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The Czech literary scholar Jiři Levy (1926–1967) has gained international recognition for his great contribution to the general theory of translation and has greatly contributed to the history and theory of translation into the Czech language in his books Uměni překladu (1963; Die literarische Ubersetzung: Theorie einer Kunstgattung, German transl., 1969; The Art of Translation, English transl., 2011) and Česke theorie překladu (1957, Czech Theories of Translation), respectively. His other distinguished research included versology, theatrology and various studies on British and American writers. This paper focuses on two related but less discussed aspects of his oeuvre – his contribution to Czech Anglophone Studies and his early translations of foreign poetry into Czech. It chronologically surveys Levy’s papers in the field of Anglophone Studies and outlines their contribution to Levy’s translatological oeuvre. It also includes their bibliography and a hitherto unpublished tentative bibliography of his Czech translations of poetry with two specimens of his translations.

The paper surveys domestication, one of the characteristic features of a number of translations in the early period of the Czech National Revival in the first decades of the nineteenth century. At that time, translations played a role of enormous cultural significance in the development of Czech literature, making up for as yet unrepresented genres and providing models to enrich the corpus. A particular set of circumstances developed due to the social and political conditions of the Czech nation: after a period of gradual decline of the Czech language following the Thirty Years’ War, the Czech language was gradually regaining the status of a language of literature and science. From the twenties onwards the rising middle-class reading public demanded entertaining belles-lettres in Czech. Many of these translations were freely adapted mainly from contemporary popular German prose without crediting the original author and at times even plagiarized, as the writer Karolina Světlá, well-read in both literatures, later recorded in her memoirs. This paper presents two typical examples of localization of English pieces of literature. In his translation of Thomas Gray’s An Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, Josef Jungmann replaced the English historical figures (Hampden, Milton and Cromwell) with Czech ones (Thurn, Rokycana and Žižka), while Jan Kaška replaced the London characters and setting with Prague in his translation of a piece from Charles Dickens’s Sketches by Boz. These examples show how domesticated poems and tales typically preserved the original plot with localized characters and setting. At present we can see an increase in scholarly research of the original and translated literature of the period.

This paper reflects upon the relevance of the ideas of Peter Newmark to legal translation. Even though legal translation was not the focus of Newmark’s interest, he makes several references to legal translation in his writings, mostly in relation to authoritative statements, which is a broad category of texts introduced by Newmark and including legal and administrative texts. The paper provides a critical analysis of his ideas and puts them into today’s legal translation studies context. The second part of the paper includes a brief and non-exhaustive overview of Newmark’s con-cepts that have been echoed in legal translation studies, namely his list of translation techniques, and his dichotomy of semantic and communicative translation.

The paper describes the state of legal interpreting training in the Czech Republic, which, as it currently stands, focuses on legal terminology rather than specific interpreting techniques. Against this background of the existing training opportunities, the paper presents a pilot course on legal interpreting, including court interpreting, for BA and MA students of English for Translators and Interpreters at Palacký University Olomouc. It describes the design of the course, its content and the methodology applied. Specifically, it describes the different settings addressed in the courses and the materials and activities used to train interpreters for these settings, including a mock trial. Finally, the paper also discusses the challenges and potential room for further development.

Healthcare interpreting has been a topic of interest for various fields of study around the world for over 60 years; however, it has not yet been discussed comprehensively in the Czech Republic. This paper aims to lay the groundwork for future research in the country by providing a basic overview of the research findings abroad. Drawing on the summary article by Pöchhacker (2021), the contribution first examines studies and other works on interpreting in healthcare by researchers in fields other than translation studies, such as nursing, psychiatry, linguistics, and social sciences from the 1960s to the early 1990s. Afterwards, the paper compiles the findings of more recent studies from Africa; Asia and Australia; the United States, Canada and Mexico; and Northern, Southern, and Central Europe, concluding with remarks on the few works on healthcare interpreting that have been produced in the Czech Republic.

The grammar of a language constantly changes. Synchronically this change is manifest in the emergence of alternate grammatical constructions. The side-by-side of old and new variants is part of a speaker’s language competence. Thus, a greater awareness of variation, which would allow learners to contextualize different variants, at least receptively, is demanded for the teaching German as a foreign language. The present paper investigates how five different textbook series of German as a foreign language deal with five different language change phenomena: (1) explicitly in productive exercises and grammatical overviews, (2) (for three of the five textbooks) implicitly in their audio- and reading material, which was compiled into a corpus. The distribution of variants was compared with the distribution in authentic texts, available in corpora of written and spoken speech. It turns out that the productive exercises aimed at the acquisition of grammatical constructions are limited to constructions, which are typical for written language use, although some textbooks draw attention to grammatical variants. In audio-material and reading texts, grammatical variation between new and old constructions, which is manifest most clearly in the distinction between oral and written speech, is present, but remains uncommented. On the basis of these data the paper argues for a more authentic approach and a more tolerant attitude towards phenomena of grammatical change in teaching German as a foreign language, which also includes their adequate production.

The topic of this paper is the role of German language history in the context of university-based German studies abroad (so called “Auslandsgermanistik”) with focus on German studies in the Czech Republic and selected didactic aspects. Above all, the paper aims to present a project of a new collection of texts and tasks on German language history, which is currently being developed at the Department of Germanic Studies (Faculty of Arts, Charles University). The paper comments on the specific features of the book, including a focus on German texts from the Czech Lands and interdisciplinary orientation, among others. The appendix contains excerpts from the forthcoming publication.

