Vladimira

The Slovak story by František Švanter is a real challenge for translators. Firsty, we have to keep
in mind that Švanter is the representative of “naturizmus” movement that is characterized by lyrical
descriptions of nature. These scenes are quite hard to visualize as we can see at the beginning of the
story. Secondly, we have to pay attention to the vocabulary. He uses some words that are outdated
and it’s difficult to understand them in these days as for example "omachnateli nekonečnou tisinou“.
A question arises, does we have to keep the Slovak diacritical marks? Like in the name “Magduša”? I
would definitely keep it like it, but for the English listener it does not represent anything. English knows
some diminutives, but they don’t use it so often as Slovaks do e.g. Žilôčka sa nechveje. Kvapôčka krvi
nezazvoní. What’s interesting though is that we can find diminutives also for adjectives “Jediná rovina,
jedinká cesta” or for adverbs “Chodí pomaly a tichučko ako smrť”. The epizeuxis as “Utekali sme,
utekali” is used to intensify the action, but it’s not typical for English to translate it “as we ran, we ran”.
We can also find there some expressive expressions such as „ju šľahali blesky strachu“ or synonyms as
“mládenec or parobok” that we should try to find in English too.
As for the second story, it’s easier to understand, it’s more reader-friendly.
We have to keep in mind what’s appropriate and what isn’t. The publishing house doesn’t have to
publish your book if there are some vulgar words. When translating swearwords, we have to be very
attentive, because Slovaks are more sensitive to such words. When they argue - “Ty debil! Ty idiot! Ty
kok“ ….. Metaphors and/or idioms are strongly culturally conditioned. So, it requires to either look for
an exact equivalent if there is such in the language intended to translate to or seek another
metaphorical phrase which would express something similar or just make a literal translation and
knowing that it could lead to a different path and a totally wrong translation, e.g. the whole living world
has gone into its shell and the shell was bathed in a strange ethereal light. A similar problem presents
the translation of slang terms, since they differ from language to language and they are basically
understood by "insiders" and give you less room for translation than metaphors. It would be strange
if they would speak in Slovak because we wouldn’t know that the man is an Englishman.