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1. Introduction
This diploma thesis deals with interjections in literary translation. It compares the use
of interjections in original English texts, in their translation and in original Czech texts. This
theme was chosen because though interjections are quite important means of expression no
attention is paid to them in linguistic or translation theory literature. And also because I was
interested in what happens with interjections in the process of translation.
The thesis is conceived as a corpus study because in this type of study the use of interjections
in the texts and translators´ attitude to translation interjections can be manifested with the greatest
clarity. For the purpose of the thesis I have chosen four English texts and their translations from
the Kacenka corpus and found four original Czech texts for comparison. Kacenka (Korpus
anglicko-cesky – elektronicky nastroj Katedry anglistiky) is a parallel corpus that was created at
the Department of English and American Studies at the Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Brno
(www.phil.muni.cz/angl/kacenka2/). This corpus contains mainly literary texts in English and
their Czech translations.
In this thesis I hope to show differences or correspondences in the use of interjections in
English and Czech texts, determine what the difference is and why it is there. I would also like to
point out the difference and correspondence between the translators´ attitude to translation of
interjections and their translating strategies and connection of these translating strategies to the
Czech use of interjections. I want to find out whether there is any difference in both languages in
expressing various emotions by an interjection, for example whether joy is expressed by an
interjection more often in English than in Czech. This is explored in the second part of the study.
The first part of the study is more theoretical. In this part the secondary literature, mainly
linguistic, from which the information on interjections was derived, is introduced and evaluated
and the methodology of the corpus study is described and clarified. Also the information on
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interjections gained from the secondary literature is given and classification that was adopted
from the secondary literature and used in this thesis is introduced and explained.
The second part of the study is the corpus study itself. To the English texts and their
translations that were chosen from the Kacenka corpus Czech texts are added to form four triplets
in which the interjections are looked up, classified and compared. Each triplet has its own chapter,
where the tables with the occurrences and emotions expressed are given and analysis of the
specific features of that particular text is offered.
In the final section of the thesis the corpus study is reviewed from a more general point of
view. In this section I try to determine the differences between the use of interjections in Czech
and English and attempt to explain why there are differences. Here I also summarize the
translators’ attitudes to translation of interjections and their translating strategies. In the
concluding part of this section all the findings will be summarized and evaluated.
3
1.1 Secondary Literature
Secondary literature was mainly used to get information about interjections, and also to create
a list, a corpus, of interjections that were looked up in the primary literature.
The most important and most comprehensive information on interjection in the Czech language
can be found in works of Františel Trávníček. Trávníček (1888-1960) was a professor at the
Masaryk University; his field was linguistics and Czech studies. His Neslovesné věty v češtině, díl
1. Věty interjekční, published in 1930, are a basis of the other authors´ writing on interjections and
to the authors of grammars. He introduces a classification of interjections, a division to several
groups; he explains the origins of those words that became interjections by a change (loss) of
meaning. In his 1958 publication Nauka o slovní zásobě he discusses the communicative values
and meaning of interjections in the sentence.
Bohuslav Havránek in his 1981 Česká mluvnice sums up Trávníček´s findings, takes the most
important information about the interjections from him and briefly defines what is an interjection.
Miroslav Grepl and Petr Karlík in their Skladba spisovné češtiny, published in 1986, discuss the
interjectional, vocative and exclamatory sentences and the similarities between
a vocative and an interjection and the process by which a noun becomes an interjection.
Two parallel diploma theses from the Faculty of Arts, Russian Studies Department, written in
1987 by Zdeňka Uhrová - Slovesa a citoslovce vyjadřující zvuky jejichž původcem je člověk - and
Dana Kamenická - Slovesa a citoslovce vyjadřující zvuky, jejichž původcem je zvíře, popř.
neživotná substance - give some information on the interjections, mostly derived from
Trávníček´s works, and a basic list of interjections produced by humans and by animals or
inanimate subjects.
Information on the interjections in English can be found in many grammars but the most
exhaustive is, in my opinion, in Curme´s A Grammar of the English Language. More specifically,
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in volume 2, Parts of Speech and Accidence, general definition of an interjection is given, and in
volume 3, Syntax, more specific information is offered on an interjection and its position in the
sentence.
Vladimir. Z. Jovanovic, a Serbian scholar, gives more precise information about English
interjections and also offers an extensive list of them. He discussed the meaning, position and
usage of interjections. His article, “The Form, Position and Meaning of the Interjections in
English”, was published in 2004 in Linguistics and Literature.
Jiří Zbořil´s minor thesis from 1998, (Department of English and American Studies, Faculty of
Arts, Brno), Translation of Interjections, is a predecessor of this thesis; it served as an inspiration
and offered some methodological solutions.
From the popular Internet encyclopaedia, Wikipedia, information on interjections, on the novels
and on the authors of the novels was derived. The information it gives is brief and reliable.
Besides these texts a number of dictionaries was used, apart from Oxford Advanced Learner’s
Dictionary and Anglicko-český, česko-anglický slovník edited by SPN, I consulted online
dictionaries; those were Slovník Seznam, which offers only basic translations of interjections, and
OneLook Dictionary which provide reference to the other online dictionaries, like Cambridge
Dictionary (dictionary.cambridge.com). Another online dictionary that was consulted is Merriam-
Webster Dictionary (www.m-w.com). For inspiration and for interjections of a very recent origin
(sometimes even with the author of the coinage) I looked in the Rap Dictionary
(www.rapdict.org/Category:Interjections).
The primary literature, the novels that were studied - Lucky Jim, Šťastný Jim, Muži v offsidu,
The Cool World, Prezydent Krokadýlů, Hovno hoří, The Confederacy of Dunces, Spolčení hlupců,
Černí baroni, The Jungle Book, Knihy džunglí and Povídání o pejskovi a kočičce - are introduced
at the beginning of each chapter.
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I.2 An Interjection
Interjection literally means “thrown in between” from Latin “inter” (between) and “iacere”
(throw). As a part of speech it belongs to the independent elements - words, phrases or clauses
without any grammatical relation to the other parts of the sentence (Curme II 104). An interjection
is defined as “an outcry to express pain, surprise, anger, pleasure or some other emotion […]
interjections belong to the oldest forms of speech and represent the most primitive type of
sentence” (Curme II 105). “Interjections are generally uninflected function words and have
sometimes been seen as sentence-words, since they can replace or be replaced by a whole
sentence (they are holophrastic)” (Wikipedia). Linguist consider them as phonemic clusters
without any meaning which convey various messages. These messages are no longer ideas or
thoughts but rather emotions, feelings and attitudes. Because of their expressiveness and
simplicity they might have been the first utterances and words used by humans (Jovanovič 18).
They are still useful because of “need for varied expression” (Curme 8). If they were of no use
they would have been eliminated from the language.
The position of the interjection in the sentence is at the beginning, in the middle, or, less
frequently, at the end of the sentence, always separated by comma, forming a clause on its own.
The interjections are often found as single sentences ended with an exclamation mark or a full
stop.
1.2.1 English Interjection
There are over 550 interjections in English, and still new ones appear, mainly as a product of
pop-culture - young urban population is the most productive in creating new interjections “as a
part of their unique linguistic identity” (Jovanovič 20). Pop music also creates new expressive
interjections, for example rap music is really productive in this area - boo-yaa, fuckadelo - both
expressions for feeling of comfort, triumph and happines (Rap Dictionary). New interjections
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come to existence either by creativity of the speaker or by borrowing from other languages (the
above mentioned rap, for example, borrows from patois or Spanish).
This leads some linguist to the opinion that any word can become an interjection if exclamated,
expressed with force and emotion, but Jovanovič argues that a word should be considered an
interjection if it is “inherent to language, the basic or natural exclamations that are produced
almost involuntarily, without making an attempt at producing any value judgment” (Jovanovič
19).
Jovanovič creates his own division based on the usage and meaning of interjections. The
basic division is to interjections proper which are “one or two syllables segments with no
particular referent in ELR (extralinguistic reality), but with indisputable purpose in language
communication” (Jovanovič 20). The other group is formed by interjections which have their
origins in the other parts of speech, predominantly in nouns and adjectives.
These have more word-like or phrase-like forms with identifiable referents
outside language or figurative meaning and are clearly suggestive of emotional
reactions to linguistic or non-linguistic stimuli [...] their repeated use in particular
situational context and with corresponding prosodic features and intensity
qualifies them for classification in this word class
(Jovanovič 21).
Jovanovič then groups the interjections according to their “pragmatic value”. This division is
probably more important for the purpose of this thesis, because of employing pragmatic
equivalence in the translation of interjections. The translator only has to know in what situation
that particular interjection is used. His most numerous group are “more situation oriented
interjections with restricted pragmatic purpose”(Jovanovič 24). They are used in certain social
situations and rituals – greetings, toasts, wishing luck, etc. The next group is formed by the
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onomatopoeic interjections. This group can grow endlessly, the only restriction is the ability of
language to imitate the sounds from the natural world. The next largest group he lists is “oaths or
rather mild oaths and euphemistic expressions […] used to suggest vexation, surprise or
disappointment on the part of the speaker” (Jovanovič 26). Another group which is, in my
opinion, culturally bound is composed of “various commands, orders or calls to domestic
animals”(Jovanovič 27). I call this group culturally bound because it contains a great number of
orders used during hunting, and I think that hunting is not as popular here in Czech republic as in
Great Britain. The two remaining small groups are attention-seeking interjections and
encouragments, mainly for sportsmen.
1.2.2 Czech Interjection
Czech linguist František Trávníček devoted part of his work to interjections and divided them
in several groups. He also discusses the meaning of interjections. He argued that an interjection
has an ideational meaning because it communicates emotions and will (Trávníček 1958, 31).
Trávníček grouped interjections as follows – subjective and objective and original and non-
original. The objective ones are those that immitate various sounds except sounds produced by
humans. These are called onomatopoeic. Their original meaning was indicative in present or past
tense. These interjections appear in children speech and are sometimes used in literature for
specific purpose. Subjective interjections are those which express emotions and will of the
speaker (Trávníček 1930, 11).
The other distinction he makes is between the original and non-original interjection. Original
(primary) interjections are partly the above mentioned, non-original or secondary interjections
form a group of fossilized inflected words (various swear words), of nominal exclamation (good
God) and of imperatives which lost their original meaning. Some of the interjections are
borrowings from other languages - halo (French), sakra, krucifix (Latin), himl, hergot (German).
8
These groupings, made by Trávníček, are based on the origin of the words. Interjections, in his
view, can stand in place of various parts of speech. For example, ugh (brr in Czech) says
“disgust”, “disgusting”, “it disgusts me”, thus it is in place of a noun, an adjective and a verb.
Trávníček points out another interesting phenomenon and that is verbalisation of interjections,
sometimes even those interjections which were originaly verbs (fossilized imperatives) are
verbalised (Trávníček 1930, 219).
One of the problematic groups of interjections is the group formed by empty vocatives (Bože,
Kristepane, panečku, páni, marjápano). The vocative itself only serves as attention seeking and
addressing word and thus has minimal communicative value and it is very similar to interjection
by its position in the sentence. The line between a vocative and an interjection is very thin, the
vocative tends to lose its addressing function and gets “emptied” and “inert” and becomes an
interjection (Grepl, Karlík 193-195). That is why I consider these empty vocatives (Bože, božínku,
páni, panečku), and their English counterparts, interjections. English dictionaries do not name
them as interjections but say that they express surprise, joy or fear and they are included in
Jovanovič´s exhausting list of interjections. In my opinion, there is no striking difference between
what is considered interjection in English and in Czech. The features that differentiate them are
more frequent occurrences in the English language and better information on them in Czech
linguistic literature.