The current emergency caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has necessitated distance interpreting training. This paper presents data collected from two online questionnaires distributed among students of translation and interpreting at the Department of English and American Studies, Faculty of Arts at Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica, Slovakia. The first online questionnaire (May–June 2020) was filled in by 26 respondents who completed 10 weeks of distance interpreting training in the summer semester of the 2019/2020 academic year. The second, identically structured, online questionnaire (December 2020–January 2021) was filled in by 36 respondents who completed distance interpreting training (10 weeks) at the same department in the winter semester of the 2020/2021 academic year. The paper also presents data on three interpreting teachers, which come from an e-mail survey and map the level of their ability to work with technology, their time availability, experience with online interpreting, or changes in approach and methods during distance interpreting training. The paper focuses on several aspects of distance interpreting training from students’ point of view, such as the form of interpreting training; frequency and regularity of tasks; time preparation; form, frequency, and contribution of the feedback; ideal training model; pros and cons of distance vs. traditional training; recommendations for its improvement. It tries to determine whether distance interpreting training can compete with traditional training from students’ point of view. Based on the questionnaire findings, recommendations for streamlining such training in the future are presented.

This paper presents the particularities of translations of Czech literature into Spanish published in Mexico and focuses on the role of the translator in the translation-publishing process and on the genesis of a translation. The first aim is to discuss the particularities of literary translation from Czech into Spanish in relation to the book market in Spanish-speaking countries and to draw attention to the role of Spain and the different contexts of translation production outside this country. The second objective of this paper is to give voice to the five interviewed translators and, with the help of the obtained material and their statements, to interpret the relevant particularities of translation-publishing process on the axis author – original – translator – publisher – translation – reader. The main part of the paper consists of individual testimonies of contemporary translators whose Spanish translations of one or more Czech literary titles were published in Mexico. The testimonies, obtained by the method of interview, brought a new insight into the topic of Mexican translations of Czech literature and valuable information on the circumstances of a particular translation work’s genesis. The source of the presented results and the quoted translators’ statements is the research by Strnadová (2021) presented in the rigorosum thesis Translations of Czech Literature in Mexico, taking into account the Czech translations of Mexican literature.

The aim of this paper is to present how the online interpreter training was conducted during the Covid-19 pandemic at the Institute of Translation Studies (Charles University, Faculty of Arts) in the last three semesters (during the academic years 2019/2020 and 2020/2021). In this paper, we try to describe the advantages and disadvantages of distance interpreter training (DIT) both from the point of view of teachers and students, we explain how the online lectures of simultaneous and consecutive interpreting were organized and we also discuss the differences of the platforms that we used. The students were administered a questionnaire to explore the learners’ attitudes and feelings regarding remote interpreting in interpreter training with a view to identifying the possibilities and limits of this type of learning experience compared with conventional forms of instruction. The latter part of the paper will comment on the most interesting student responses.

This paper focuses on the first substantial translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses into modern Hebrew, whose author was Yehoshua Friedman (1885–1934). The first part of the paper sets Friedman into the context of modern Hebrew classical philology and explores the character of his verse. The core of the text consists of three case studies of selected excerpts from Ovid’s story of Apollo and Daphne (Met. I, 456–465; 481–482; 545–552). Based on detailed linguistic and stylistic analysis of these texts, I argue that Friedman did not simply adopt a pre-existing linguistic register, but rather created an original Ovidian idiom that helped to win him lasting significance in the history of Hebrew translations from classical languages.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the Japanese proletarian literary movement had an enormous impact on East Asian writers, who often translated and adapted Japanese tales. Amongst them, Hayama Yoshiki’s 1925 short story “Inbaifu” (The Prostitute) enjoyed great popularity. This paper focuses on the Taiwanese writer Lang-shi-sheng’s adaptation of “Inbaifu”, the 1935 “Yami” (Darkness), and Manchukuo writer Yuan Xi’s adaptation of the same Japanese source text, the 1938 short story “Shi tian” (Ten Days). By comparing the Taiwanese and Manchukuo stories, this paper suggests that both versions of “Inbaifu” reflect the Japanese debate on proletarian literature that was fashionable in East Asia in the 1930s. However, by resetting the stories in Taiwan and Manchukuo, respectively, the authors created cultural products that defy borders and simple nationalist interpretations.

The Chinese art song, yishu gequ 藝術歌曲, is a typical genre of New Music (Xin yinyue 新音樂) of the May Fourth Movement. Such pieces were primarily composed by Chinese graduates of European and American universities who found inspiration in European Romantic art songs, especially nineteenth-century German lieder. The existing Western literature about this genre emphasizes the connections between the Chinese art songs of the twentieth century and European Romantic songs and does not consider any relationship with the domestic Chinese tradition. Publications by Chinese scholars also do not examine in any detail specific connections to the Chinese tradition at the ideational level. As this paper demonstrates, the Chinese art songs that emerged during the May Fourth Movement were not created solely by following a Western model. Their uniqueness is the result of combining the search for “new culture” with the significant traces of domestic roots in the social role of music and the tradition of joining words and music in a single artistic whole. The paper first explores the emergence of the art song in the context of Chinese musical modernization, and then, through citing theoretical works and analyses of select compositions by three of the most famous art song composers – Xiao Youmei 萧友梅 (1884–1940), Zhao Yuanren 趙 元任 (1892–1982), and Huang Zi 黃自 (1904–38) – it demonstrates the various approaches to creating art songs, especially in terms of how they were related to the domestic tradition. I have chosen examples that allow us to observe the gradual adoption of an originally European genre in the Chinese cultural environment and various factors that influenced how this genre changed. I also examine the changing ways in which this foreign genre interacted with the domestic Chinese environment.

