Like-minded agents and established consecrators: Czech-to-German poetry translators, 1948–1989

ABSTRACT

This study explores the translation of Czech poetry into German during the Cold War (1948–1989) from the perspective of translators, taking into account their socio-biographical background and diverse activities. Applying an agent-oriented approach, it considers these translators’ motivations which were closely tied to their personal interests and the symbolic capital that they brought to or gained from their work. A quantitative analysis reveals commonalities across these individuals’ linguistic knowledge, biographies and non-translation activities. Even so, the uniqueness of each person’s trajectory complicates efforts to establish categories of translators. For deeper insight into the conditions in which these translators worked, the article turns to the cases of Konrad Balder Schäuffelen and various translators of the author Jaroslav Seifert.

KEYWORDS:

• Czech-to-German literary transfer
• poetry translation
• Czech-to-German poetry translators
• translation and the cold war
• translation and migration

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Translations of Seifert’s poetry had previously appeared in anthologies of Czech poetry published in West and East Germany. In 1970, the Czechoslovak national publishing house Orbis also published a German version of Seifert’s collection Mozart v Praze (“Mozart in Prag”), translated by Otto František Babler, a bilingual translator from Czechoslovakia.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Czech Science Foundation [grant number GJ20-02773Y]. This text was proofread within the project Development of Research and Popularisation Resources of the Institute of Czech Literature of the Czech Academy of Sciences, CZ.02.2.69/0.0/0.0/18_054/0014701, co-funded by the EU.

Notes on contributors

Julia Miesenböck

Julia Miesenböck pursues research on Czech-to-German literary transfer at the Institute of Czech Literature of the Czech Academy of Sciences. She is about to complete a PhD project about Czech-to-German poetry transfer at the Institute of Translation Studies, Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague and works as a translator between Czech and German.