympathy.

42 5. Cultural Intersections

A general observation that can be made on the characteristics of the three above analyzed translations is that they strive to respect as fully as possible the prominent features of the source texts, the originality of the writers and their way of communicating with the reader. This is a phenomenon quite opposite to what was observed in the case of The Last of the Mohicans : its examined translations verged on adaptation. As for the communication with the readers and the effort to involve them into the story and the destinies of their characters, the Czech translations tend to surpass the originals. An example of this behavior is Lucie Cenková Simerová’s amplifying of colloquiality in the first person discourses, Alexandra Hubá čková’s treating the reader in the second person of the singular, or hers and Alena Jindrová-Špilarová’s prevailing normalization of ambiguous cultural words. This tendency to draw the reader into the story may be seen as coinciding with The Education of Little Tree style: the translators are aware of the less noble and more everyday nature of the text, especially in comparison with the rooted conceptions established by Cooper’s, May’s and other similar literature, hence they are willing to transfer it as faithfully into the Czech language and culture as possible. Nevertheless, The Education of Little Tree characteristics should not be mingled with the style and status of the other mentioned novels. As already suggested, The Education of Little Tree represents the current of rather naïve, idealizing writing on Native Americans, which Momaday’s, Silko’s and Erdrich’s novels share nothing with. Nevertheless, what they do share in the context of general Czech notion of Indians is the revolt against the Noble Savage concept. The necessity to study a translated text in the context of the host environment is aptly expressed by Gideon Toury who suggests that “translations are facts of target cultures; on occasion facts of a special status, sometimes even constituting identifiable (sub)systems of their own” (1995: 29). This necessarily raises the question whether the translation of literature on Native Americans establishes a special sub-culture within the Czech culture, both in linguistic and cultural terms. The answer could be positive in the case of The Education of Little Tree : the Czech translation, despite its overall comprehensibility and good readability, creates a discourse of its own, distinguished by its implication of a harsh and, to a certain degree, outlaw countrylife of the Natives. The positive answer is suitable as well to The Last of the Mohicans translations: in this case, the translations could perhaps be assigned to a larger context of literature of adventure

43 tending towards adaptation. On the other hand, the three modern translations being concerned, the answer would be double: in the “sub-culture” delimited by The Last of the Mohicans on one side and The Education of Little Tree on the other, these translations form another sub-system of texts that are translationally much less marked than the previous ones. This means that the translators of House Made of Dawn , Ceremony and Love Medicine were as faithful to the source texts as possible, trying to introduce into the Czech culture the works of those particular novelists unburdened with any clichés. The second part of this double answer would then be that, because of their unmarkedness, these translations do not constitute a sub-culture of their own within the environment of modern Czech translation. Nevertheless, it is probable that this neutrality was feasible due to the fact that the Indian thematics was already well “domesticated” as a concept in the target culture: the Native American element was not new, although it was interwoven with many clichés and misconceptions. This question of (sub-)culture is connected with the issue of how the novels were accepted by the Czech audience and what place they acquired within the Czech critical environment. When searching for this kind of information, the two Czech literary journals were investigated: Host and Literární noviny . In Host not a single remark was found about the publication of any of the translations. As for Literární noviny , Louise Erdrich and her novel Love Medicine , as well as its translation, was treated in a short double-review by Kate řina Hilská and Petr Dudek (1994: 12-13). Silko’s Ob řad was mentioned in a section devoted to new editions (Lukeš 1997: 16). It is worth noting here that in the same year, just a month later, Carter’s The Education of Little Tree was reviewed in the same section (Šlajchrt 1997: 16). Both of the reviews were of entirely positive character. This would imply that either the Czech critics consider the two works as those of the same sort and level, or the reviewers of Literární noviny cannot distinguish the different qualities of those texts: one of the rare indications that at least some difference may be found among these two works, is the remark on the “neliterárnost” of The Education of Little Tree (Šlajchrt 1997: 16). It is not the issue here to judge the capacities of the Literární noviny staff, nonetheless the above mentioned fact might indicate that the three postmodern novels had not been fully appreciated until 1997, perhaps out of the disorientation in the writings on Native Americans already present in the Czech culture. However, this is not the only voice to comment on the appearance of these novels. As already mentioned, the Czech editions of Love Medicine and Ceremony were issued

