Individual style in translation
Individual style in translation

Summary/Abstract: There have been various approaches to the presence of individual stylistic traits in translation. The paper briefly describes various concepts of individual translator’s style as presented in Czech and Slovak translation theories mainly by Jiří Levý, but by other authors as well. The main point of the paper, though, is to explore whether and how the structuralist ideas are present in modern translation studies. Is the notion of individual translator’s style relevant for research in translation and/or for translation criticism? Has a clear and usable definition been formulated? What method should be used for determining the individual style of a translator? The paper also proposes a method of finding stylistic patterns and tendencies in the translations done by translators who are writers themselves. The method is based on the analysis of the characteristic features of their own poetics, presuming that some of them are present in the translations, too. To illustrate the method, the paper presents partial results of the analysis of the poetry and translations by Jan Zábrana, a significant Czech postwar poet and translator.

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