SOURCE: Hrabik-Samal, Mary. “Case Study in the Problem of Czech-English Translation with Special Reference to the Works of Bohumil Hrabal.” In Varieties of Czech: Studies in Czech Sociolinguistics, edited by Eva Eckert, pp. 137-42. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1993.

In the following essay, Hrabik-Samal examines the difficulties of sensitively translating works such as Hrabal's from Czech into English.

“Translating is a form of masochism,” growled my usually mild and understanding spouse as an answer to my question, how to say kulový filek in English. This was the fourth or fifth time that I interrupted his watching of an exciting hockey game to consult him on some finer point of vocabulary or euphony. I was in the throes of translating an excerpt from Bohumil Hrabal's Kdo jsem into the King's English. “It is not,” I sputtered, “It is …”

As I tried to finish sentence, I was transported backwards in time to the...