44 with afterwards by Josef Ja řab, an established literary critic and translator of American literature. In both of the afterwards, but especially in the one to the Ceremony , he also refers to Momaday’s work, all the three authors investigated here thus being covered by him. His articles are particularly valuable for introducing to the Czech readers the situation in the United States and clarifying the position of Native American literature within the North American context. He summarizes Love Medicine , but his statements could be easily extended to the entire bulk of the 20 th century Native American literature as well, as reporting not only on the problems and hopes of American Indians but of modern America and the world as a whole (Ja řab 1994: 241). As for the pre-existing Czech concepts of American Indians in the Czech cultural environment, Josef Ja řab makes no allusion to this phenomenon: the reason for this might be the fact that his discourse is rather academic, therefore his audience is also supposed to be the one to await more “serious” information. Nevertheless, his afterward to Ceremony bears the subtitle Jsou ješt ě Indiáni v nás? , i.e. “Are the Indians still in us?” (Ja řab 1997: 281). This may suggest quite clearly that, despite the fact that it is not treated in the article at all, the issue of the Czech “Indian tradition” is reflected by Ja řab and assumed to be accepted by his audience. The discussion on the contextualization of a translation within a culture is also much dealt with by George Steiner. In his four-stage model of translation as hermeneutic motion, the stages being “trust”, “aggression”, “incorporative movement” and “piston- stroke”, the third one is especially relevant to the topic. Steiner affirms that a translation, i.e. “[t]he import, of meaning and form, the embodiment, is not made into a vacuum. The native semantic field is already extant and crowded” (1975: 298). The extant and crowded semantic field in this present case is then in a large part formed by the above discussed cultural context of the Czech conception of Native Americans, but also of the tradition of Czech translation from English and of contemporary Czech novelistic creation. The interesting point Steiner makes is that “[w]here the native matrix is disoriented or immature, the importation will not enrich, it will not find a proper locale” (299). If applying this statement to this three-novel case, what is the outcome? Considering what was found out about the works on Native Americans read in the Czech culture, the “native matrix” might be judged disoriented in the sense of the above mentioned misconceptions and naivety which enhanced the choice of works to be translated and which surrounded the term “Indian”. Nevertheless, the analysis of the

45 three novels in question proved that their translations do not follow this trend and are independent of the ancient clichés. The matrix to these translations is rather the tradition of the translation of great classic novels as well as the Czech prose of the last decades of the 20 th century. The three translations are largely founded on the previous “domestication” of the Indian topic, as was already indicated, but they refuse to intertwine with it: they work in a substantially independent way, trying to render as faithfully as possible the original discourse of the source texts.

6. Conclusion

Evidently, the cultural context is an important phenomenon to be regarded when investigating translation. For this study, the context of perceiving the imported cultural element of “Indianness” had to be considered. In the Czech culture, the image of Native Americans was changing throughout the second half of the 20 th century. From the concept of rather primitive but noble savage of Cooper, through the heroic figures of adventure literature of various kinds, it modified into the notion of victims whose carefully preserved wisdom should by sought by their destroyers. In all these images, certain naivety and lack of reality-based information was observed. The translations of House Made of Dawn , Ceremony and Love Medicine perhaps did not receive due attention among the Czech public, nevertheless they showed another aspect of literature connected with Native Americans. This could be achieved particularly because of the character of the three novels that shed light on contemporary life on reservations without concealment, this being done in highly elaborate and original modes of writing. In this way, these novels enrich the Czech view of world literature. As for the translations themselves, they were effectuated in an unbiased manner, thus defying the Noble Savage and Western-movie heroic Indian myth. The striving for maintaining the styles of the source texts as well as their semantic and syntactic forms is another proof of the intention to present the novels to the Czech reader as faithfully as possible, which is in deep contrast to the early translations of The Last of the Mohicans that could be classified as adaptations. Nonetheless, despite the prevailing neutrality of translation, the Czech versions tend to gain the reader’s attention in a moderately more conspicuous ways than the originals

