6
1 INTRODUCTION
This bachelor thesis aims to analyse and compare novel Postřižiny by
Bohumil Hrabal and its English translation Cutting it short by James D. Naughton.
Hrabal's novels are known for richness of their language, which makes them
interesting and challenging for translators. I decided to choose this particular novel
because I admire Postřižiny for its special atmosphere and poetics of the 1920's and I
was wondering how (or if) this can be transmitted from one language to another.
Moreover, thanks to colourfulness of its language, Postřižiny offers a wide range of
points which can be analysed and discussed.
The translation analysis is focused on direct speech which offers a lot
of items to compare (dialect, cultural words etc.); therefore, the theoretical part of the
thesis is dedicated to spoken language. Firstly, this part deals with typical features of
spoken interaction, briefly describes differences between spoken and written
interaction and introduces three types of talk.
Second part of the thesis is dedicated to spoken varieties of Czech and
English. Firstly, Spoken Czech is discussed with special emphasis on Common
Czech. Secondly, spoken varieties of English are introduced and briefly described.
Finally, there is a sub-chapter dedicated to chosen parts of Czech and English
grammar. These parts are: word order, tenses, simple sentence, compound and
complex sentence.
The last part of the theoretical part contains four sub-chapters. The
first of them is dealing with methods of translation based on Newmark's theory of
translation. Therefore, there are eight methods of translation mentioned: word-for-
word translation, literal translation, faithful translation, semantic translation,
adaption, free translation, idiomatic translation and communicative translation.
Second sub-chapter is aimed at equivalent effect, its importance for a good
translation and ways how it can be achieved. As for the third sub-chapter, it deals
with translation criticism and describes five stages of its plan: text analysis, the
translator's purpose, comparison of the target language text with the source language
7
text, quality of translation and the translation's future within the target language
culture. Finally, the last sub-chapter aims at translation of dialect, because this is
frequently discussed in the practical part of my thesis.
The practical part of this bachelor thesis consists of translation
analysis of the two texts mentioned above. It is based on equivalent theory of
translation. I worked with extracts chosen from the original texts and imported into
translation corpus which is incorporated into the fifth chapter of the thesis. The
translation analysis follows Newmark's plan of translation criticism and in
accordance with it there are five sub-chapters included - each of them is equivalent to
individual steps of the plan. The heart of the practical part is the third sub-chapter
containing the corpus and following translation analysis with emphasis on interesting
items categorized in correspondence with their common features.
The bachelor thesis is closed with a conclusion in which I, at first,
describe and summarize my work. Furthermore, I state my conclusions and findings
resulting from my bachelor thesis.
8
2 SPOKEN INTERACTION
This chapter is aimed to cover general characteristics of spoken
interaction. In the first sub-chapter, spoken interaction is introduced by pointing out
its typical features, whereas the second sub-chapter compares spoken language with
written language. In the third sub-chapter, the types of talk are discussed with special
attention to conversation which is the most common type of talk in the text I am
going to analyse.
2.1
Typical features of spoken interaction
Spoken interaction is performed by speech which is transitory and
processed in real time. In addition to speech, spoken interaction involves non-
linguistics noises, e.g. laughter, whisper and sighs as well as gestures and facial
expressions (Dontcheva-Navratilova 66).
According to Anna-Brita Stenstörm, spoken interaction can be
described by two main principles:
speakers take turns
1
speakers cooperate
Nevertheless, this does not mean that the listener always waits for the
speaker to finish. In fact, in ordinary spoken interaction the speakers disagree,
contradict each other and object to each other's ideas. Usually, there is a dominant
speaker and the other party's contribution is reduced to so-called "backchannels".
Backchannels are not considered to be proper turns as they do not involve a speaker
shift. Typical backchannels are "m", "yes", "ok", "I see" or "really". They provide
positive impact on the smooth flow of conversation. Moreover, they help the speaker
to take, keep and yield the turn and to appeal for feedback.
According to the way of taking turns, we divide three types of speaker
1 A turn involves everything the current speaker says before the next speaker takes over. (Stenstörm
4)