The paper discusses the role of directionality in translations from Czech to German language. Its main purpose is to detect differences in the translation process between native and non-native translations, with a special focus on the translation strategies chosen. The empiric part consists of an investigation of a sample from students‘ translations, produced during practical lessons on translation of non-literary texts into German at Charles University. Some of the examples discussed in the paper show differences between native and non-native translations on three different linguistic levels: lexical, syntactic and pragmatic. While the lexical and syntactic level show a tendency towards inhibitation of L1 structures, the pragmatic level is more likely to transfer source language norms into the target text.

The aim of this paper is to discuss some of the challenges resulting from the fact that classes in translation taught at the Institute of Translation Studies (Charles University, Prague, Czechia) in its double degree programme offered jointly with Universität Leipzig are attended by students whose mother tongue is not Czech. Drawing on the results of action research conducted in two different translation courses, we describe the challenges that this non-standard situation represents for the teacher, how teaching methods need to be adapted, what implications this distorted directionality has on student assessment, how this combination of students with different mother tongues can enrich translation seminars and their participants, and what benefits it brings to the interaction between teacher and student and between the students themselves.

The paper is dealing with the works of Gábor Devecseri (1917–1971), who was one of the most prominent and eminent translators of ancient literature in Hungary. The special focus is on the Ovidian tradition: Devecseri published his translation of Metamophoses in 1964. The first part of the paper demonstrates his methodology tracing his translation strategies with the special regards to the translations from the 19th century. The author bases on the manuscripts and documents (mostly the textual variants of translations) conserved in the manuscript collection of the Petőfi Literary Museum (Budapest). The second part examines the influence of the translation of Metamorphoses on Devecseri’s poetry and novel writing techniques. The Ovidian elements are especially helpful for Gábor Devecseri to modulate his authorial relations to the cultural memory, to the questions of identity, and to the dialogue between photograph and text.

This paper links three areas: reflections on translation as a decision process, the field of institutional translation, and translation manuals / style guides. Inherently, human translation is a decision-making process. As such, the process is subject to standards, specifications, and other restricting features. This is true for both literary and non-literary translation. The present article looks at institutional translation through a decision process–prism, paying special attention to translation manuals and style guides. The paper is divided into two main parts: In the first part, Jiří Levý’s concept of translation as a decision-making process is formalized to establish a model. The model eventually includes a taxonomy of ten distinctions: (1) Selecting the text to be translated; (2) Primary level vs. meta level; (3) Subsumption of (definitional and selective) instructions; (4) Acceptance vs. non-acceptance of instructions; (5) Quantitative vs. qualitative aspect of decision-making; (6) The quantity of decisions made by a translator compared to those taken by the original author; (7) Necessary vs. unnecessary surplus decisions; (8) Motivated vs. unmotivated decisions; (9) Selective instructions; (10) Conscious vs. unconscious decisions. The model is then represented in a concise flow chart. The paper also compares relevant passages of the earlier English version of Translation as Decision Process (1967) and the original Czech version from 1971. The comparison shows a shift in Levý’s understanding of translation process over time. In the second part, the above-mentioned taxonomy is applied to non-literary translation, specifically to the highly regulated context of institutional translations. Since institutional translation is predominantly governed by (written and unwritten) rules that affect translators’ decisions, it is translation manuals and style guides that play a key role in a translator’s decision process. Linking the newly devised model of the decision process with such manuals and/or style guides has proven to be a suitable way of creating a taxonomy for the latter, which has always been missing from research into such resources. The model bridges differences between various types of institutional discourse (here, supranational, corporate, and non-profit organisations are scrutinized). The current paper proposes a general systemization grid for translation manuals and style guides, by allocating individual resources to individual distinctions (No. 1–10) of the model. In addition, the contribution also points to the potential of game theory in exploring institutional translation.

Charisma is a complex phenomenon. This fact manifests itself not least in an abundance of myths, half-truths, and unanswered research questions. Most charisma myths have not been uncontroversial, and since empirical investigations have advanced quickly over the past years, we take the opportunity in this paper to revisit ten of the most important myths that relate primarily, but not exclusively, to the linguistic and phonetic aspects of charisma, such as the interactions between verbal and nonverbal and between segmental and prosodic cues, as well as the roles of breathing and fundamental frequency in charisma perception. The result is a very diverse picture. Some myths, including very old ones, can be accepted. Others must be rejected in the light of contradicting empirical results. The status of some myths remains unsettled. Furthermore, in discussing that diverse picture, our paper points towards knowledge gaps in research and practice and gives concrete directions as to where to go from here.