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1.3 Methodology
This thesis concentrates on the translation of interjections in the literary texts and is conceived
as a corpus study. Suitable texts for the corpus and for the comparison of the translation of
interjections had to be chosen. Two criteria were applied to the choice of the texts. The first one
was that the books that are available in the electronic form. So the English originals and their
translations were retrieved form the parallel corpus available at the Department of English and
American Studies at the Faculty of Arts of Masaryk University in Brno. The original Czech texts
were gained from the Internet, also in the electronic form. The electronic form of the novels was
very important because automatic computer search was used to look the interjections up.
The second criterion was the number of interjections in the texts, their frequency of
appearance. Presupposing that the greatest number of interjections is found in comic novels and in
literature for children, representatives of these genres were selected. From the English literature
available in electronic form Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim, translated by Jiří Mucha as Šťastný Jim,
John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces with Jaroslav Kořán´s translation Spolčení
hlupců, Warren Miller’s The Cool World, translated by Josef Škvorecký as Prezydent Krokadýlů,
and Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book with translation by Aloys and Hana Skoumal Knihy
džunglí were chosen. Because the thesis deals with the comparison of the translations with Czech
original texts representatives of the same genres had to be picked from the Czech literature. The
requirement here was that the novels are not very far from each other by the year of publication
and that the style is at least not strikingly different. In the end these texts were chosen - Karel
Poláček´s Muži v offsidu (paired with Amis’s Lucky Jim), Miroslav Švandrlík´s Černí baroni
(with Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces), Petr Šabach´s Hovno hoří (with Miller’s The Cool
World) and Josef Čapek´s Povídání o pejskovi a kočičce (paired with Kipling’s The Jungle Book).
The English originals and their translations were found, as was said above in the Kačenka corpus,
created at the Department of English and American Studies. The original Czech texts were gained
from online databases of e-books www.e-kniha.webovastranka.cz and from go.to/eknihy.
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Before I started working with the selected texts I needed a preliminary list of both English and
Czech interjections to have a basic idea what to start with. This list of interjections to be looked
up was retrieved from a number of novels and stories and also from Jovanovic´s article and
Kamenická´s and Uhrová´s diploma theses.
All the electronic texts I worked with were in the doc. or rtf. format so the interjections were
looked up with help of Microsoft Word processor function Find (ctrl+f). This method is reliable
but the interjections cannot be looked up as whole words. This function does not distinguish
between normal letters and characters like inverted commas or an exclamation mark. So it would
not find an interjection at the beginning of direct speech if the box “search for whole words” is
ticked. The search is slower than looking up whole words, because it will find the cluster of letters
as parts of the other words, but it is more reliable. For example, if oh is looked up as a whole word
in Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces, the result is 24 occurrences of oh in the whole text which
represents only 17% of the real number, because if oh is not looked up as a whole word the
function will find 142 occurrences. This method of searching the interjections is also quite
demanding in terms of one’s attention and concentration. Interjections that can be found with this
method are the usual ones, the primary interjections.
If there are other, unusual interjections, onomatopoeic in particular, it is better to search for
clusters of the same letters (search for ooo will find booom or voooom (as in Cool World)). This
method, searching only for clusters, also helps with some common interjections, like uh. If uh is
written into the search box the function will find also huh, so it is useful to pay attention to the
clusters of letters common to several interjections because it can save work.
Compared with this method the manual searching (close reading) is more reliable. I tried to
look up the interjections in the first seven chapters of Warren Miller’s The Cool World and found
out that with the help of the automatic search only 80% (compared with reading) of the
interjections that are in the texts was found. The interjections that were not found by the automatic
search were mainly the onomatopoeic ones. The reliability of the automatic search is better (92%)
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with the interjections that are not onomatopoeic and which appear more frequently in the text.
Those that appear only once or twice are found either by chance or by close reading.
Organising the interjections according to the emotions they express
Having found the interjections in the texts I tried to organize them to tables according to the
emotions they express and frequency of their occurrences. This helped me to compare the usage
of interjections in the original texts and in the translations. At the beginning of each chapter in the
corpus study there are tables with the interjections found in the texts with frequency of their
occurrence. Within the chapters the interjections are organised into the tables depending on the
emotions they express and on the translating method the translator employed.
For classification of the interjections into the tables it was necessary to find such emotions that
are more general, otherwise the classification of the interjection and their comparison would be
impossible. Some of the emotions I chose are clear, like anger or fear, but it is necessary to say
that these emotions might range from a mild excitement to rage or from a pleasant chill to terror
and still be called anger and fear. Surprise, for example, does not stand only for a pleasant feeling
but also for unpleasant surprise. In short, most of the emotions listed in the tables are summary
names for a larger number of emotions, but this generalization was necessary for the purpose of
this thesis.
There were cases when I could not decide which emotion that particular interjection expresses.
I either decided from the context or, when that did not help me to decide, listed that interjection as
unspecified emotion. For example, no was one of the Czech interjections and oh one of the
English that were often listed as expressing unspecified emotion.(For example “Oh, he was
charmingly frank about it, James.” (Lucky Jim), or “Oh, we’ll be very serious.” (A Confederacy of
Dunces, without signs of objection), or “No tak ten Ferdinand se jednou sebral a jel do Francie na
práci.” (No is quite frequently used in this sense - as a part of narration), “No, a nešťastná láska se
končí slavnou svatbou” (both Muži v offsidu).
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The corpus study is then summarized in the final comparison, where the overall comparison of
original English, original Czech and translated texts is made as well as the comparison of the
translators‘ attitudes to the interjection translation. Here I counted and compared the overall
frequency of the interjections in the texts, discussed the differences between the numbers of
interjections used for various emotions and summed up the most frequent interjections in the texts
once more.
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2. Corpus Study
2.1 Kingsley Amis: Lucky Jim, Jiří Mucha: Šťastný Jim and Karel Poláček: Muži v offsidu
These novels are both comic and both deal with a group of people with a common interest or
common profession. Poláček´s novel is older than Amis´s, but the time of publication, in my
opinion, does not really play role in case of these two authors. Lucky Jim was published in 1954,
the Czech translation was published in 1970. It belongs to so called “university novels”
(Universum I, 168). It tells a story of Jim Dixon, a history teacher at a provincial university in
England. The author’s work is characterized as “satirical novels about problems of Britain being
modernized” (Universum I, 168). Poláček´s Muži v offsidu was published in 1931, Poláček´s
work can be described as “trying to characterize the common Czech man”, his novels range from
rather mild irony to satire, which also aims at Czech men - at the middle class and their behaviour
(Universum VII, 366). Muži v offsidu is a story about fans of a Prague football club Viktorka,
father and son Habásko. Their comic adventures are in a way always connected with football and
the other football fans.
As far as interjections are concerned, there are more of them (they have greater density) in
Muži v offsidu and they have a more varied use. In Muži v offsidu the most often used interjection
is no, followed by jojo, jejej, etc. There are also some onomatopoeic interjections - sounds of
singing, laughing. The interjections in this novel give liveliness to the characters, they partly
depict their personalities (for example father Habásko´s frequent nostalgic sighs jojo), the
interjections are also often used ironically.
Amis in his Lucky Jim does not use any special or unusual interjections. The most frequent
one was oh, which appeared alone or in phrases like oh (my) God, oh dear, etc. Other interjections
which appeared often were - ah, eh, er, mm, the above mentioned phrases including God, dear
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and Christ and the onomatopoeic interjections - ha ha ha, etc. The interjections do not play as
significant a role as in Muži v offsidu.
Table 1: Interjections found in Lucky Jim and Šťastný Jim
Lucky Jim Šťastný Jim
interjection number interjection number
oh 155 empty vocatives 26
empty vocatives (oh God, dear)
33 aha 19
ah 24 hm 4
onomatopoeic* 18 ach 4
eh 15 a jéje 1
er 6 ehm 1
mm 4
alas 2
total 263 total 55
*Interjections listed as onomatopoeic were, in this case, not exactly onomatopoeic, according to
Trávníček´s classification, because they are sounds produced by a human being (sounds of
laughter, singing, imitating someone’s accent, etc.). But they were listed as such for the sake of
easier classification. These were: hallaher hallaher, fa-la-la-la, hohoho, hahaha, bahaha, a-ah,
hallo (each appearing several times).
Table 2: Interjections found in Muži v offsidu
interjection number no 72 é 4 jojo 19 hm 4 empty vocatives 12 pst 4 ach... 11 núú.. 4 jejej 8 nóó 4 nono (no, no) 7 hip 4 ó 7 cs cs 3 aha 7 hehe 2 o jé, a jé, ó je 5 hola 2 haha 5 šššš.... 2 hej 5 oj oj oj 2 total 222
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Tables 1 and 2 show that the variety of interjections is greater in Muži v offsidu than in Lucky
Jim. Poláček uses more interjections because the speech of his characters is more colloquial and
the characters tend to be more emotive than Amis’s. The tables also show that though Amis’s use
of interjections is not very varied, the translator, Jiří Mucha, uses even fewer interjections and in
lesser numbers. His translation strategy will be explored next.
Kingsley Amis: Lucky Jim, Jiří Mucha: Šťastný Jim
Table 3: What interjections express in Lucky Jim
used to express number translated or substituted surprise 45 22 agreement 37 13 understanding 35 20 hesitation, thinking 26 13 disagreement, objection 22 7 attention seeking 18 9 onomatopoeic 18 17 disgust 11 9 resignation 10 7 beginning the sentence, addressing 9 0 remembering 8 2 sorrow, pity 6 4 joy 5 2 fear, worry 5 5 anger 4 1 impatience 4 4 total 263 135 (51%)
Oh
Oh, as by far the most often used interjection in the text, was employed to express every
possible or necessary emotion and feeling. Its use is very wide also according to the dictionaries –
“oh ... expressing surprise, fear, joy, etc....used for emphasis or to attract sb´s attention” (Oxford
16
Advanced Learner’s Dictionary 858). In the text oh is most often used to express agreement,
surprise, disagreement or objection, and hesitation (see table 5). Oh often appeared as oh yes, oh
no, as an expression of agreement or remembering or objection and are dealt with as single
interjections. Oh also appeared as a part of address (“oh, Dixon”), these were dealt with as
attention seeking interjections.
Phrases with oh that were separated are oh dear, oh God, oh my goodness, etc. I consider these
different interjections than oh. In Czech grammars these phrases are classified as “empty
vocatives” (Grepl-Karlík, Trávníček), words that used to be nouns but their meaning got lost, and
oh (ó) is very often used as a part of a vocative in English literary texts.
Mucha in his translation avoids using equivalents for oh (ach, ó) and prefers to omit it
altogether or to use a different part of speech or a different interjection (mainly aha) instead of it.
He uses an equivalent only in three cases, once as a sigh (“ach Jime”) and twice in a phrase
expressing remembering or realisation (“ach tak”). In other cases Mucha uses another interjection
(aha), a different part of speech or a different method of translation - for example instead of
emphasizing oh in “oh, no” he puts “ne, ne”, doubles the negation and emphasizes it as well.