46 and hence to maintain a rather favourable attitude of the Czech audience towards the Native Americans. Lastly, an important remark should be made: the presented thesis uses as the basis of its main arguments five source texts and their translations. Consequently, the field of research was rather narrow and the conclusions derive basically from that field. The last point is then a suggestion for a wider study that would explore the translations filling in the gap between The Last of the Mohicans and The Education of Little Tree as well as the contemporaries of Momaday’s, Silko’s and Erdrich’s Czech versions. The area of intercultural relations between the Czech environment and Native Americans, or Indians, is rich and worth being refreshed with new views and concepts.

47 7. Bibliography

Primary sources: Carter, Forrest (2004) The Education of Little Tree. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Carter, Forrest (2000) Škola Malého stromu. Translated into Czech by Lubomír Mi řejovský. Praha: Kalich. Cooper, James Fenimore (1986) The Last of the Mohicans. New York: Penguin Books. Cooper, James Fenimore (1954) Poslední Mohykán. Translated into Czech by K řiš ťan Bém. Praha: Mladá fronta. Cooper, James Fenimore (1961) Poslední Mohykán. Translated into Czech by Vladimír Henzl. Praha: Albatros. Erdrich, Louise (1989) Love Medicine. New York: Bantam Books. Erdrichová, Louise (1994) Čarování s láskou. Translated into Czech by Alena Jindrov- Špilarová. Praha: Odeon. Momaday, N. Scott (1989) House Made of Dawn. New York: Harper&Row. Momaday, N. Scott (2001) Dům z úsvitu. Translated into Czech by Lucie Cenková Simerová. Praha: Argo. Silko, Leslie Marmon (1986) Ceremony. New York: Penguin Books. Silková, Leslie Marmon (1997) Ob řad. Translated into Czech by Alexandra Hubá čková. Praha: Mladá fronta.

Secondary sources: Bataille, Gretchen M. (1993) ‘American Indian Novels’. Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature 47: 61-66. Bruchac, Joseph (1987) ‘Striking the Pole: American Indian Humour’. Parabola 12.4: 22-29. Carter, Dan T. (1991) ‘The Transformation of a Klansman’. The New York Times October 4. . Dudek, Petr (1994) ‘Nenápadn ě tradi ční román L. E.’ Literární noviny 40: 12-3. Evasdaughter, Elizabeth N. (1988) ‘Healing Ethnic Hatred by Mixed-Breed Laughter’. MELUS 15/1: 83-95.