This paper reports on a research-training module in a conference interpreter training environment where students strive to acquire high-level interpreting skills through intensive practice over two years. Both theory and research are remote from their concerns. The module described was designed specifically for this environment. The aim was to raise the students’ awareness of the nature of research, of the gains it could offer to interpreters-in-training and to the interpreting profession, and of practical challenges it faces. Care was taken not to add a significant workload which they might view as irrelevant to their endeavours. This translated as an introductory two-lecture part followed by micro-experiments in which the students’ own interpreting exercises were used as material. The students were asked to record and transcribe their interpretations of experimental source speeches, to analyse and reflect on the data. In one exercise, they were asked to perform an experiment as researchers with other students as participants. Throughout the process, the instructors provided detailed guidance and explained how the experiments were designed, taking on board challenges and uncertainties, and what inferences could or could not be drawn from the data and why. A questionnaire at the end of the module suggests that the students found the module interesting, not excessively taxing, that it taught them something about research and also about interpreting. Since this module entails virtually no overheads as regards the students’ daily practice and gives them a good sense of the practical issues associated with research, it is suggested that it could be integrated into curricula with more traditional research training as well.

The aim of this paper is to discuss some of the challenges resulting from the fact that interpreting classes at the Institute of Translation Studies (Charles University, Prague, Czechia) are attended by students whose mother tongue is not Czech (double degree students from Universität Leipzig or Erasmus+ incoming students). Drawing on the results of action research conducted in two different interpreting courses, we describe the challenges that this non-standard situation represents for the teacher, how teaching methods need to be adapted, what implications this distorted directionality has on student assessment, how this combination of students with different mother tongues can enrich interpreting seminars and their participants, and what benefits it brings to the interaction between teacher and student and among students.

This paper presents an outline of the author’s doctoral thesis concerning an analysis of Czech and German translations of Dutch literature in the first half of the twentieth century. The essential issue is whether these texts should be called “translations” or “adaptations”. In the first part of this paper the latter terms are defined. Furthermore, two major Czech translators of Dutch literature from this period, Rudolf Jordan Vonka and Lída Faltová, are introduced, as well as the corpus. Finally, a case study of a Czech and German translation of Max Havelaar by Multatuli (1860) is presented.

This paper examines patterns in omission and substitution of articles in Dutch by Czech FL learners. Why do some learners from L1 backgrounds without articles show persistent variability in their article production? Firstly, the paper briefly refers to recent research on L2 and FL language acquisition of articles. Furthermore, article use in Dutch and Czech is described, focusing on definiteness. Finally, a comparative analysis of the determined language tools is carried out in order to compile a hypothesis with regard to the patterns of incorrect article use by Czech FL learners of Dutch. Following Hawkins (2004) and Trenkic (2009), it is argued that the FL learners primarily focus on the semantics of articles instead of taking into account the morpho-syntactic function of this category. This misanalysis potentially leads to omission and substitution errors in the FL article production.

This paper deals with “May”, an 1836 poetic masterpiece by the Czech Romantic poet, Karel Hynek Macha (1810–1836). First, it briefly recounts the findings of Jiři Levy (1950) and Stanislav Rubaš (2012) concerned with “May” in its renderings into English. Having analysed various English versions of Macha’s poem, both translation scholars reveal how the poetic potential, or muse, of the respective translators have been moulded by their target language cultures, especially in terms of the florid excess of Victorian poetry and of Romantic fatalism, the stock-intrade of Romantic poetry, coined by George Gordon Byron. Second, the paper examines a new (so far unpublished) English translation of “May” by UIC Professor Alfred Thomas. Juxtaposing some of the main passages of the original (mostly from Canto 1) with their new English version, the author reveals a number of metrical and semantic shifts, shortcomings as well as obvious mistakes. Third, for the sake of contrast and comparison, the present article shows how a 1932 translation of “May” made by Roderick A. Ginsburg excels over the new rendering both in accuracy and poetic qualities.

Although Jiři Levy, the most renowned Czech translation scholar, is not directly associated with translation pedagogy, many of the concepts that he left behind are still relevant for translator training as well as foreign language teaching. The present paper first explores the comprehension stage of Levy’s model of translation process which he broke down in a commendably detailed manner in order to help future translators realize how many aspects and layers of the source text they have to understand and analyse before beginning with the actual translation. Examples of errors made by translator trainees as well as professionals are discussed to explain that insufficient comprehension of the surface (i.e. purely linguistic) level is a rather frequent occurrence which very often affects deeper levels of content (such as the author’s attitude) and text coherence. At the same time, the objective is to explain how comprehension errors can be used in the translation classroom to develop research skills, including the use of language corpora. The latter half of the paper is a discussion of Levy’s thoughts on translation procedures and the behavioural tendencies of literary translators. Levy himself suggested only a limited number of procedures to be taken by literary translators to transfer names and culture-bound terms but definitely left his mark by being probably the first scholar to explain in a systematic way the tendencies exhibited by translators whereby translations tend to be more general, neutral, logical and explicit than their source texts. Taken together, Levy’s procedures as well as tendencies have been presented by Anthony Pym as one of many viable typologies of translation solutions, which might prove to be a key to getting language teachers and learners to think of translation as a communicative activity, thereby contributing to initiating the much-missed collaboration between Translation Studies and the teaching of foreign languages.