Generally speaking, Mucha prefers to use the part of speech that oh stands for. For example he
uses verb in “oh, Dixon”- “poslyšte, Dixone”, etc.
Table 4: Methods of translating oh in Lucky Jim by Jiří Mucha
method of translation number % of the total
equivalent 3 2% ach, other interjection 22 14% aha, a jéje, Bože other part of speech 37 24% poslyšte, kdepak, tak, omission 93 60% total number 155
17
Table 5: What oh expresses in Lucky Jim
used to express number % of the total translated or substituted agreement 30 19% 23% (7) surprise 28 18% 46 % (13) understanding 27 17% 55% (15) disagreement, objection 19 12% 32% (12) hesitation, thinkinng 18 12% 44% (8) attention seeking 13 8% 7% (1) resignation 10 6% 30% (3) remembering 8 5% 25% (2) sorrow, pity 1 1% 100% (1) joy 1 1% 0% (0) total 155
This table shows how frequently oh was used to express the emotions listed in the table. The first
percentage is worked out from the total number of occurrences oh (155). The numbers in the third
column show the percentage worked out from the number of occurrences of oh expressing one
emotion and the number of translated or substituted cases (for example 7/30 in the first line).
Phrases oh (my) God, my God, God
These phrases are usually used in to express fear, joy, disgust or anger. I deal with these
phrases separately also because Mucha employs a completely different strategy in translating
them. He prefers to use equivalents or approximate equivalents; he does not translate my God as
“můj Bože” but with empty vocatives like proboha, panebože, kristepane. Mucha also uses these
empty vocatives to translate other interjections like oh dear, dear dear, for which Czech does not
have any “direct” equivalents. (As a probable deviated or abbreviated form of “dear God” it could
be translated by some of Czech deviated forms of vocatives like jemine, jemináčku, krindapána,
etc. but these would hardly be convenient for the text.)
Similar interjections like Christ, my Goodness and the already mentioned dear are translated by
the same method. Mucha uses different, sometimes deviated, forms of empty
vocatives/interjections like “bože, proboha, prokrista”.
18
These interjections express mainly fear (5), disgust (8), impatience (4), surprise (6), anger (2),
hesitation (2), joy, agreement, resignation and objection (each once).
Table 6: Methods of translating (oh) (my) God, (oh) dear, Christ, etc. in Lucky Jim by Jiří Mucha
method of translation
number % of the total
equivalent 20 61% not exact equivalents other interjection 7 21% proboha (christ), bože bože (dear),
etc. other parts of speech 3 9% ale, ale, ani za nic, samozřejmě,
na mou duši omission 3 9% total number 33
Ah
This interjection has a more limited use than oh. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary says
that it expresses “surprise, delight, admiration, sympathy, etc.”(24). Ah thus expresses more
positive and pleasant emotions and feelings than oh. Amis uses this interjection to express
surprise and understanding, less frequently for joy and consent or agreement. Ah appears usually
together with “there” or “here” (“ah, there you are”) and again with names. Ah usually expresses
surprise, agreement, understanding and joy.
Mucha employs the same translating strategy as with oh and prefers to omit it, he uses the
equivalent only once (ach), which is none of the possibilities the bilingual dictionary offers (it
gives “á, och, ó”) (Krámský et al. 27). Again the choice is quite understandable; ach is better
suited for this type of text than och or ó. Sometimes he chooses another interjection, namely aha
instead of ah. When he uses different parts of speech he translates ah by “jo”, “ano”, or by a word
ah stands for, like “poslyšte”.
19
Table 7: Methods of translating ah in Lucky Jim by Jiří Mucha
method of translation
number % of the total number
equivalent 1 4% ach other int. 2 8% aha other part of speech 6 25% ano, jo, verbs omission 15 63% total number 24
Table 8: What ah expresses in Lucky Jim
used to express number % of the total number
translated or substituted
surprise 7 29% 29% (2) agreement 5 21% 60% (3) understanding 3 12,5% 33% (1) joy 3 12,5% 33% (1) anger 1 4% 0% (0) attention seeking 1 4% 100% (1) disagreement 2 8% 0% (0) pity, sorrow 2 8% 50% (1)
Eh
This interjection is “used to express surprise or doubt, to invite agreement, or to ask for sth to be
repeated” (OALD 387). The same use it has in Lucky Jim. Eh usually appears at the end of an
interrogative sentence and “invites agreement” as the dictionary puts it. The translator again does
not use any interjection, but functionally similar words like “co, cože, viďte” or omits it. There are
no equivalents. Mucha uses other parts of speech in 10 cases and omission in 5 cases.
Er
The same translating strategy is used with er, which expresses hesitation and appears six times in
the text. Mucha uses different part of speech (4) “jakž takž, všelijaké, totiž...” or omits it
altogether (2).
20
The last remaining interjection is mm, which expresses thinking, hesitating or agreement. It
appears at the beginning of the sentences (4) and in all cases Mucha translates it with an
equivalent as hm.
There is another group of interjections which, I think, do not express any emotions but sounds, but
I would not call them onomatopoeic. They imitate sound of laughter (ho ho ho, ma ha ha), singing
(fa-la-la-la...) and then there is hallo, hallaher (used when phoning). All these interjections are
either transferred (ho ho ho) or translated with exact equivalent (tra-la-la, ha ha ha, haló).
To sum this overview up, I would say that Jiří Mucha translated those interjections that have
approximately the same frequency in Czech as in English (God, Christ, etc). Those that are not
used so often he usually omitted or substituted with other interjections or parts of speech.
Karel Poláček: Muži v offsidu
As was said above, Poláček uses more interjections (not in numbers but in proportion) in the
text than Amis and their use is more varied and livelier. The most often appearing one is no. Some
people may argue that no is not an interjection but the use of it suggests that it should be
considered an interjection, for example because, as an interjection, it can be removed from the
sentence and no change will happen with the meaning or syntax of the sentence. Czech no as an
interjection will be written in italics as the other interjections are and so it will be easily
distinguishable from English “no” as negation, as all the other parts of speech it will appear in
inverted comas.
Another interjection which I decided to list even though some scholars may say that it is not an
interjection is jojo. “Jo” as such is a colloquial expression of agreement but it appears also as an
expression of joy and pleasure and when it is doubled it expresses right the opposite - sorrow, pity
or melancholy. This way it works in Muži v ofsajdu where it is used 16 times. The other
interjections which are to be found in the text are, in my opinion, indisputable.
21
Interjections that were found in Muži v offsidu, those that appear more than once, are in the table
in the beginning of this chapter.
There are other interjections which appear only once or which are onomatopoeic - hahá,
bohorodičko, ejchuchu, ouvejs, ajajaj, hihihi, chichichi, ochochocho, o, mankote, prr, fuj fuj,
hurá, mtadadádá mtádadádá, la-la-la, houk, tradá, tfiú, vauvauvau, kristapána.
The interjections used in the novel are very often part of a person´s speech, they form a part of
character´s idiolect (jojo used by one, ach used by women characters).
Table 9: What interjections express in Muži v offsidu
used to express number % of the total number of int. (222)
sorrow, pity 41 18% anger 23 10% disagreement 21 9% hesitation, thinking 17 8% attention seeking 16 7% unspecified emotion 12 5% invitation 12 5% joy 12 5% fear 9 4% contempt 8 4% surprise 6 3% worry 6 3% understanding 5 2% agreement 5 2% encouragement 5 2% total (with other interjections) 222
Usage of no in Muži v offsidu
Poláček uses no to express almost every emotion and feeling necessary, sometimes also uses it
only as a beginning, an introductory word which has no other meaning, no other message,
sometimes as a part of an address. Sometimes it was difficult to decide what exactly no expresses
in the novel, but that is a problem with many other interjections, the process of deciding is
described in chapter on methodology.
22
Table 10: What no expresses in Muži v offsidu
used to express number % of the total % of other int. expressing the same anger 10 14% 50% sorrow, pity 6 8% 18% agreement 4 6% 80% disagreement 12 17% 57% hesitating, thinking 10 14% 59% invitation 12 17% 100% unspecified emotion 12 16% 100% other uses 5 7% total number 72
Ach, ó
Ó appears in prayer, as a part of “ó Bože” (oh God) and as an expression of surprise or joy but
that only in two cases. Ach is used in addressing either God or other characters (Richarde), and
once or twice in a nostalgic sigh - “ach, ta láska” (oh, that love).
Bože and other empty vocatives
Bože, kristapána, bohorodičko, ježíšmarjá, ježíš and panenko milostná were used as exclamations
expressing various emotions - sorrow, fear, joy, worries. Those that were in the text as part of a
prayer were not included. I do not consider these vocatives empty but real nouns (these have
addressing and naming function).
Having explored the texts separately I would like to compare them now in terms of frequency of
the use and occurrence of interjections.
23
Comparison
Table 11: What interjections express in Lucky Jim, Šťastný Jim and Muži v offsidu
used to express Lucky Jim Šťastný Jim (only int.) Muži v offsidu surprise 45 10 7 agreement 37 3 6 understanding 35 15 4 hesitation, thinking 26 3 19 disagreement 22 1 27 attention seeking 18 0 16 contempt, disgust 11 7 8 resignation 10 5 0 remembering 8 2 1 sorrow, pity 6 2 41 fear 5 4 5 joy 5 2 12 anger 4 1 21 total 263 55 222
From table 11 the translator’s tendency to fit the usage of interjections to Czech standards can be
seen and also his strategy to avoid using interjections in translation even though Czech uses them
in a given situation. For example, joy, anger or sorrow is expressed by an interjection quite often,
as table 11 shows. Avoiding interjections may lead to reduction of the colour, the style and the
variety of expression of the original. Mucha partly compensates for this by using Czech
interjections when translating other words and phrases - “I see” is translated by aha, intensifiers
like “what on earth”, “what the hell” or “for God’s sake” he translates by kruci and proboha (see
table 12 below). By adding these interjections Mucha compensates for reduction of interjections
that express understanding or agreement (aha) and hesitation (no). He adds interjections
expressing anger by translating intensifiers by interjections.
Table 12: Translation of interjections by Jiří Mucha in Lucky Jim
Lucky Jim - Šťastný Jim number
% of the total in the source text (263)
interjection - interjection 55 21%
interjection - no interjection 208 79%
no interjection - interjection 33 13% aha (10), proboha (11), no (11), kruci (1)
24
Table 12 sums up Mucha´s use of interjections. It shows how many interjections were translated,
omitted and added in his translation. His dealing with interjections is very interesting: he
translated 21% of the interjections from the source text and added more than half of the number of
the translated ones. Even with the added interjections his translation has the fewest interjections of
the texts explored here.
Oh and no
These interjections appear most often in Lucky Jim and Muži v offsidu. Oh is used 155 times in
Lucky Jim, no is used 72 times in Muži v offsidu. Mucha translates oh by its equivalents only three
times, and uses other interjections only 22 times. On the other hand he uses no only 12 times in
the whole novel, only once as a translation of an interjection (ooh), the other instances are usually
translations of “well”, “anyway”, “anyhow”. Jiří Zbořil in his minor thesis found out that no is
used to translate oh quite often, especially when it expresses hesitation or agreement. Mucha does
not adopt this strategy; he prefers omission, other parts of speech or other interjections.