48 Ferguson, Charles A. and Shirley Brice Heath (1981) Language in the USA. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Givens, Bettye (1985) ‘N. Scott Momaday. A Slant of Light’. MELUS 12/1: 79-87. Hilská, Kate řina (1994) ‘Indiánská mozaika’. Literární noviny 40: 12. Ja řab, Josef (1994) ‘Louise Erdrichová: Čarování s identitou’. In L. Erdrichová, Čarování s láskou. Translated into Czech by Alena Jindrov-Špilarová. Praha: Odeon, 235-41. Ja řab, Josef (1997) ‘Ob řad jako scéná ř k napl ňování životních p říb ěhů’. In L. M. Silková, Ob řad. Translated into Czech by Alexandra Hubá čková. Praha: Mladá fronta, 281-7. Jouve, Vincent (2001) La poétique du roman. Paris: Armand Colin. Karlík, Petr, Marek Nekula and Zdenka Rousínová (eds.) (1995) Příru ční mluvnice češtiny. Praha: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny. King, Tom (1983) ‘N. Scott Momaday. Literature and the Native Writer’. MELUS 10/4: 66-72. Klaudy, Kinga (2009) ‘Explicitation’. In Baker, Mona and Gabriela Saldanha (2009) Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies. Oxford: Routledge. 104-9. Klobou čník, Jan (1954) ‘Doslov’. In J. F. Cooper, Poslední Mohykán. Translated into Czech by K řiš ťan Bém. Praha: Mladá fronta, 309-12. Lukeš, Jan (1997) ‘review of Ob řad ’. Literární noviny 27: 16. Merriam-Webster On-line. < http://www.merriam-webster.com> Nelson, Robert M. (1993) Place and Vision: The Function of Landscape in Native American Fiction . New York: Peter Lang. < https://facultystaff.richmond.edu/~rnelson/PandV/hmod.html> Newmark, Peter (1988) A Textbook of Translation. Harlow: Pearson Education. Ortiz, Simon J. (1981) ‘Towards a National Indian Literature: Cultural Authenticity in Nationalism’. MELUS 8/2: 7-12. Pospíšil, Tomáš and Don Sparling (2001) ‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at America’. Brno Studies in English 27: 73-84. Silberman, Robert (1993) ‘Opening the Text: Love Medicine and the Return of the Native American Woman’. In G. Vizenor (ed.), Narrative Chance. University of Oklahoma Press, 101-20. Slotkin, Richard (1986) ‘Introduction to the 1831 Edition’. In Cooper, James Fenimore (1986) The Last of the Mohicans. New York: Penguin Books. ix-xxviii.

49 Steiner, George (1975) After Babel. New York: Oxford UP. Šlajchrt, Viktor (1997) ‘review of Škola Malého stromu ’. Literární noviny 31: 16. Toury, Gideon (1995) Descriptive Translation Studies and beyond. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Treuer, David (2008) ‘Going Native: Why do writers pretend to be Indians?’. Slate . Vizenor, Gerald (ed.) (1993) Narrative Chance. University of Oklahoma Press. Wolfram, Walt (1981) ‘Varieties of American English’. In Charles A. Ferguson and Shirley Brice Heath, eds. (1981) Language in the USA. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. 44-68.

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8. Notes i The translation into English, as literary as possible, was made for the purpose of this thesis by its author. The Czech original is: “buržoasie, a zvlášt ě buržoasie americká, má ovšem d ůvod […] nemilovat [,] jeho um ění skreslovat a význam jeho díla snižovat.” (Kloboučník 1954: 309) ii The translation into English, as literary as possible, was made for the purpose of this thesis by its author. The Czech original is: “[v] p říb ěhu […] nás neupoutá jen dramatický spád událostí, ale i zobrazení života a zvyk ů indiánských kmen ů, lí čení krásy divoké p řírody a v neposlední řad ě Cooperova obrana a oslava původních obyvatel amerického kontinentu.” iii The translation into English, as literary as possible, was made for the purpose of this thesis by its author. The Czech original is: “pravd ěpodobn ě jde o autobiografii, nebo ť z každé v ěty cítíme osobní prožitek”. (Šlajchrt 1997: 16) iv The French literary theoretician Gérard Genette classifies the narrator types according to their relationship to the story and according to the narrative level. The former constitutes the homodiegetic narrator, i.e. present in the spatial and temporal universe of the novel, and the heterodiegetic narrator, i.e. absent from that universe. The latter criterion distinguishes extradiegetic narrator, i.e. the one who is not the object of the narrative, and intradiegetic narrator, who participates (fully or partially) in relating of the story. (Jouve 2001: 25) v It is never indicated which particular language is used. vi Though N. Scott Momaday is of Kiowa origin, he spent a certain time living in Jemez, New Mexico, where he took models for some characters of his novel. (Givens 1985: 82) vii The term “colloquial Czech” is used systematically for the expression “obecná čeština” throughout the whole thesis. viii Charles A. Ferguson and Shirley Brice Heath list four most widespread erroneous ideas on the speech of Native Americans. “They are: 1. There is only one Indian language, and it makes sense to ask whether someone ‘speaks Indian.’ 2. The Indian language is a primitive kind of language, having strange sounds, limited vocabulary, and undeveloped grammar, and it is not suitable for modern communication. 3. The Indian language is dying out and will soon be totally forgotten. 4. Most Indians cannot speak English properly and use a broken kind of English that includes the greeting ‘How!’, the exclamation ‘ugh!’, and the word ‘heap’ as a multipurpose quantifier and intensifier.” (1981: 111-2) It is the fourth point in particular that may be alluded here by Momaday and his translator. This presuppostition may be confirmed by another allusion to clichés mentioned later in the novel: “They [the whites]’re always calling you chief and talking about firewater and everything.” (Momaday 1968: 152) ix Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies defines explicitation as “the technique of making explicit in the target text information that is implicit in the source text.” (Klaudy 2009: 104) x This would be the case of pragmatic explicitation (Klaudy 2009: 106-7). xi “[T]ransference […] offers local colour and atmosphere, and in specialist texts enables the readership […] to identify the referent – particularly a name or a concept – in other texts (or conversations) without difficulty. […] At the other end [of the scale] there is componential analysis […] which excludes the culture and highlights the message.” (Newmark 1988: 96) xii

