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Translating Topol: Kafka, the Holocaust, and humor

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Woods M.

Slovo a smysl - Word & Sense

2016

vol. 13

issue 25

83-97

This article focuses on Alex Zucker’s 2000 English translation and editing of Jáchym Topol’s Sestra (1994): City, Sister, Silver (Catbird Press). In particular, the article analyzes a passage which Zucker edited out of the novel (and which Topol also edited out of the second Czech edition of Sestra in 1996), that presents a humorous alternative history of Franz Kafka retold in a hallucinatory vision of Auschwitz. The context of the editing of the passage is instructive in thinking about the translation of Czech literature into English, especially of aesthetically and thematically challenging work: the difficult nature of cultural specific material; linguistic playfulness; and, most importantly, the role and agency of the translator. Zucker’s decision to post the edited passage online, on the publisher’s website, suggests a possible path for future translations, allowing interested readers access to work that might be edited because of domestic norms. Finally, the article analyzes Topol’s subversive humor in demythologizing Kafka, and Zucker’s translation strategies in conveying both the humor and Topol’s poetics into English.

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Translating Topol: Kafka, the Holocaust, and humor