In Muži v offsidu equivalents of oh, ach and ó appear 11 and 7 times, respectively. They are
part of an address or a prayer; sometimes they express surprise, agreement or disagreement. It is
difficult to compare it with three instances of ach in Šťastný Jim, with no case ó in the text, but it
seems that Mucha was right to avoid exact equivalents, the more so when we realize that some of
the achs and ós in Muži v offsidu are used ironically.
Aha
This interjection appears only 7 times in Muži v offsidu, but Mucha uses this interjection very
often; as was said above he uses it when translating oh, ah, “I see”, making it the most frequent
interjection in his translation (33 cases) which is unusual and may seem unnatural because in
originally Czech texts these rarely appear more than ten times (for example, once in Šabach´s
Hovno hoří and Švadrlík´s Černí baroni, 5 times in Čapek´s Povídání o pejskovi a kočičce).
25
2.2 John Kennedy Toole: A Confederacy of Dunces, Jaroslav Kořán: Spolčení hlupců and
Miroslav Švandrlík: Černí baroni
These two novels are both comic, they are closer to each other by time of both writing and
publication than Poláček´s and Amis’s novels. Toole’s novel A Confederacy of Dunces was
published in 1980, but it was written in 1969. Švandrlík´s Černí baroni was published in 1990
though he started writing it in 1962. They also share a critique of society hidden under the comic
tone. A Confederacy of Dunces takes place in 1960s in New Orleans and tells a story about a lazy
but intelligent college graduate Ignatius Reilly and his adventures during his search for work, and
about people from the back quarters of New Orleans. Švandrlík´s Černí baroni takes place in
1950s in the army, in one of the “working” battalions for those not fulfilling the regime’s ideas
about true communist soldiers (priests, gentry, rich farmers together with thieves and criminals
and reliable communists who are not able-bodied).
As far as interjections are concerned, Toole´s novel has a greater number and variety of them,
ranging from the classic ones (oh) to dialect or idiolect ones (Jones’s whoa). One of the most
frequent ones is again oh; alone or in phrases like oh Lord, oh my God. There are also vulgar
interjections (shit). The interjections in this novel have a similar function to the interjections in
Poláček´s Muži v offsidu. The interjections in A Confederacy of Dunces also form an important
part of a dialogue; they help to create a feeling of a real, lively, colloquial speech of common
people and sometimes also help to characterize the personalities of the heroes of the novel.
Švandrlík in Černí baroni uses fewer interjections, usually rather vulgar, sometimes not only
Czech ones but also Slovak ones (or rather Czechoslovak, coined by major Terazky). Again there
is a great number of empty vocatives (ježišmarjá). The small number of interjections in the text is
caused by the ironic, elevated style of the novel and by the less important role of the dialogue in
the novel.
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Table 13: Interjections found in A Confederacy of Dunces and Spolčení hlupců
A Confederacy of Dunces
number Spolčení hlupců number
oh 147 empty vocatives 123 empty vocatives 122 kurva 83 hey 77 ach 75 whoa 73 aj vaj (varied) 27 aw 38 onomatopoeic 21 huh 34 hej 18 ooo wee 25 no 17 onomatopoeic* 21 doprdele 12 shit 16 achich 7 ho hum 7 aha 4 whoo 5 ó 4 aha 1 žú 2 uh huh 1 ouvej 2 hovno 2 au, jauva 1 eh, ech 1 uhm, huhmmmm 1 páni 1 juchúúú 1 halo 1 a jeje 1 total 560 total 404
*Onomatopoeic interjections are: hoho, ho hum, aarf, braah, woof woof woof, oof, whoo, shh
(each appearing several times).
Table 14: Interjections found in Černí baroni
interjection number no 87 sakra 12 proboha 8 boha jeho 7 doprdele 6 bože môj 5 hm 5 ježíšmarjá 5 he 3 jo, jo (jó) 3 fuj 3 ha 2 ajajaj 2 hergot 2 once appearing 25 total 175
27
Tables 13 and 14 show the difference between the original novels, the density of interjections
in Černí baroni is smaller, the interjections in the text form only 0,150% of all words, compared
with 0,429% in A Confederacy of Dunces. As was said above, interjections do not play as
important a role in Černí baroni as in A Confederacy of Dunces. They are used only to make the
dialogue more natural. Table 14 shows that Švandrlík employs almost none of the primary
interjections in his novel, which suggests that his characters are not as emotive or emotively
acting as Toole´s and that Švandrlík uses other methods to express the characters´ emotions
(ironically serious utterances). Table 13 also shows Kořán´s creative attitude to translation of
interjections. His methods will be explored below.
John Kennedy Toole: A Confederacy of Dunces, Jaroslav Kořán: Spolčení hlupců
Table 15: What interjections express in A Confederacy of Dunces
used to express number translated or substituted anger 111 99 disagreement, objection 63 45 surprise 62 60 address, att. seeking 47 40 joy 39 38 sorrow, pity 33 31 fear 31 27 inviting agreement 29 21 excitement 25 24 onomatopoeic 21 21 agreement 18 13 disgust 17 17 remembering 14 13 pain 14 14 understanding 12 12 emphasis 10 9 misunderstanding 5 5 resignation 4 4 unspecified emotion 4 3 hesitation, thinking 1 1 total 560 497 88,75%
28
Oh
Oh is again the most often used interjection. Oh is not used for any particular emotion but is
quite evenly distributed among more of them (see table 17). Oh appears 142 times in the text.
Though Kořán prefers translating interjections to omitting them, with oh he uses omission
frequently, almost for quarter of the ohs (see table 16). To translate oh he employs direct
equivalents (ach, ó, och), sometimes mocking the emotion with achich. Achich is also sometimes
used to translate oh uttered by the homosexual character in the novel. Kořán uses other
interjections less frequently, for example sakra, žú, no. Sometimes he also translates oh by other
parts of speech, like “ale”, “jen”, “tak”. Oh again appears as a part of phrases like oh my God, oh
dear, etc. I will deal with these phrases separately again because of the reasons given in the
previous chapter and because of the great variety of expressions Kořán used to translate them.
Table 16: Methods of translating oh in A Confederacy of Dunces by Jaroslav Kořán
method of translation
number % of the total
equivalent 83 58 ach, ó, och other interjection 13 9 žú, sakra, no other parts of speech 12 8 tak, ale omission 34 24 total number 142
Table 17: What oh expresses in A Confederacy of Dunces
used to express number % of the total number translated or substituted objection 21 15% 52% (11) joy 18 13% 100% (18) anger 17 12% 35% (6) surprise 15 11% 93% (14) remembering 14 10% 93% (13) address 14 10% 86% (12) understanding 12 8% 100% (12) fear 10 7% 60% (6) agreement 8 6% 50% (4) sorrow, pity 7 5% 100% (7) unspecified emotion 4 3% 75% (3) pain 2 1% 100% (2)
29
(First percentage worked out from the total number of oh in the text, the second from the
particular emotion, for example 11/21 in the first line)
Sometimes the boundaries between feelings and emotions are not clear and it is a question of
personal choice or personal interpretation to which column the interjection will be added. For
example “oh, my valve” can be seen as expressing fear, pain or anger. I listed it as fear.
Whoa
This interjection is used mainly by Jones, the black vagrant, the only one who seems to see things
clearly and who has the tendency to comment on things using rather vulgar expressions. This one
is problematic. The dictionaries I consulted offer two possibilities - “command to a horse to stop
or stand still” or “request to a person to slow down speaking or acting” (OALD 1458,
dictionary.cambridge.org). From the translator’s attitude to this word (72 times translated as kurva
and once omitted) it seems that he sees it as mispronounced “whore”, or that he translates this
interjection which is used without any specific meaning with regard to the character that uses it
and translates it with a vulgar word. The use of this interjection (table 18) shows that Kořán´s
interpretation of this word was right.
Table 18: What whoa expresses in A Confederacy of Dunces
used to express number % of the total translated anger 31 42% 100% (31) excitement 25 34% 96% (24) surprise 8 11% 100% (8) joy 5 7% 100% (5) agreement 3 4% 100% (3) sorrow, pity 1 1% 100% (1) total 73
30
Ooo-wee
Discussing the character of Jones I will continue with his other favourite interjection and that is
ooo-wee. This interjection is used to express sorrow, pity (10), surprise (6), anger (5), emphasis
(4), joy (1) and is translated either by aj-vaj (jaj-vaj), sometimes varied in the number of syllables,
or by aj-jaj, oj-oj, again varying in the number of syllables.
Empty vocatives - Lord, Christ, my God, etc.
Toole employs a great number of empty vocatives in his novel. It is probably caused by the
chattiness of the characters and by the effort to make the dialogue as vivid as possible. The most
numerous interjection in this group is oh, my God (44 occurrences) translated as ach Bože in 43
cases and once as panebože. None was omitted. In A Confederacy of Dunces oh, my God
expresses these emotions: anger (16), disgust (9), fear (8), pain (5), surprise (3), disagreement (2)
and joy (1). This phrase has a fixed translation, fixed equivalent, which cannot be said about the
other phrases:
Table 19: Translations of the empty vocatives in A Confederacy of Dunces
oh (my) dear božíčku, ach jejda jémine, jemináčku (3), jémine (2), propána oh my God ach Bože (43), panebože (1) (oh) Lord božíčku, bože božíčku, prokristáčka (2), mankote (7), ale děte, ó
pane, můj ty bože, pánbíčku an nebi, dobrotivý bože, panebože (2), krindapána (2), prokrindáčka,, ježíšku na křížku, šmarjá,
oh (my) goodness ach ta má hlava, ach propánajána, ach má ty dobroto, ach jouvej, ježíšmarjá, ach bože na nebi, ach můj ty bože, achich jémine
oh (my, good) heavens
panenko skákavá, pro Kristovy rány, ach probůh, jémine, dobrotivá nebesa (6), spravedlivá nebesa
good grief panenko skákavá, pro pět ran božích, můj ty smutku (6), oh, my ach božíčku, jemináčku good God dobrotivý bože my God probůh, bože (4), můj ty bože, můj ty smutku
Christ kristepane (3), Ježíši Kriste
Jesus Christ, Christ awmight
Ježíši Kriste (3)
31
The variety of expression in the translation is great as is manifested in table 19. There is no
special use of any of these interjections for particular emotions in the original or the translation.
Kořán in his translation uses many of deviated forms of Jesus Christ (jémináčku, jémine,
krindapána, prokristáčka), of God (propána, Czech Pán Bůh), of German for my God (mankote,
mein Gott) and once of Virgin Mary (šmarjá, from Ježíš Maria).
Table 20: What the empty vocatives express in A Confederacy of Dunces
used to express number examples surprise 23 (oh) Lord, oh my, oh dear, oh heavens, oh my
goodness... anger 14 oh dear, good grief, oh my goodness, my God... fear 13 Lord, oh dear, good heavens, Christ disgust 8 my God, good God, oh my heavens objection, disagreement
7 good grief, (oh) Lord
sorrow, pity 5 Lord, oh my goodness joy 5 oh my dear, Lord, oh my goodness pain 4 good grief, oh Lord resignation 1 oh my dear remembering 1 oh my emphasis 1 Lord total 82
Tables 19 and 20 are organized differently than the other tables because I want to show the
translator’s creativity in translating this group of interjections.