This paper presents a preliminary discussion of the status of translation practices embedded in the commentarial entries of the Yuan dynasty anthology Du lü yanyi 杜律演義 [Explanation of the Meaning of Du Fu’s Regulated Verse] by Zhang Xing 張性. The research moves from a definition of ‘translation’ that extends beyond the prototypical discourse on the relations between different languages to encompass more varied discursive processes and products within a single language and more extensively within the field of metaliterature. As a case study, the paper examines the characteristics of the commentarial entries appended to two poems of the sequence “Qiu xing ba shou 秋興八首” [Stirred by Autumn] in the anthology Du lü yanyi. It analyses how the commentarial notes are related to units or whole portions of the poetic prototext, and for what purpose. As a result, the paper brings to light the juxtaposition and the combination of two fundamental approaches to the mediation of the prototext: one leaning towards commentary by way of explanatory reformulations, and the other leaning towards translation in the form of imitative reformulations.

Attenuating devices are frequently employed in both spoken and written language to weaken the illocutionary force of utterances as well as their directness. In this way, they are associated with expressing linguistic politeness. In scientific discourse, hedges are largely used to express negative politeness since the authors aim to protect themselves against disapproving or critical remarks of text recipients. Linguistically, hedging devices are realised in various ways, e.g. as modal adverbs (possibly, perhaps, probably,…), modal adjectives (possible, (un)likely, probable,...), modal nouns (assumption, possibility, suggestion,…), modal verbs expressing possibility (might, could, would,…), epistemic verbs (assume, seem, appear, suggest,…), approximators such as approximately and roughly, etc. The aim of this paper is to analyse hedging devices in written academic discourse, in particular in English and Czech medical research papers published in medical journals with an impact factor, and compare them with respect to their types, occurrence and communicative functions they perform. In other words, to find out whether the pragmatics of hedging is or is not culture-specific. Hedging devices may be classified from various points of view. In this paper a modified version of Hyland’s taxonomy (1998) was adopted.

The paper explores similarities and differences in the strategies of structuring information at sentence level in spoken and written language, respectively. In particular, it is concerned with the position of the rheme in the sentence in the two different modalities of language, and with the application and correlation of the end-focus and the end-weight principles. The assumption is that while there is a general tendency in both written and spoken language to place the focus in or close to the final position, owing to the limitations imposed by short-term memory capacity (and possibly by other factors), for the sake of easy processibility, it may occasionally be more felicitous in spoken language to place the rhematic element in the initial position or at least close to the beginning of the sentence. The paper aims to identify differences in the function of selected grammatical structures in written and spoken language, respectively, and to point out circumstances under which initial focus is a convenient alternative to the usual end-focus principle.

Research articles rank among the most prominent academic genres familiarizing their readers in a succinct way with the latest results of academic research. Due to the immense rate of publication these days, it has become increasingly difficult to gain reader attention. Among otherthings, such attention may be achieved by devoting particular care to the selection of a suitable title and perhaps reinforced with the help of the keyword set. Since titles and keyword sets are freely available and visible even in paid online journals, they are in open competition and serve a multitude of functions (e.g., enticing readers or raising their expectations). Crucially, they encode the Global Theme of Research articles, though in two distinct ways. This paper is based on a specialized corpus, composed of titles and keyword sets gathered from linguistic Research articles recently published by six renowned international journals. By examining their ideational, interpersonal, and textual functions, the author of this paper has sought to identify some of the prominent patterns and tendencies in their formulation, paying particular attention to their syntactic and FSP parameters.

The paper analyses English sentences with thematic locative subjects. These subjects were detected as translation counterparts of Czech sentenceinitial locative adverbials realized by prepositional phrases with the prepositions do (into), na (on), v/ve (in), z/ze (from) complemented by a noun. In the corresponding English structure, the initial scene-setting adverbial is reflected in the thematic subject, which results in the locative semantics of the subject. The sentences are analysed from syntactic, semantic and FSP aspects. From the syntactic point of view, we found five syntactic patterns of the English sentences with a locative subject (SV, SVA, SVO, SVpassA and SVCs) that correspond to Czech sentences with initial locative adverbials. On the FSP level the paper studies the potential of the sentences to implement the Presentation or Quality Scale. Since it is the “semantic content of the verb that actuates the presentation semantics of the sentence” (Duškova, 2015a: 260), major attention is paid to the syntactic-semantic structure of the verb. The analysis of the semantics of the English sentences results in the identification of two semantic classes of verbs which co-occur with the English locative subject.

Georg Brandes (1842–1927) has had a significant influence on the development of the Chinese lyrical tradition since the beginning of the 20th century. During a panel on comparative literature at the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) in 1971, Chen Shih-Hsiang said that the “Chinese literary tradition as a whole is a lyrical tradition,” offering another perspective for interpreting the Chinese literary tradition. The Chinese lyrical tradition emphasizes expressing deep feelings (or embodying lyricism) in various art forms. When tracing the trajectory of the development of the Chinese lyrical tradition, one finds that Lu Xun’s “Moluo shi li shuo” (On the Power of Mara Poetry) (Mara Poetry) has had a profound impact on the formation of the lyrical tradition, which was proposed by Chen ShihHsiang in 1971, and has been consolidated by Chan K. K. Leonard since the 21st century. However, the important role that Brandes played in Lu Xun’s analysis in “Mara Poetry” has not received the attention it deserves. In fact, Lu Xun’s article is deeply indebted to Brandes’s Poland: A Study of the Land, People and Literature (Poland). In order to bridge this research gap, the aim of this paper is twofold. Firstly, it attempts to examine the degree to which Brandes helped develop the Chinese lyrical tradition by identifying his influence on Lu Xun. Secondly, it traces the development of the tradition by delineating both Chen’s and Chan’s contributions. Chen’s research helps highlight the characteristics of A. Mickiewicz’s poetry introduced by both Brandes and Lu Xun, which were considered the major characteristics of the Chinese lyrical tradition by Chen later on. Chan’s study further suggested that the characteristics embodied in Mickiewicz’s poetry can also be found in Lu Ji’s (261–303 AD) “Wen Fu” (Essay on Literature).

