Translation into Slovak

Súčasná umelecká-literárna tvorba jednej z najväčších krajín Európy-Ukrajiny zostáva pre slovenského recipienta pomerne neznámou veličinou, rovnako ako aj jej dejiny. Slovenský preklad románu Čierny havran aspoň v niečom zapĺňa túto medzeru. Vasyľ Škľar v próze s historickou tematikou spracoval donedávna (do 90-tych rokov 20. storočia) tabuizovanú tému o krátkom období ukrajinskej samostatnosti v rokoch 1917-1920. Tento ukrajinský spisovateľ má titul kontroverzného a zároveň najčítanejšieho autora súčasnosti. V príspevku sa zaoberáme dominantnými translatologickými metódami, ktoré slovenský prekladateľ Vladimír Čerevka aplikoval v procese prekladu tohto diela. Pokúsime sa nájsť odpoveď na otázky, ktoré sa vynorili v procese čítania originálu a jeho komparácie so slovenským prekladom. Historický román je nasýtený veľkým množstvom reálií, pomenovaní vojenských hodností, príslušníkov rôznych vojenských a politických skupín, jedál, nápojov, dopravných prostriedkov, a pod., ktoré sú zaujímavé z prekladateľského pohľadu.
Summary: The current artistic-literary work one of the largest countries of Europe-Ukraine remains a relatively unknown quantity for the Slovak recipient, as well as the history of this country. The Slovak translation of the novel Black Raven at least fills this gap. In the historical prose Vasyl Shkljar dealed with a taboo topic (until the 1990s) about a short period of Ukrainian independence between 1917 and 1920. The Ukrainian writer is known for his controversy and at the same time he is the most widely read author in the present. The main focus in the conference paper is on dominant translatological methods applied by Slovak translator Vladimír Čerevka in the process of translation of this work. We will try to find answers to the questions that emerged in the process of reading the original and its comparison with the Slovak translation. The historical novel is saturated with a great number of terms associated with the culture of the nation, military ranks, members of various military and political groups, food, drinks, etc., which are interesting from a translation point of view.

In this presentation, we discuss dubbing in Slovakia in comparison with its Czech counterpart. The theoretical background of this form of translation is introduced shortly. To further illustrate the current situation in this area, the results of a questionnaire with more than 1 000 respondents are presented. These findings illustrate the opinion of the Slovak audience on both Czech and Slovak dubbing productions. A comparative analysis of the original, Czech and Slovak version of an American TV series Glee is also presented. The analysis is concluded with possible causes behind the current state of dubbing.

The paper is based on our empirical research into literary translation criticism. It confronts the views of Slovak translation theorists on translation criticism with a sample of texts evaluating literary translations into Slovak, excerpted from the 2011 and 2012 issues of three literary magazines, three periodicals specialized in linguistics, literature, philology
and translation theory and from a recently founded magazine specialized in translation criticism. Our ambition was to inform of the current state of literary translation criticism in Slovakia and point out the multiple approaches to the subject. We suggest that different types of literary translation criticism pursue different objectives and are destined to different groups of readers. All of them are productive and useful because they reflect the current situation of the local literary and cultural milieu.

There are five means for expressing the passive meaning in the Slovak language: analytic passive, reflexive passive, transformation in active construction (with an indefinite personal object), modal expression with an active infinitive, and circumlocution. Authors of modern translations of the Bible use the whole range. However, while in the profane context the analytic passive is rare (as usual in non-translation Slovak), its numbers are much higher in the case of the so-called theological passive. The question is: why?
First, we tried to find an answer within the semantic frame of the theological passive: as if the analytic passive voice was the best expression for the fact that the unexpressed agent is God. But this does not reflect the truth. All five means equally leave the agent in the background. The differences between them are technical – each has its own grammatical (and lexical) limitations.
Another answer can be found in the translation tradition. Preference of analytic passives characterizes the Lutheran tradition, which has its roots in the Czech Bible of Kralice, influenced by German Reformation translations. From this point of view, the analytic passives can be seen as an attempt to produce “high” language of the Bible. By contrast, Catholic translations, which were made primarily with pastoral intentions, could use the language of the people with greater liberty because the “high” Bible of the Catholics was still the Latin Vulgate. So, in Catholic translations vernacular means predominate: reflexive passive and active with the indefinite personal subject.
This tradition of “high” biblical language is certainly responsible for greater frequency of analytic passives in our translations. In addition to that, nowadays we can also presume direct influence of the English (and German) language. The last factor that must be taken into consideration is poorer competence of exegetes as translators.

This paper deals with dubbing and its specifics in Slovakia. The categorization of countries according to their preference in audiovisual translation is reconsidered and redesigned around the current data regarding audiovisual translation in Europe. The focus of the article then shifts to dubbing in Slovakia and to some extent Czech Republic, where there is a strong preference for dubbing over subtitling in television production. A heuristic basis for the process of dubbing production based on personal experience and observations of the author is introduced and some issues that arise during this process are addressed. The current situation and changes in comparison to the past in the (Czecho-)Slovak dubbing are depicted and analyzed. The paper offers a brief outlook on dubbing from a rather empirical point of view. Introduction The tradition of dubbing is characteristic of only a few countries in Europe. Audiovisual translation (AVT) has a much richer history and tradition in those countries that naturally felt the need to dub or subtitle what was produced in other states and in foreign languages. Some countries opted for subtitling, others for dubbing or voice-over. Even today, we can call certain countries " dubbing countries " and other " subtitling countries " (Gottlieb in Baker, 2001 p. 244) and, although this division has turned out to be insufficient (see e.g. Szarkowska, 2005), it is clear that the tradition of dubbing as a prevailing form of audiovisual translation is present only in some countries. This paper looks closely at how the countries are divided according to their prevailing audiovisual translation preference and then takes a closer look at the process of dubbing production in Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

V tejto kapitole z vysokoškolskej učebnice možno nájsť prehľad vývinu anglicky písanej literatúry Spojeného kráľovstva a Írska. Kapitola je doplnená o interpretácie kľúčových diel a ukážky existujúcich slovenských (v niekoľkých prípadoch i českých) prekladov.

This paper analyzes Czech and Slovak dubbed versions of the first season of the American TV series Glee. The primary focus is on the Slovak version which exemplifies the low quality of Slovak dubbing for commercial televisions. The Czech version is used to demonstrate more adequate solutions to the problems that both versions had to deal with. A number of excerpts from the original and the dubbed versions is presented together with author’s commentary. The paper discusses semantic shifts and errors in translation for dubbing, dialogues – screen correspondences, some translation strategies and general approaches of the Slovak and Czech versions.