English meets Czech II

This is a continuation of a previous post, where I described some of the challenges I met when trying to translate the first two chapters of The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune into Czech. If you didn’t read it yet, it can be found here. Out of style Some things are always in style, like “the red lip classic thing that you like”. And style is important in language too. Continue reading

English meets Czech I

In the previous posts (1 and 2), I talked about wanting to translate The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune into Czech. In those posts, I described how it all started and my very first translation puzzle, exclamations like “oh dear”. In this and the next post, I will go through several other domains in which I was challenged by the original text when trying to translate it into Czech. Continue reading

Translating 'Oh Dear'

“How difficult it can be to translate a text from a language I understand well to my mother tongue, right?” I thought to myself when I first opened The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune with the intention of forging my way as a new translator and bring this lovely book to the Czech audience. “Let’s see. What’s the first sentence?”

“Oh dear,” Linus Baker said, wiping the sweat from his brow.

“Oh dear,” I thought to myself and then spent about a week figuring out the best way to translate the first two words.

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Beginnings

It’s Friday, May 27, 2022, and I’m sitting at a Vietnamese restaurant across from my flat, getting fried spring rolls and coconut water. I didn’t plan to come here, but I’m feeling so tired, and it’s just the kind of a day for a treat. A group of older women sits at the table next to me, making it almost impossible for me to focus on my own words because theirs are that much more interesting. Continue reading