This paper analyses the role of visualisations in grammar books for learners of German as a foreign language. It evaluates a sample of grammar books self-labelled as pictorial as well as other grammar books designated for non-native speakers of German. The analysis focuses not only on pictures, but on all the visual means that grammars use to convey grammatical rules. The aim of the study is to provide a better understanding of didactic and cognitive-linguistic aspects of the grammar transmission. In order to do so, it inquires into the usage of visual metaphors and mnemonic devices. Though the benefits of such types of visualisations have repeatedly been proven, they appear only seldom in the analysed grammar books as most of the visualisations depict only the semantics of example sentences. The article presents concrete cases to illustrate both problematic uses of visualisations and examples of good practice that can serve not only as a starting point for further didactic contributions in this field but also as suggestions for teachers of German or authors of teaching materials.

This article first presents the theoretical and empirical foundations of “Station 2” of a didactic setting in which learners deal with sourcing operations and apply them to a text corpus on a topic created for this didactic setting. The core of the text corpus is a reportage about former miners who now earn their money as “snail strokers” in order to help a landscape devastated by coal mining to grow new vegetation with the snail slime obtained in this way. Through sourcing operations (i.e. through metadata-based evaluation of the texts), learners can identify intentions and perspectives in these texts and assess the credibility of the information. The paper further presents results of data analysis, which are used in the sense of design-based research for further optimization of the setting and modification of the theoretical considerations about it.

Finding a German publication in the field of foreign language acquisition that does not explicitly mention the role of literature would be an anomaly. Within DaF (German as a foreign language), the position occupied by works of literature has been subjected to no or very little scrutiny in the past decades. Simultaneously, it has become fashionable to criticise the (supposed) deficiencies of the pragmatic and competence-driven approach to teaching. The paper offers a critical examination of the theoretical underpinnings as well as the arguments often employed by the proponents of the use of literature in teaching. The findings hint at misleading citation practices, the absence of empirical research in the area as well as problematic argumentation at times.

This paper deals with the perceptual impact of using word-initial glottalization as a boundary signal. Research into glottalization is discussed before presenting a reaction time (RT) experiment based on a word-monitoring paradigm that aims to investigate the cognitive effect of the presence of glottalization in native Czech listeners’ perception. Natural and acoustically manipulated sentences selected from a spontaneous political debate were used as stimuli. The low level of control of the material makes the design relatively innovative in comparison with similar previous studies. Fifty listeners were instructed to press a button as soon as they heard a specified target word embedded in a sentence, where a preceding carrier word included glottalization or linking. The results support the hypothesis that the presence of glottalization facilitates the processing of subsequent words, but the temporal scope of the effect varied. The experiment also raises new methodological issues and offers suggestions for further RT research.

In the context of the reception of Shakespeare in the early period of the Czech National Revival from the 1780s to the 1830s, the paper discusses the contribution of the writer Josef Linda (1789/1792?–1834), who published a series of commented selected passages from Shakespeare’s plays in the literary magazine Čechoslav in 1822–1823. The earliest reception of Shakespeare’s oeuvre paralleled the developing revival of the Czech language and original literature, using the limited media available. The first publications were two chapbooks by an anonymous author outlining the plots of Macbeth and The Merchant of Venice printed in 1782 without stating the name of the author, adapted from German versions. The first Czech version bearing the playwright’s name was the simplified prose translation of Macbeth by Karel Hynek Thám, published and staged in 1786. Several minor contributions (short passages from plays, quotations, short playwright’s biographies) were published in magazines. The series of Linda’s translations is specific, he called short passages from plays “vejpisy” (“extracts”) and used them to illustrate various human qualities (veracity, flattery, straightness) and supposed views of the playwright (Shakespeare on music). They also included a short article on Elizabethan theatre. His knowledge of Shakespeare is also perceptible in his play Jaroslav Šternberg v boji proti Tatarům (1823, Jaroslav of Šternberg Fighting the Tatars). Being published in one of the earliest Czech literary magazines with a wide readership, Linda’s translations thus contributed to Czech acquaintance with the playwright’s oeuvre.

This article is related to the study of specialized translation, specifically to lexical and phraseological variation in legal translation. In fact, this study arises from the need to delve deeper into the study of Spanish phraseological units using larger corpora, considering the varieties that reflect the convergences and divergences of this language throughout the places where it is spoken. To this end, the paper approaches sentences using a comparative corpus-based approach analysing phraseological units used in Argentine and Spain. The research provides a brief contextualization of the legal systems of the selected countries, and, by using corpus linguistics, the PUs are extracted and compared. The main objective is to detect similarities and differences at the phraseological level in both languages and to provide functional equivalents in German that can be useful for students and translators. The findings show that at the methodological level corpus linguistics is a useful tool for the identification of PUs in specialized texts. Furthermore, the analysis of the examples from the corpus of sentences shows the evidence of lexical variants referring to the same reality both within a single variety of Spanish and between different varieties. This consequently determines the need to further study the PUs of Spanish by using a more extensive corpus, considering the different countries in which Spanish is an official language.