Aw
This interjection expresses “mild disappointment, gentle entreaty, or real or mock sympathy or
sentiment” (www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary, Merriam-Webster Dictionary). In the novel it is
used as an expression of objection, sorrow and pity, joy and agreement. It is usually translated by
“ale” (“aw, come on” - “ale děte”, “aw, Santa” - “ale di ty, Santo”) or by other interjections like
no (see table 21). It is quite difficult to find out which of the Czech interjections could be used as
an equivalent for this word, I would suggest probably ó, ach - equivalents of oh. Table 22 shows
32
that Kořán did not prefer equivalents but other parts of speech which are in these situations used
in Czech.
Table 21: Methods of translating aw in A Confederacy of Dunces by Jaroslav Kořán
method of translation number % of the total equivalent 1 3% ach omission 7 18% other interjection 11 29% no, eh, ech other parts of speech 19 50% ale, heleďte, jo total 38
Table 22: What aw expresses in A Confederacy of Dunces
used to express number % of the total translated or substituted objection, disagreement 23 60% 83% (19) sorrow, pity 8 21% 75% (6) joy 4 11% 75% (3) agreement 3 8% 100% (3)
Hey
According to the dictionary, this interjection is “used to call attention or express surprise or
inquiry” (OALD 585). In the novel it is used to attract attention in a great majority, but it also
expresses anger, objection or surprise. This interjection is translated by its equivalent (hej), by
other interjections (no, a jeje, aj-vaj, kurva) and by other parts of speech: verbs - “počkejte”,
“heleďte”, nouns - “darebáci” (“‘Hey!’ he heard Santa Battaglia shout”,“‘Darebáci!’slyšel křičet
Santu...”), “hochu” (“hey, boy” - “hochu, hochu”) and other: “cože”, “kamto”, “ahoj”,
“zdravíčko”, “tak to prrr” (“‘Erran? Hey! I thought this a sweepin and moppin job.”’ -
“‘Pochůzku? Tak to prr! Já jsem najatej na zametání.”’).
33
Table 23: Methods of translating hey in A Confederacy of Dunces by Jaroslav Kořán
method of translation
number % of the total
equivalent 19 25% hej other interjection 28 36% jauva, kurva, hergot, no other part of speech 18 23% kamto, heleďte, co je, cože, darebáci omission 12 16% total 77
Table 24: What hey expresses in A Confederacy of Dunces
used to express number % of the total translated or substituted
attracting attention 33 43% 85% (28) anger 18 23% 94% (17) objection 9 12% 56% (5) surprise 6 8% 83% (5) agreement 3 4% 67% (2) sorrow, pity 3 4% 100% (3) joy 3 4% 100% (3) greeting 2 3% 100% (2)
Tables 23 and 24 show that Kořán again translated hey according to the emotion it is used for.
Hey in this novel has much wider use than the dictionary suggests and Kořán, in reaction to this,
uses many interjections and also other parts of speech to translate it.
The remaining interjections that appear more frequently are huh, shit, whoo and ouch. On the
whole, Kořán uses a greater variety of interjections to translate them, he tries to use those
interjections that expresses these emotions in Czech.
Huh is, according to the dictionary, “used to express scorn, disgust, enquiry, etc.” (OALD
607). In the novel huh is used to invite agreement or as an expression of enquiry. It is also
translated as such. Kořán uses the other parts of speech to translate it. When huh invites
agreement (29 cases), it is translated as “co”, “viď”, words that invite agreement in Czech (21
cases). Huh also expresses misunderstanding (5 times) and is translated as “cože”or “prosím”.
34
Shit is a word used mainly to express anger and is translated as doprdele or kurva. Shit is also
twice expresses objection, in those cases Kořán translates shit as “pěkný hovno”, which is
equivalent of shit and which is also used in Czech to express objection.
Whoo “is an expression of delight” (www.onelook.com). In the novel it expresses mostly
positive emotions. It appears 5 times and each time is translated differently. When it expresses joy
it is translated as juchúúú and žúúú, when it is used to express surprise it is translated as páni,
resignation is expressed by hergot and objection by chacha. Also ouch gets different treatment
every time it appears, it is translated as ouch, auvaj, auu.
The interjections that are left are onomatopoeic or have mixed usage, like ho hum which
express sorrow (ach ouvej), anger (hoho), objection (hoho), or imitates yawning (huáááá) twice
and once unindetifiable sound (áááhumm). The others are onomatopoeic - woof woof arf for dog´s
barking, oof for fall, braah, aarff, hoho, ssh.
Miroslav Švandrlík: Černí baroni
The most numerous interjection in this novel is again, as in Muži v offsidu, no. It is followed by
empty vocatives like sakra, proboha, boha jeho. I did not include commands (halt), these could be
considered interjections because commands to animals are interjections (Jovanovic), but I think
that these are not important for the purpose of this thesis, even if they were interjections, because
their use is very specific and limited.
Interjections that appear in the novel are listed in table 14 at the beginning of this chapter.
Those that appear only once were - hej, eh, prisámboh, aha, ej, nu, prokristapána, ach, bašta,
haló, prima, ježíši kriste, kruciprdel, pane bože, urá. There are also onomatopoeic interjections -
hu ha ha urá urá urá, ha ha ha ura ura ura, la-la-la, lala, la la la, jupajdis jupajda (all refrains of
songs), aaaa....oh....jajaja, búúú....kak....ááá, éééé...jujuju...huhuhu, hau jeje ááá (babbling of one
of the soldiers).
35
Table 25: What interjections express in Černí baroni
used to express number % of the total number (175) anger 28 16% unspecified emotion 26 15% hesitation, thinking 18 10% agreement 18 10% joy 14 8% fear 13 7% sorrow, pity 10 6% surprise 6 3% disagreement, objection 5 3% disgust 5 3% understanding 4 2% invitation 4 2% resignation 4 2% impatience 2 1% misunderstanding 2 1% attracting attention 1 1% total 175
No
No is the most frequent interjection in the text. It often appears as an uncertain, unidentifiable
expression, for example, “No, nad tím by se snad dalo přimhouřit oko” or “No, já tě k tomu nutit
nebudu”. These occurrences are difficult to decide and are listed as unspecified emotion.
Sometimes context helps to decide the emotion the interjection expresses but not in all cases. (for
example “‘No vidíte,’ radoval se Troník” was listed as joy).
36
Table 26: What no expresses in Černí baroni
used to express number % of the total ( 87)
% among other int. expressing the same
unspecified emotion, address
25 29% 89%
agreement 16 18% 89% hesitation, thinking 13 15% 72% joy 7 8% 50% anger 5 6% 19% disagreement, objection 4 5% 80% invitation 4 5% 100% surprise 3 3% 50% fear 2 2% 15% impatience 2 2% 100% understanding 2 2% 50% sorrow, pity 2 2% 20% disgust 1 1% 20% resignation 1 1% 25% total 87
Sakra and other empty vocatives
Sakra is also an empty vocative, this time from Latin “sacra(mentum)” it probably has its
origin in sacred rituals or oaths and sakra is altered, deviated because of the taboo (Holub-Lyer
430). Today this meaning is completely lost, by contrast, it is considered quite rude. Sakra
appears mostly as an expression of anger (11 cases, to this number was counted two instances of k
sakru, inflection of sakra) and once it expresses sorrow and pity.
Proboha is used 8 times, mostly for fear (4 cases), then for anger (2) and once for disgust and
surprise.
Boha jeho is quite specific for this novel, it is a Slovak interjections but characters speaking
Czech use it as well (probably after major Terazky). It appears 7 times in the novel and expresses
anger (2 cases), disgust (2), joy (1), fear (1) and sorrow, pity (1).
Bože moj is used by the character of major Terazky, who speaks a strange mixture of languages
which resembles Slovak. It is used 4 times for sorrow, pity (2), anger (2)
and joy (1).
37
Ježíšmarjá is written with varied diacritic (jéžišmarjá, ježišmarjá). It appears 5 times and
expresses fear (4 cases) and sorrow, pity (1).
Hergot was used twice, for joy and anger. Those that appeared once were ježíši kriste (fear), pane
bože (sorrow, pity), prokristapána (fear) and prisámboh (joy).
From those interjections that appear more than once none is used unusualy. Hm is used for
hesitation and thinking (4 cases) and once for agreement, doprdele (written both together with the
preposition and with a pause) for anger (5 cases) and once for fear, he for misunderstanding (2)
and for surprise (1), fuj for disgust, hej to attract attention, etc. There is one interjection I would
like to attract attention to as an evidence of the author’s creativity, at least I think so, and that is
kruciprdel, used once to express anger.
Comparison
To sum up, the use of interjections in both original texts differs significantly, in A Confederacy
of Dunces the interjections are used frequently and form an inherent part of the characters´ speech.
Švandrlík in Černí baroni does not use so many interjections and creates his characters´ idiolect
and personalities by using other methods. Kořán as a translator tries to catch the colourful speech
of Toole´s characters by using even a greater variety of interjections than Toole.
Kořán employs a completely different translating strategy from Mucha (Šťastný Jim). He
translates oh by its equivalents (ach, ó), he creatively translates the empty vocatives, he rarely
uses omissions. He makes use of “ale” as a very flexible word which can suggest not only
objection but also surprise, anger, sorrow, pity (ale, ale) and even joy.
Kořán also uses no in his translation, it is the most numerous interjection in Černí baroni, as it
was in Muži v offsidu. Kořán does not use it as much for translation of interjections as for
translation of other parts of speech, sometimes he simply adds it to make the dialogue more vivid,
natural. For example he adds it to rhetoric questions like “Ain´t that terrible?”- “No, není to
38
hrůza?” No is added to these questions in 10 cases. He also sometimes translates invitations or
pacifying “okay” and “come on” by no tak (13 cases), sometimes also “well” and implied
hesitation is translated by no (12 cases) (see table 27).
Table 27: Translation of interjections in Spolčení hlupců by Jaroslav Kořán
A Confederacy of Dunces - Spolčení hlupců
number % of the total in the source text (560)
interjection - interjection 404 72% interjection - no int. 156 28% no interjection - interjection 50 9% no (40 occurrences),
proboha (2), kruci (3) hergot (2) and other empty vocatives)
Table 27 shows that Kořán uses as many interjections as possible, because A Confederacy of
Dunces is written in a relaxed, colloquial language of which the interjections are an inseparable
part and Kořán wants his translation to have the same effect. Also, he did add as many
interjections as Mucha in Šťastný Jim did. The most often added interjection is no which, as this
study shows, is very frequently used in Czech. What can be a little unnatural in this translation (as
far as interjections are concerned) is quite a large number of achs and also achich, which does not
appear very often but is marked.
39
2.3 Warren Miller: The Cool World, Josef Škvorecký: Prezydent Krokadýlů and Petr Šabach:
Hovno hoří
These two novels differ from each other quite significantly by the year of publication, there is
fifty years difference between them. The Cool World was published in 1959 and Hovno hoří in
1999. The stories are both written in the first person narrative, in a colloquial language which
resembles spoken language but direct speech is not used very often. Both novels were
cinematized – Miller´s novel into a movie with the same name and Šabach´s into Pelíšky and
partly also into Pupendo. Both movies are more famous than the novels, which can be proved by a
simple search on the Internet, which, especially in case of Miller’s novel, will show that the text is
not much written about.
