500彩票网

Books in Japanese libraries have classification numbers, for example, books categorized as "Literature" are marked with a three-digit number starting from 9 on the top row. According to the Nippon Decimal Classification System, the numbers 910, 920, and 930 are assigned to "Japanese Literature," "Chinese Literature," and "English and American Literature, respectively. However, the classification for each language does not continue indefinitely, and 990 is designated as "Literature of Other Languages." Simultaneously, the bookshelf space of the 990 series is overwhelmingly small compared with that of other literature. What is the nature of such "small" literature? What barriers exist when such "small" literature is translated, and how do translators overcome them? These questions were the starting point for this book.
 
Specifically, the book explores the Czech language culture in Bohemia, where German was the primary language of administration, education, and culture at the beginning of the 19th century. The Czech population developed various activities to expand the opportunities for expression in the Czech language. The Czechs were unable to develop their cultural capital in the Czech language because its vocabulary size and usage were limited compared with German. Josef Jungmann (1773-1847) expanded the expressive potential of the Czech language by increasing the vocabulary through translation and compiling dictionaries and collections of examples.
 
The Czech and German speech spaces intersected in Czechoslovakia, which became an independent state after World War I. The translator Pavel Eisner (1889-1958) was an active mediator between these two languages. He introduced Czech literature to the German-speaking world and vice versa by making use of various paratexts, such as prefaces, commentaries, and notes. Eisner was of Jewish descent. He appeared to have found his calling in translation and translated many works, including Franz Kafka.
 
In the second half of the 20th century, translation assumed another function in the Czech Republic during the Cold War. Milan Kundera (1929-2023), a Czech-French novelist, moved to France after 1975 and was keenly aware of the drastic decrease in the number of readers of the Czech original; he recognized that the value of the French translation was on par with the Czech original. However, the Czech edition published after the Velvet Revolution included a paratext,“Author's Afterword,” which was not included in the French translation, presenting different views of the novelist than those in the translated version.
 
This book examines translation in Bohemia from the perspectives of cultural capital and paratexts, describes a part of Czech literary history that spans multiple languages, and explores various translation issues specific to "minor" languages.
 

(Written by ABE Kenichi, Professor, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology / 2024)