Some bilingual (or multilingual) writers translate their works from their mother tongue (mainly one of the so-called “languages of limited diffusion”) into an international language or write in both languages. This type of literary translation is called “author’s translation”. Milan Kundera is one such writer. The linguistic analysis of Milan Kundera’s novels “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” and “Immortality” demonstrates that the Czech language of these literary works, written during the author’s so-called French period, is to a certain extent deformed on all levels of linguistic expression. The author’s literary texts written and/or published after his emigration to France provide, in a certain sense, unique evidence of the fact that even a prestigious writer can lose the feeling for his mother tongue if he is not living permanently in its milieu.
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