Miller’s The Cool World is told by Duke Custis, a young black gang member from Harlem. The
novel is written in a black dialect with many grammatical errors. It is conceived as a confession of
a young criminal. It tells a story of Duke’s pursuit of a gun and his fall when he gets it. The story
may be sometimes funny but the overall impression is not funny at all. It is a story of a poor boy
with a very small chance to escape the life of a criminal.
Interjections that can be found in this novel are partly the common ones - oh, Christ, uh - and
partly quite special ones like Man or shitman. Škvorecký as a translator employs very peculiar
language that nowadays may seem sometimes unintelligible, especially to the young generation.
In Šabach´s Hovno hoří there are three persons from whose point of view the stories are
written. The main theme is the relationship between men and women and their different
perception of the world around them (see various reviews on the Internet, for example short
reviews on www.milosnemec.cz). The language of the stories is colloquial and relaxed. The most
often used interjections are again empty vocatives and no. The novel lacks primary (subjective)
interjections like ach.
40
Table 28: Interjections found in The Cool World and Prezydent Krokadýlů
The Cool World number Prezydent Krokadýlů number man 57 páni, pánove 77 oh 39 onomatopoeic 29 onomatopoeic* 31 doprdele 17 uh 23 empty vocatives 15 oh man 21 ach 14 shitman 20 hm 5 empty vocatives 17 no 4 uh (un) huh 7 hovno 3 ah 4 I.I.I.I. 3 total 255 total 178 (with other
interjections) *Onomatopoeic interjections are: slump, slump slump, boom, boom boom boom, whish, eeeeyuh,
thum, thum thum, whoooom, voooom, thic thic..., bam, thuck, chomp, whack (some appearing
more than once).
Table 29: Interjections found in Hovno hoří
interjection number no 28 proboha 14 panebože 5 do prdele 4 ježíšmarjá 2 do háje 2 onomatopoeic* 6 once appearing 13 total 74
*Onomatopoeic interjections: ááách (breathing), škyt, pssst (breathing), hrrrr, klapity klap (some
appearing more than once).
Tables 28 and 29 show that both authors do not employ such a great variety of interjections in
their texts. Miller’s novel has a higher density of interjections than Šabach (Miller 0,469% and
Šabach 0,232% of all words). One of the reasons for this difference is that Miller uses
interjections outside direct speech, which Šabach does not. Šabach also, as Švandrlík in Černí
baroni, uses other parts of speech to express emotions.
41
Warren Miller: The Cool World, Josef Škvorecký: Prezydent Krokadýlů
Table 30: What interjections express in The Cool World.
used to express number translated or substituted emphasis 58 53 onomatopoeic 31 29 address 24 19 hesitation, thinking 23 21 anger 21 16 disagreement, objection 16 14 joy 16 16 sorrow, pity 13 13 fear 10 9 agreement 10 8 impatience 6 6 surprise 6 6 remembering 4 4 understanding 3 3 total 255 217 (85%)
Man, oh Man, shitman
These expressions appear very often in the text and are very specific for this novel. These
words are not usually classified as interjections but in this text they work so. Their meaning as
nouns and addressing and the naming function are lost. The meaning gets lost mainly in Duke’s
narration, outside direct speech. In indirect speech, in narration, Man is only an empty phrase;
Duke talks to the reader as the book is written as a confession, but he does not really address
anybody. In the dialogue the addressing function is preserved (that is why these were not included
into this group, they were also translated differently (“vole”), Škvorecký also felt the difference).
Man does not even express any particular emotion, it is used mainly for emphasis (34 cases), (for
example: “Man it was rough at Valley Forge an places like that” “Páni ve Valley Forge a při
takovejch průšvihách to teda bylo drsný”) and address (14), the rest is distributed among fear (2),
surprise (2), joy (2) and other emotions. Škvorecký uses omission and other interjections (ksakru,
namouduši) only twice, by far the most often he translates it by equivalents (mostly páni, pánové,
once appears člověče and chlape). He realizes that this interjection is a part of the boys´ speech,
42
and that it must be translated mostly by the same word because it is almost always used in the
same situation.
Oh Man expresses more emotions; it was used 21 times and expresses joy (6 cases, with o
Man), impatience (3 cases), surprise, anger, fear, sorrow, pity (2 cases each) and agreement,
disagreement, address and emphasis (1 each). It is translated as páni, pánové again.
Shitman is a compound of “shit” and “man”. It appears 20 times in the novel. The translator is
sensitive to the emotion it expresses. When it is used for anger, it is translated as doprdele (for
example: “Shitman I liven in places like that all my life”- “Doprdele celej život jsem bydlel v
takovejhle barákách”), when it expresses disagreement, it is translated as
hovno (“Shitman the reason headbreakers usen the Colt is because they dont know better”-
“Hovno. Pendrekáři nosej Colty poněvač sou pitomý”). Hovno is sometimes used in Czech to
express strong disagreement; it could also be considered closest to equivalent of shitman. Shitman
is used to express anger (9 cases), emphasis (5 cases), anger (3), surprise, fear and impatience
(each 1).
These interjections, these phatic addresses, are very specific feature of this novel. No other of
the novels I worked with has such a great number of them. In the original English texts “man” is
not used the way Miller uses it. Only in Lucky Jim by Amis, “old man” as an expression close to
an address appears three times. In the Czech texts similar words appear, but they are also closer to
real address than the expressions Miller used. In Švandrlík´s Černí baroni “člověče” (man)
appears 15 times and “vole” 13 times. In Šabach´s Hovno hoří “člověče” appears twice and “vole”
9 times. And in Muži v offsidu by Poláček “člověče” appears 8 times. None of the authors uses
“pane” or “pánove” (written without the diacritics in Prezydent krokadýlů) the same way
Škvorecký does. “Pane” appears as a real address in all four Czech texts.
43
Oh
Oh is the second most often used interjection in the novel. It appears 39 times and the translator
again prefers omission to other translating methods (see table 31 below).
Table 31: Methods of translating oh in The Cool World by Josef Škvorecký
method of translation
number % of the total example
equivalent 16 41% ach, ó other interjection 5 13% no, bože other part of speech 6 15% jo, ano, víš omission 12 31% total 39
Oh is mostly used for address, anger and disagreement, surprisingly often translated as ach. It
probably, in translator’s view, belongs to Duke’s style, to his way of expression, of writing.
Table 32: What oh expresses in The Cool World
used to express
number % of the total number
% among other int. expressing the same
translated or substituted
address 9 23% 38 77% (7) anger 6 15% 29 33% (2) disagreement 5 13% 31 60% (3) emphasis 3 8% 5 33% (1) sorrow, pity 3 8% 23 100% (3) agreement 3 8% 30 33% (1) remembering 3 8% 75 100% (3) understanding 2 5% 67 100% (2) fear 2 5% 20 100% (1) joy 1 3% 6% 100% (1) surprise 1 3% 17% 100% (1) hesitation 1 3% 4% 100% (1)
It is interesting that Škvorecký translated or substituted oh so frequently when it is used as a part
of an address, the other translators (except for Kořán) avoided translation or substitution in this
case. Another interesting feature is that the less frequently oh is used to express particular emotion
the more frequently it translated or substituted (see the last lines of table 32).
44
Uh
According to dictionaries, uh expresses either hesitation (Merriam-Webster), or request for
repetition when something is misunderstood or surprise, confusion or uncertainty (OneLook
Dictionary, www.onelook.com).
This interjection appears quite frequently, often it is several times repeated (uh uh uh - counted as
one), not really expressing any emotion, at least not for me. To me it seems more like urgent
difficulty or inability to express oneself when something is, as well urgently, needed. It is listed as
hesitation. Škvorecký translated it often as “teda” or “vole”. (For example: “Uh uh uh uh Duke
now Man uh uh.”- “Teda Duke koukni vole teda”). His choice of “teda” suggests that he also
understood the word as hesitation or inability to express oneself. It often used by Blood, a drug
addict, who utters the majority of the uhs in the text and it, in my opinion, helps to express his
compulsive behaviour.
Table 33: Methods of translating uh in The Cool World by Josef Škvorecký
method of translation
number % of the total example
equivalent 0 0 other interjection 6 26% hm, no, chachacha other part of speech 15 65% teda, prosim tě omission 2 9% total 23
These were the most often used interjections in the text. The other group of interjections that
appears often are the onomatopoeic ones. Škvorecký translates them either by the interjections
very similar to the original ones, he changes a vowel or a consonant to make the interjection
sound more natural in Czech - boom - bum, vooooom - zůůůůům, or he translates them by a
different interjection, also more natural in Czech - slump - klap, thic - cvak. Twice he also
translates it by a verb (“Harrison slam his book shut. It goes Thuck.”- “Harrison sklapne knihu až
to práskne.”). Onomatopoeic interjections found in the text were – boom (translated as bum),
45
slump (klap), whish (fít), bam (prásk), whack, thuck (by a verb), thic (cvak), thum (bum),
whooooom (huííí), voooom (zůůůůůůům), eeeeeyuh (áááách), chomp (chrup).
Empty vocatives
The remaining interjections are not very frequent. There are 17 empty vocatives, oh Christ, oh
dear, Jesus, oh God. Christ, Jesus and God are translated by their equivalents - kristepane, jéžíš,
panebože - oh dear is translated as ach kamaráde, bože and ach bože.
Table 34: What the empty vocatives express in The Cool World
used to express number % of the total
%among other int. expressing the same
translated or substituted
joy 6 35% 38% 100% (6) sorrow, pity 5 29% 38% 100% (5) fear 2 12% 20% 100% (2) impatience 1 6% 17% 100% (1) remembering 1 6% 25% 100% (1) anger 1 6% 5% 100% (1) emphasis 1 6% 2% 100% (1)
The rest of the interjections appear only a few times. The most frequent of these is uh (un) huh,
which is used 7 times and expresses agreement, it is translated by hm (1 case), hm no (5 cases)
and once by “helemese”. Its opposite, hunh uh is used once for emphasis of negation and is
translated as “fakt” (“No. Hunh uh.” - “Ne. Fakt”).
Ah appears 4 times as a part of an address and is three times translated as ach and once omitted. I.
I. I. I. is used three times, it probably an original spelling of ai, which expresses “pity, pain or
anguish” (www.onelook.com). Here it is used for surprise (unpleasant) or disbelief and is
translated by “namoutě, namoutě, namoutě” in all three cases. For example: “He shaken his head
at whut he readin. He say ‘I.I.I.I.’ Like that. ‘I.I.I.I’” – “Vrtí hlavou nad tim co čte. Řiká.
‘Namoutě namoutě namoutě’. Tohle. ‘Namoutě namoutě namoutě’”
46
Nah nah nah is an imitation of a woman´s refusal, and is translated as “depak, depak, depak”. Hey
attracts attention and is translated as “hele”, damn is used for anger and is translated by its
equivalent - sakra.
Petr Šabach: Hovno hoří
In Šabach´s text the most frequent interjection is again no. The next most numerous group is
the empty vocatives (namely proboha and panebože). The common, primary interjections (ach,
he, aha) are not very frequent.
The table of interjections found in the novel is at the beginning of this chapter (table 29).
The interjections that appear only once are jééé, jé, prokrista, mno, haló, ksakru, aha, hergot,
hurááá, he, ach, hm, tě pic. Onomatopoeic interjections are - škyt, ááááách, áááách, pssst (sounds
of breathing), klapity klap and prrr.
