Publication details
Czech Literary Translation Histories 1918 – 2010: A Quantitative Perspective [presentation]
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2012 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | Globally speaking, translation history is an area of study which aims on indexing and reviewing selected past translations from both quantitative and qualitative point of view and thus attempts to uncover links that connect translators' work to various social, cultural, and historical variables. The process of such a study encompasses a number of steps from raw data collection and database building to statistical analyses and in-depth interpretation. Following a similar research pattern, this paper presents one of the first attempts on a data-driven overview of English-to-Czech literary translation (published books only) of the period between 1918 and 2010. The study draws data from a vast, newly-established database of Czech literary translation which has been assembled over the last four years, as one of the main outputs of a PhD research project funded by the Czech Science Foundation. Using a variety of statistical measures, the study reveals patterns such as overall translation production, author introduction, and translation delay, and their dependence on social and political developments of particular periods. All in all, the paper provides a concise model picture of the situation of Czech literary translation in 1918-2010 combining hard data with references to broad sociopolitical and economic conditions of the country. In addition, it shows how different English-speaking backgrounds of the original authors may have, in different periods, shaped translators's choices and thus influenced opportunities of the Czech readership. |