Abstract

Native Americans or Indians constitute a concept that is historically well established in the Czech culture. Since more than one hundred years, literature dealing with Native Americans was extensively translated into Czech. The English source texts were nevertheless authored by writers of non-Native origin and therefore the image of Native Americans they provided was often erroneous or idealized. N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko and Louise Erdrich represent a new phenomenon in the context of the Czech translation: the authors are of Native origin and their creation is based on personal experience of contemporary life of Indians on the reservations, in the cities etc. As the Czech perception of Native Americans was distorted in many ways, the research is focused on the possible influence of this perception, or its absence, on the translations of House Made of Dawn , Ceremony and Love Medicine . To be able to observe this, several translations of works representing the climate surrounding the image of Native Americans in the Czech culture are examined briefly. This basis provided, analyses of the translations of House Made of Dawn , Ceremony and Love Medicine follow, taking into consideration colloquiality and the transfer of cultural elements in particular. Finally, a wider cultural context is treated, i.e. the attention the three novels received in the Czech literary environment and the position they occupy in the context of the Czech translation of literature concerning Native Americans.

52

Resumé

Původní obyvatelé Severní Ameriky neboli Indiáni p ředstavují pojem, který je v české kultu ře historicky dob ře zako řen ěn. Literatura zabývající se Indiány je již více než sto let p řekládána do češtiny ve zna čném rozsahu. P ůvodní texty v angli čtin ě však byly v podstat ě bez výjimky vytvá řeny spisovateli neindiánského p ůvodu, a obraz, který o Indiánech podávaly, byl tak často mylný nebo zidealizovaný. N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko a Louise Erdrich jsou v kontextu českého p řekladu novým jevem: tito spisovatelé jsou indiánského p ůvodu a jejich tvorba se zakládá na osobní zkušenosti se sou časným životem Indián ů v rezervacích či ve m ěstech. Práv ě z toho d ůvodu, že české vnímání amerických Indián ů bylo v mnoha ohledech zkreslené, zam ěř uje se tato práce na možný, nebo naopak chyb ějící, vliv tohoto vnímání, na p řeklady román ů House Made of Dawn , Ceremony a Love Medicine . Pro lepší vhled do problematiky nejprve krátce p ředstavíme n ěkolik p řeklad ů, které vystihují atmosféru, která obklopovala obraz Indiánů v české kultu ře. Po tomto uvedení následují analýzy p řeklad ů House Made of Dawn , Ceremony a Love Medicine . Obzvláštní pozornost je v ěnována hovorovosti a p řevodu specifických kulturních pojm ů. Záv ěrem zohled ňujeme širší kulturní kontext, tedy míru pozornosti, jaké se on ěm třem román ům dostalo a jaké místo zaujaly v kontextu českého p řekladu o severoamerických Indiánech.

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