Table 35: What interjections express in Hovno hoří
used to express number % of the total (74) emphasis 21 28% anger 15 20% sorrow, pity 6 8% onomatopoeic 6 8% agreement 5 7% joy 4 5% surprise 4 5% fear 4 5% hesitation, thinking 3 4% objection 3 4% address 1 1% understanding 1 1% invitation 1 1% total 74
No
In more than a half cases no appear as a personal locution of one of the characters in the
beginning (“Co? No!”, 16 cases). Together with one simple no I listed these as an emphasis. The
47
locution means something like Am I right? Right. The rest of the 28 is distributed among
agreement (5), objection (3), invitation (1), anger (1) and hesitation (1).
Empty vocatives
Empty vocatives counted together form the next greatest group of interjections in the text. To this
group belong proboha, panebože, ježíšmarjá, hergot, prokrista, ksakru.
Table 36: What the empty vocatives express in Hovno hoří
used to express
number % of the total % among other int. expressing the same
anger 8 33% 53% fear 4 17% 100% emphasis 4 17% 19% sorrow, pity 4 17% 67% joy 2 8% 50% surprise 1 4% 25% thinking, hesitation
1 4% 33%
total 24
Anger is expressed by proboha (4), panebože (2), ksakru and hergot (both 1), fear by proboha (2),
panebože and ježíšmarjá (both 1), emphasis by proboha (4), joy by panebože (2), surprise by
proboha and hesitation by prokrista.
From the remaining interjections do prdele is used in all four cases to express anger as well as do
háje (2). Jééé and hurááá express joy, he, jé and tě pic are used for surprise (jé for pleasant, he
and tě pic for unpleasant), ach and hm express sorrow and pity, mno hesitation, haló attracts
attention and aha is used for signalling understanding.
Comparison
The novels share several features - there are not many subjective, original interjections, on the
contrary, there is quite a large number of secondary interjections (empty vocatives) and
onomatopoeic ones.
48
Table 37: What interjections express in The Cool World and Hovno hoří
used to express The Cool World Prezydent Krokadýlů (only int.)
Hovno hoří
emphasis
58 41 21
onomatopoeic 31 29 6
address 24 17 1
hesitation, thinking 23 8 3
anger 21 16 15
disagreement, objection 16 12 3
joy 16 16 4
sorrow, pity 13 9 6
fear 10 9 4
agreement 10 6 5
impatience 6 6 0
surprise 6 6 4
remembering 4 1 0
understanding 3 2 1
total 255 178 74
Though the language of Hovno hoří is not as colloquial or even peculiar as the language of
Prezydent Krokadýlů, Šabach and Škvorecký employ similar interjections in similar situations, for
example for agreement Šabach uses 5 times no and Škvorecký 4 times hm no, to express anger
they both use doprdele (Škvorecký writes the preposition and the noun together), Šabach 4 times
and Škvorecký 9 times. Škvorecký does not use so many deviated forms of empty vocatives as
Šabach when translating interjections but he employs this strategy when he translates the
intensifiers. “The hell” used as intensifier is 6 times translated as ksakru or sakra. “God dam it” is
translated as sakra krucifix or as krucinál (see table 38). The high number of emphasising
interjections is also common to both novels; it is a part of colloquial language. There is a
relatively high frequency of onomatopoeic interjections, mainly in The Cool World; this feature is
still present in the speech of the adolescents and Škvorecký was right to translate them by
interjections and not by verbs.
49
As the other already discussed translators, Škvorecký also added some interjections to the text. He
did so when translating the above mentioned intensifiers and when translating “well”, “you know”
which he translated by no. He also adds one ach.
Table 38: Translation of interjections in Prezydent Krokadýlů by Josef Škvorecký
The Cool World - Prezydent Krokadýlů
number % of the total in the source text (255)
interjection- interjection 178 70% interjection - no interjection 77 30% no interjection - interjection 24 9% no (15), empty
vocatives
Table 38 shows that Škvorecký very frequently translated an interjection by an interjection, he
translated 70% of the interjections in the original. He realized that the interjections form a very
important part of the speech of young people. He, as well as Kořán, added mostly no, which is a
typical interjection of Czech texts.
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2.4 Rudyard Kipling: The Jungle Book, Aloys a Hana Skoumal: Kniha džunglí and Josef
Čapek: Povídání o pejskovi a kočičce
Now I get to the representatives of literature for children. Both The Jungle Book and Povídání
o pejskovi a kočičce share the main feature - there are mostly animals as the main characters
(except for Mowgli, who is human but brought up by animals).
Kipling’s The Jungle Book was published in 1894, it is composed of three stories about
Mowgli, the man cub, about Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, the mongoose, and about Toomai, the elephant
handler. These stories contain much of what Kipling knew about the jungle and about India. They
are seen as fables, the animals in the stories have human characters and the stories should give a
moral lesson to the reader. An interesting fact about this book is that it is one of “founding” texts
of the Scout movement because of the morals of the book.
(www.usscouts.org/profbvr/jungle_book, en.wikipedia.org). This book is for older children than
the Čapek´s one.
Josef Čapek´s Povídání o pejskovi a kočičce was published in 1929. Čapek started writing
stories for children as his own children started learning to read, so the book is written for an age
group between 6-8 years old). Povídání o pejskovi a kočičce is to the present one of the most
popular and one of the best books written for children in Czech Republic. I doubt there is a child
who does not have it on his or her bookshelf. The book is composed of various comic adventures
that Pejsek and Kočička experience while doing the everyday things, for example, cooking or
tiding up the house.
Concerning the interjections The Jungle Book contains the classic ones (oh, o) as well as the
unusual ones (arre arre), as the setting is exotic and the author tried to keep a bit of this exotic
feature in the language. There is also a large number of onomatopoeic interjections - mainly,
obviously, the animal sounds.
51
Povídání o pejskovi a kočičce has not such a number of animal sounds as Pejsek and Kočička
are conceived more as humans than Kipling´s characters. The most numerous interjection is again
no, followed by jejej, panečku, etc. The interjections in these two books differ probably more than
in the case of the other pairs discussed here, as the age groups the novels are aimed at differ, and
the difference is very important for the style of writing.
Table 39: Interjections found in The Jungle Book and in Knihy džunglí
The Jungle Book number Knihy džunglí number o 35 ach 7 oh 30 hej 6 onomatopoeic 19 hoho 3 hai 5 héj 3 oho 3 aha 3 bah 3 fuj 3 hi 3 fú 2 hah 3 jéje 2 phew 3 pst 2 ahaa 3 hurá 2 ah 2 ó 1 faugh 2 hm, chm chm 1 pah 2 áaa, ah-h-á 1 hsh 2 au, ouvej 1 wah 2 hola hola hola 1 umph 2 aaa-sp 1 ugh 2 ahah, ehé 1 once appearing 22 uf 1 fí 1 hehe, haha 1 uá, uach 1 hurá 1 pch 1 other once appearing 5 onomatopoeic 18 total 143 total 59
52
Table 40: Interjections found in Povídání o pejskovi a kočičce
interjection number no 12 panečku 8 jéjej, jejej 7 aha 5 jemine 5 ach 3 heč 3 hej 2 ha ha 2 ó jej, ó je 2 hm 2 fuj 1 au au 1 propána 1 oho 1 propánajána 1 no no 1 onomatopoeic 16 total 73
Numbers in tables 39 and 40 may be misleading. The greatest density of interjections was found
in Josef Čapek´s Povídání o pejskovi a kočičce, where the interjections form 0,628% of all words.
The reason is obvious, the book is written for very young readers and interjections are quite
important in literature for such young children, probably because interjections are among the very
first words a child utters and which he or she understands and understandability is one of the
requirements for literature for children.
Rudyard Kipling: The Jungle Book, Aloys and Hana Skoumal: Knihy Džunglí
The interjections found in Kipling’s novel are very varied, many of them appear only once or
twice in the whole text. The most numerous are oh and o, the other interjections found in the text
53
are used less than 5 times, usually once, twice or three times. As was said above, many of the
interjections are very unusual due to the exotic setting. The interjections appearing more
frequently are listed in table 39. Once appearing interjections are aah, ah-h-á, ouch, heh, arulala
wahooa, ahoo, ts ts, arre arre, ai, aihai, huah, ouach, ahae, aaa-ssh, ow, wow, hmph, ohe, hillo
illo illo, hum, hurrah, arre arre hai yai kyaa - ah. Onomatopoeic interjections are whoof, ho ho (3
times), ha ha, hhrrmph, rrrt, rrrmph, rrrhha, augrh, aaarh, uhrr, yarrh, grr, arrh, wah, sssss,
heya--hullah, heeyah--hullah
Table 41: What interjections express in The Jungle Book
used to express number % of the total translated or substituted
address 41 29% 17% (7) surprise 22 15% 73% (16) onomatopoeic 19 13% 94% (16) anger 11 8% 55% (6) contempt 8 6% 63% (5) sorrow, pity 7 5% 57% (4) emphasis 7 5% 0% (0) comforting, soothing 6 4% 100% (6) fear 5 3% 100% (5) objection 4 3% 75% (3) joy 3 2% 100% (3) salute 3 2% 100% (3) pain 2 1% 100% (2) relief 2 1% 100% (2) attention seeking 1 1% 100% (1) agreement 1 1% 100% (1) understanding 1 1% 100% (1) total 143
The largest number of interjections is used for address because two most frequent interjections
were employed to express it, and that are o and oh.
O
54
The most numerous is o (35 occurrences), for the most part used as a part of an address (31
occurrences), in accordance with the dictionary definition “expression used when addressing a
person, thing, etc.” (OALD 848). The remaining four os are used to express emphasis
(3 cases), for example “Haste! O haste!” - “Honem. Honem.” and anger (1). The translators
omitted the most of it. As was said many times before, ó and ach is not used in Czech with
address very often.
Table 42: Methods of translating o in The Jungle Book by Aloys and Hana Skoumal
method of translation
number % of the total
equivalent 2 6% ó, ach other int. 0 0 other part of speech 1 3% milý omission 32 91% total 35
Oh
Oh with 30 occurrences is the second most frequent interjection in the novel. Again the most often
used method of translation is omission, but the other methods were employed here as well:
Table 43: Methods of translating oh in The Jungle Book by Aloys and Hana Skoumal
method of translation
number % of the total example
equivalent 5 17% ach other interjection 1 3% aha other part of speech 4 13% ale, co, inu, copak ty omission 20 67% total 30
Examples of usage of the other parts of speech:
“Oh, thou art a man´s cub”- “Copak ty, ty jsi člověčí mládě”
“Oh, if you trying to back out” - “Inu, jestli si netroufáš do rvačky”
55
As well as translation of it, the use of oh is more various than that of o.
Table 44: What oh expresses in The Jungle Book
used to express number % of the total % among other interjection expressing the same
address 7 23% 17% anger 5 17% 45% sorrow, pity 4 13% 57% emphasis 4 13% 57% surprise 4 13% 18% objection 3 10% 75% contempt 2 7% 2% understanding 1 3% 100%
The remaining interjections appear only one to five times and I will choose those that were
translated unusually or creatively. Hai is one of the exotic interjections and is used for comforting,
soothing. It was translated as héj which in Czech definitely does not evoke comforting. As an
expression of surprise hai was translated as jéje. Oho also expresses surprise and is translated by
other parts of speech that express surprise in Czech - “cože” and “podívejme se”. Bah, when it is
used for contempt, is translated as uch and fuj, both interjections are usual expression for
contempt in Czech, the translators tried to vary their vocabulary by using different expressions.