In the present paper, the author has carried out a comparative analysis of Boris Pasternak’s rendering of Hamlet, which first appeared in 1940 and was republished time and again between 1941 and 1957, sometimes with major cuts and revisions. Recounting the disturbing history of the most famous Shakespearean translation in the Russian language and re-evaluating previous research on it, the author arrives at a conclusion that Pasternak’s Hamlet, by and large, aims at holding a mirror up to the times of the Stalinist Russia. The translation’s extensive political engagement is documented by juxtaposing Shakespeare’s original with Pasternak’s striking allusions to the times of terror in which he had to live.

In the Renaissance, a great evolution took place in many disciplines related to very diverse fields of knowledge. Among them were the arts of memory and Christian Hebraism, whose development went hand in hand with Christian Kabbalism and other speculative sciences. Both disciplines had long previous traditions and some previous contact, starting with Raimundus Lullus, but it is from the first years of the 16th century that mnemonics and Kabbalistic studies appear to converge on certain authors. This may be the case of Johannes Romberch, author of the Congestorium artificiosae memoriae (1520), who makes very particular mention of Kabbalah in this well-known treatise. This paper aims to be an approach to the points of contact established in the Congestorium to later develop a comparative study.

This paper offers a review of some Christian authors who used Virgil as a pagan model with the purpose of portraying Christ’s life as a classical hero. Our working hypothesis is that Juvencus and Proba made the allusions and references to Aeneas’ heroic qualities to announce the victorious new archetype of Christ as the only example of virtue. This process defined as ‘Virgilisation of Christ’s life’ was fundamental for Prudentius’ poetic task.

The Metamorphoses is one of the most productive and complex intertext in the poetry of Hungarian poet Sándor Weöres. This paper addresses some models of complex rewriting of the Ovidian text in the 1950s, analysing the radical poetic rewriting of the Ovidian metaphors, mythical prosopopeias and the poetic figures of metamorphosis in Weöres’ poetry. The epic mythological poems of that decade (Medeia, Minotauros, Orpheus) connect and contrast fragments of the disparate mythic narratives of the characters. The textual and narrative discontinuity and the mixture of epic, lyric and dramatic discourses allow to read these poems as a simultaneous experiment with transformation and interchange of the dramatic functions of the characters, dissolving and establishing the borders of their identity, testing the capacity of the co-reading of contrasting and distant mythologems. Ovid’s characteristically ironic move from admiring the beauty to a distinctly rapacious love of having, the reciprocity of the distant characters’ narratives and the poetical utilization of the sonority (the metaphorisation of the sound, and the out of control of the own speaking, invoking the voice at the moment it is lost) are very fruitful for the Echo (1954).

For Western researchers, the understanding of Chinese culture is conditioned by differences in language, tradition, history and socialization. The interpretation of various aspects and elements of different cultures is always connected to the geographic, political and economic positions of the interpreter as well as the object of interpretation. In Western research on China, the non-reflected use of theoretical analyses that are in themselves results of specific (Western) historical processes and the related structure of societies, often proves to be a dangerous and misleading mechanism. A fundamental premise of the present paper is that Western epistemology represents only one of many different models of human comprehension of reality. On this basis, it questions traditional intercultural methodologies hitherto applied in Sinology and Chinese studies. The article presents the main methodological paradigms of a transculturally aware research that could improve the understanding of general principles underlying the particular research questions and objects under investigation.

The article explores Jiang Menglin’s philosophy of life and his notion of rensheng guan (“view on life”) in the period between his studies in the USA and the year of the May Fourth events in 1919. In the first part, the paper traces the origins of Jiang’s idea back to the then-prevalent version of pragmatism propagated by John Dewey and other pragmatist thinkers gathered at Columbia University, while in the subsequent parts it aims to illuminate the later developments of Jiang’s own version of pragmatism in the context of the May Fourth intellectual discourse. While the article aims at presenting a positive outline of Jiang’s philosophy, it also endeavours to expose its less explicit aspects through its apophatic (exposition by negation or denial) expositions in Jiang’s writings from the period. Finally, it focuses on Jiang’s contributions to the debate on suicide that developed after Lin Deyang’s suicide in November 1919.

The vocabulary of tourism has not been studied in depth until recently. In this paper we try to fill this gap, by focussing on French neologisms attested in this field. Our research, based on Timestamped JSI web corpus (2014-2019), shows that word formation largely stems from binomial appositions, thus following the model of terminology. A comparatively small number of words consist on translations from English, since French tourism is deeply rooted in national culture.

The literary interest in Greenland has been growing steadily in recent years. Both the question of the countryʼs secession from Denmark and the handling of imperialism's historical heritage have occupied the public. The author Kim Leine diligently contributes to the debate with his works on the cultural encounters between Danes and Greenlanders. Following an overview of Leine’s description of the coexistence of colonizers and colonized and the political and religious influence of the former on the latter in the beginning of the 18. century this paper discusses how Leine tries to debunk the common perception of Danes as soft colonizers. The main purpose of the article is to investigate how the difference between the two cultures manifests itself in the father-son relations, with a special focus on the interpretation of the act of sacrifice in the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac. The approach is inspired by postcolonial theory.

