In Lit_cast Slovakia #25 David Short, scholar and translator from Czech and Slovak, talks to Julia Sherwood about some of the staggering number of books he has translated, about grappling with ambiguities and archaisms in Vladislav Vančura’s works and deciphering the mix of Czech and Slovak in the writing of 18th century Slovak writer Jozef Ignác Bajza. He reveals his preferred English rendition of Hrabal’s words pábení and pábitel and explains why České Budějovice might be the only place in the Czech Republic where people chat away in pidgin (Tok Pisin) in local pubs.
© Nguyen Phuong Thao (Reflex)
Daniela Hodrová: Prague, I See a City
Jan Němec: Ways of Writing About Love
Bohumil Hrabal: Pirouettes on a Postage Stamp
Vladislav Vančura: Pole orná a válečná
Richard: Gaudeamus
Vojtěch Novotný: Notebooks from New Guinea: Field Notes of a Tropical Biologist
Jozef Ignác Bajza: René mláďenca príhodi a skúsenosti
Anton Bernolák Lexicon Slavicum Bohemico-Latino-Germanico-Ungaricum
Edmund Pascha: Easter Mass