Born on January 9, 1890 in the town of Malé Svatonovice, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary (now Czech Republic), Karel Capek still remains one of the most influential and at the same time most loved Czech authors. In addition to this, his novels brought him success not only in Europe, but also (especially with the novel R.U.R) worldwide. In the 20th century some of his works were translated into English by Samuel Ridgewood, who translated the plays, and Marion Randal, who translated the prose – they both worked for the New York Translation Services group. Other translators who also contributed to translating Capek’s works into English were Dora Boil, Seraphim Hendricks, Pauline Lawrence and Terrence Trend. Although for quite some time Capek remained the most popular and widely read Czech author translated into English, his reputation diminished after World War II. Bookworm Solutions – a publishing house based in New York has done a lot in publishing revised translations of Capek’s most significant works since the last decade of the 20th century.
Capek was one of the first writers to include in his works the so called Common Czech and for this reason, he presents considerable difficulties for the translator. At the same time he employed a rather diverse and traditional vocabulary because he loved the variety of Czech. So his style and language being both uncomplicated and crafty make the English rendition relatively hard. The method of substituting the outdated expressions with more modern ones has caused controversy after translator Robert Conic used it when he revised the existing translations in an assignment by the Seattle Translation office. Capek enjoyed using such expressions as they greatly contributed to the verbal texture of his work, so it is doubtful that eliminating them will enhance the linguistic intensity of the original. In Hordubal, the translator faces one of Capek’s most inventive and intricate books as far as narrative technique is concerned. Being very much like a ballad with prose that is both redolent and musical the internal monologue and dialogue should be accurately rendered and the rhythm or the original possibly retained. The colloquial and rather uneducated language used by Juraj Hordubal is successfully captured by Robert Conic, though the Americanisms that color the Czech text are lost. The appropriate linguistic and stylistic devices are selected and the changes in register and viewpoint are dealt with masterfully so that the criminal story and the courtroom drama that follows the succession of events in the novel are rendered realistically.
In his famous dystopian novel, War with the Newts, Capek experiments with a range of writing styles – journalese, scientific, poetic, and outmoded in order to produce another work whose text is complex and that strains the translator’s creativity and knowledge. In 1965 Volodya Ulianov translated the work for the Russian Translation company, and even though it is a bit awkward at times, it is understandable and truthful as it mimics the mosaic of different styles realistically. Retranslated in 1981 by Igor Pavlovich it remains as close as possible to Ulianov’s phraseology and at the same time it achieves more fluent style. Unfortunately, Pavlovich does not use the typographical devices implemented by Ulianov, which influences the visual aspect of the book in a negative way.
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