Translator training has been increasingly relying on simulations of real-life professional practice. One way of bringing learning closer to authentic professional experience is by introducing project-based instruction. The aim of this paper is to present a project conducted in an optional literary translation seminar at the Institute of Translation Studies (Charles University, Faculty of Arts) in the summer semester of the 2018/2019 academic year. Providing students with an opportunity to engage in an authentic translation assignment, the project was a collaborative translation of Bertha von Suttner’s Die Waffen nieder! (Lay Down Your Arms) from German into Czech under the supervision of two Czech university teachers. During the opening session, a work schedule was drawn up, covering all the stages of translation and editing. Later, groups of students worked on individual chapters, consulting across the teams and with the teachers, both in person and through online shared documents, which is also where the editing took place. The students worked independently on authentic tasks in a real-life context, with the teachers acting as facilitators. The principles of cooperative learning were applied to the project as sharing, collaborating and mutual support were part of all the stages of the translation. The participants were administered a questionnaire to explore the learners’ attitudes and feelings regarding project-based learning in translator training with a view to identifying the possibilities and limits of this type of learning experience compared with conventional forms of instruction. The latter part of the presentation will comment on the most interesting student responses.

This is a detailed discussion of the volume of collected studies of the well-known classicist Klaus-Peter Johne which was published in 2007. It offers a summary of the individual papers, a discussion of their contents, and several additions to the list of publications, which is a useful bibliographical tool. Together with a short assessment of Johne’s contributions in the context of the scholarship of the German Democratic Republic, some general methodical remarks are offered on the concept of a volume of collected studies.

Diva Montis Sancti (1665), written by B. Balbín, is an important work on Marian pilgrimage sites. Within the background of the cultural and historical contexts, the paper compares the Latin text with its translation into Czech (Přepodivná Matka Svatohorská, 1666) by M. V. Štejer and an anonymous German version (Heiliger Berg, 1668). The language analysis of the Latin and Czech versions of the text is underpinned by examples of Štejer’s translation strategies. The article also states the function and presumed readership of the versions. In contrast with the historical / patriotic function of the original aimed at educated European elites, both translations can be in today’s terms characterised as paraphrases, accentuating the religious and educative functions and, therefore, intended for less educated readers.

One of the major traits of Baroque art in Bohemia and Moravia is its receptive character. In the cycles thematically taken from Ovid's Metamorphoses artists often accurately followed widespread and popular illustrations. My paper focuses on rare example of reception of Metamorphoses edition published by J. J. von Sandrart in Nürnberg 1698. This edition includes several engravings depicting less frequently visualized stories that were followed in stucco decorations in the Silesian chauteau in Kravaře, irrecoverably damaged during a fire in 1937. The discovery of printed model allowed for the identification of all the iconographic motifs in Kravaře. The ceiling of the grand hall showed story about the prophet Tiresias. The article analyses visual representations of Judgement of Tiresias as well as its textual interpretations. The stucco ceiling in Kravaře was the only known monumental visual representation of this motif not only in the Central European context, but most probably in all Europe.

Knut Hamsunʼs prose fiction around 1890 fulfills his programmatic intention to represent modern complex individuals. Two decades later the author steps forth to chastise the nation with simplistic reactionary truths. The hero of Hamsunʼs “wanderer” novels 1906 to 1912 may be taken to parody the protagonists of Hunger, Mysteries, and Pan 1888–1894. The hysteric tone in the narratorʼs criticism of modern society in Hamsunʼs 1912 novel, The Last Joy, points to a personal motivation. The ultimate pleasure in this book seems to be indulging in his own self, an experience of nothingness associated with literature. Interpreting the authorʼs U-turn from modernist to reactionary as fueled by fear of his own findings, the lack of foundation in a world where subjectivity reigns uninhibited, this paper will focus on the implications of the narratorʼs professed but unclear conclusions, the reasons for and the nature of the authorʼs political involvement.

This paper describes a study conducted as part of the diploma thesis The Impact of Spanish Regional Varieties on the Quality of Simultaneous Interpreting into Czech (2019). The aim of the study was to find whether interpreters make more omissions, additions, semantic errors, and delivery errors when interpreting from Latin American varieties of Spanish than when interpreting from standard European Spanish, as defined by the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE). Another goal was to find whether the expectations of different user groups regarding the quality of simultaneous interpreting differ or not. The theoretical part of this article presents the findings and conclusions of studies published by authors who address the quality of simultaneous interpreting. The research portion of this article describes an experiment conducted at the Institute of Translation Studies, Faculty of Arts, Charles University: five master’s degree students of conference interpreting (Czech A, Spanish C) were asked to simultaneously interpret a speech pronounced by four native speakers – from Argentina, Peru, Mexico and northern Spain. The interpreted versions of the speech were evaluated based on an established quality assessment model. To get another source of data, the interpreters filled out a questionnaire, which included questions about their experience with Spanish regional varieties, as well as a subjective evaluation of the difficulty of the speech, the speakers’ accent, and their own interpreting. Joining the study were ten more participants – five general users and five student-users (3rd year undergraduate students of Spanish for Intercultural Communication), who were asked to assess the renditions in Czech. The last chapter of the article presents the results of the experiment, as well as the results of the questionnaire regarding quality assessment.