The onomatopoeic interjections are usually translated by transforming English spelling to Czech
usage, for example changing ph to f, or omitting h at the end of the words (hhrrmph - hrmf, augrh
- augrr).
56
Josef Čapek: Povídání o pejskovi a kočičce
Čapek´s book is similar to Kipling’s in the usage of interjections, there is a great variety of
them, but they are not used very often. Onomatopoeic interjections again appear quite often, not
only animal sounds but also sounds inanimate objects (for example car - tu-tututú). As was said at
the beginning of the chapter, Čapek´s book has the greatest density of interjection of all the novels
studied here. It is so because it is meant for the youngest readership. It is necessary to add one
thing - though there are many interjections in the text they are not used cheaply, in a kitschy way.
The interjections that were found in Povídání o pejskovi a kočičce are again listed at the
beginning of the chapter. Onomatopoeic interjections are: haf, haf, cilililink (3 times), hehe, hehe,
hihihi, ratata ratata, mňáááuf, mňáaauf, ňaufňaufňauf, rrrrrr, hňauf, hňaf hňaf, tu-tututú.
Table 45: What interjections express in Povídání o pejskovi a kočičce
used to express number % of the total onomatopoeic 16 22% emphasis 13 18% surprise 7 10% joy 7 10% understanding 5 9% fear 5 7% objection 4 5% boasting 3 4% unspecified emotion 3 4% anger 2 3% hesitation, thinking 2 3% attention seeking 2 3% sorrow, pity 1 1% remembering 1 1% pain 1 1% address 1 1% total 73
No
As in every Czech book discussed here, the most frequent interjection is again no. It appears 12
times and expresses mainly emphasis.
57
Table 46: What no expresses in Povídání o pejskovi a kočičce
used to express number
% of the total % among other interjections expressing the same
emphasis 5 42% 39% unspecified emotion 3 25% 100% fear 1 8% 20% objection 1 8% 25% anger 1 8% 50% joy 1 8% 14% total 12
Panečku
The second most numerous interjection in the text, panečku, can be counted in the empty
vocatives group, panečku is a diminutive of either only pane or of panebože with “bože” omitted -
that would be a deviation of the vocative. Panečku is also mostly used for emphasis (6 cases) (for
example: “[P]es má, panečku, ouška nějak citlivá”) and once for surprise and objection (ó
panečku).
Jéjej, jejej
These interjections differ only in diacritic, their usage is the same. They are used to express
surprise (5 cases) (for example: “Jéjej, tady je anděl a Mikuláš”), joy (1) and emphasis (“[J]éjej,
děti, co ona toho ještě našla”).
Jémine
Jémine belongs to the same category as panečku, it is a deviated form of “Jesus”. Its use is more
varied than that of panečku. Jémine expresses joy (2 occurrences), fear, surprise and objection (1
each).
58
The other interjections are used according to their dictionary definitions, there is no original
usage. Aha is used in the usual way, to express understanding and that in 5 cases.
Ach does not appear very often, only three times, twice it expresses fear and once a part of an
address. Haha is not included in the onomatopoeic interjections because here it used to express
mischievous joy. Heč as was said is an interjection used mainly by children, as an expression of
boasting or of joy. Hej attracts attention (2 cases), hm expresses thinking (2 cases), ó je is
expression of joy; ó jej is used for emphasis. Oho expresses remembering, propána fear and
propánajána sorrow and pity. Fuj appears not as expression of disgust but for anger, no no is an
objection and au au expresses pain.
Comparison
Translators of The Jungle Book, Skoumals, employed the method of omitting the interjections
that are not frequently used in the Czech language and sometimes they translated such
interjections with the other parts of speech. They translated The Jungle Book 70 years after its first
publication and they seem to have made the language more up to date and more readable than the
original. Those interjections that appeared as an exotic feature of language, the Indian
interjections, were only adjusted to the Czech spelling (arrulala! whoo! - arulala! hú!).
59
Table 47: What interjections express in The Jungle Book, Knihy džunglí and Povídání o pejskovi a
kočičce
used to express The Jungle Book
Knihy džunglí (int. only)
Povídání o pejskovi a kočičce
address 41 5 1 surprise 22 13 7 onomatopoeic 19 18 16 anger 11 5 2 contempt 8 3 0 sorrow, pity 7 4 1 emphasis 7 0 13 comforting, soothing 6 6 0 fear 5 3 5 objection 4 0 4 joy 3 3 7 salute 3 3 0 pain 2 2 1 attention seeking 1 1 2 agreement 1 1 0 understanding 1 1 5 relief 1 1 0 total 142 69 73
(containing other categories not included in the table)
The table shows that the translators of the novel tried reduce those interjections that do not appear
so often in Czech as in English (see, for example, the reduction of interjections expressing address
or surprise). They also omitted those interjections that do not appear often in the literature for
children, anger and contempt. Skoumals do not translate the other parts of speech by interjection,
as was the case in other pairs that were studied here.
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3. Final Comparison
In this section I would like to compare the translations and the original texts on a more general
level. The first thing that will be explored is the difference in the use of interjections in standard
literary language and in colloquial language. The difference is very clearly visible in both original
texts and in the translations. The fact is that the more literary the language is, the fewer
interjections there are, this is true for both languages but more for Czech. Second, Czech literary
texts seem to prefer secondary interjections to primary interjections (see Trávníček´s classification
in chapter An Interjection). This tendency appears in those texts that are written in a standard
language but also in colloquial texts. Third, variety in the use of interjections to express particular
emotions will be examined. In the last part the translators’ attitudes will be compared on a general
basis.
Amis’s Lucky Jim and Kipling’s The Jungle Book are written in standard literary language.
The number of interjections in the originals is significantly higher than in the translations. If the
total numbers of interjections are counted, the interjections make up 0.247% of all words in Lucky
Jim and 0.271% in The Jungle Book whereas in Šťastný Jim the translated interjections represent
only 0.071% of all words and in Knihy džunglí 0.176% of all words. On the other hand Toole’s A
Confederacy of Dunces and Miller’s The Cool World are written in non-standard language, A
Confederacy of Dunces a colloquial language with many dialogues, in a language specific for
New Orleans and The Cool World in a black Harlem dialect. Interjections appear more often in
both the originals and the translations – in A Confederacy of Dunces the interjections represent
0.429% of all words and in The Cool World 0.464% of all words. The translations retained most
of the interjections – Spolčení hlupců 0.324% and Prezydent Krokadýlů 0.373%.
The reason for reduction of interjections in the translations of standard literary language texts
is, in my opinion, a different perception of primary, original (subjective) interjections in Czech
and English. Czech uses primary (and secondary) interjections more often in the colloquial
61
language, interjections are more connected to spoken language and many of the primary
interjections are often seen as marked (for comparison see tables 48 and 49). In literary texts
secondary interjections, mainly empty vocatives appear more often than primary interjections.
Secondary interjections seem to have become a more natural part of the language and are not
perceived as marked, definitely not so often as primary interjections. English uses primary
interjections in literary language more frequently than Czech. On the average, in original English
texts primary interjections make up 59% whereas in Czech texts it is only 24%.
I reviewed the translators´ dealing with most numerous primary interjections in the texts and
compared them with secondary interjections. I found out that Mucha in his translation of Lucky
Jim omitted 60% of occurrences of oh in the text and translated by equivalents only 2% of these.
On the other hand he used equivalent to translate 61% of the empty vocatives in the text and
omitted only 9%. Skoumals in their translation of The Jungle Book omitted 91% of occurrences of
o in the text; equivalent appears in 6% of the cases. Unfortunately, there are no empty vocatives in
The Jungle Book so the comparison here is not complete. The situation is different in the two
remaining texts. In A Confederacy of Dunces Kořán translated by equivalent 58% of ohs present
in the text and omitted 24% of them. For translation of all empty vocatives Czech equivalents or
the other empty vocatives were used. Škvorecký in his translation of The Cool World uses
equivalent to translate 41% of ohs appearing in the text but omitted 31% of them. He also
translated all empty vocatives by their Czech equivalents or by the other empty vocatives. The use
of the empty vocatives in original Czech texts will be discussed in a moment.
62
Table 48: Translation of oh and of empty vocatives in all translated texts
equivalent other parts of speech
other interjections
omission
Šťastný Jim - oh 2% 24% 14% 60% Šťastný Jim – empty vocatives
61% 9% 21% 9%
Knihy džunglí - oh 17% 13% 3% 67% Spolčení hlupců - oh 58% 8% 9% 24% Spolčení hlupců – empty vocatives
100% 0% 0% 0%
Prezydent krokadýlů - oh
41% 15% 13% 31%
Prezydent krokadýlů – empty vocatives
100% 0% 0% 0%
Table 48 shows that translators really deal with the primary and secondary interjections
differently. Primary interjections (and to a lesser extent also secondary interjections) are used
more often in the texts written in colloquial language than in texts written in literary language. I
will try to support this claim by comparing the original Czech texts.
First of all I would like to make a brief comment on style of the texts. Poláček´s Muži v offsidu
is colloquial in dialogues and literary in the narration, but sometimes very ironic. Šabach´s text is
also written in colloquial, relaxed language. Čapek´s Povídání o pejskovi a kočičce is written for
a very young readership and that makes the language of the novel specific – it has a high number
of interjections and the reader is addressed directly from time to time, which does not appear in
any other novel discussed here, and Švandrlík´s text can be considered to be closest to the
standard literary language but the style is ironically elevated. The density of interjections in the
Czech text is as follows: the most interjections can be found in Čapek´s Povídání o pejskovi a
kočičce – 0.628% of interjection among all words, I think that this is so because of the age group
the novel is written for – little children – whose word stock may still contain a lot of interjections
and thus the texts conforms to that feature of children’s language. Poláček´s Muži v offsidu comes
next with 0.377%, then Šabach´s Hovno hoří with 0.232% and the last one is Švandrlík´s Černí
baroni with 0.150% (approximately – the novel in electronic form is not complete).
63
As was said in the corpus study itself, the most numerous of Czech interjections is no.
Etymology of no is not clear, it used to be, and partly still is, an invitation (like English “come
on”), similar to Czech nu and also to na (Holub-Lyer 336). It is not exactly one of the primary
interjections. So in Czech texts primary interjections appear less frequently - mainly to add colour
and vividness – and secondary interjections are used more often.
Table 49: The most often used interjections in the Czech texts
Muži v offsidu – no 32,4% (of the total – 222) Muži v offsidu – empty vocatives 5,4% Muži v offsidu – ach 5% Černí baroni – no 49,7% (of the total – 175) Černí baroni – empty vocatives 24% Černí baroni – ach 0% Hovno hoří – no 37.8% (of the total – 74) Hovno hoří – empty vocatives 32.4%
Hovno hoří – ach 2.7% Povídání o pejskovi a kočičce -no 16% (of the total – 73) Povídání o pejskovi a kočičce - empty vocatives 19.1% Povídání o pejskovi a kočičce - ach 4.1%
Again, the language is important for the choice and the occurrence of primary and secondary
interjections. As was said above Černí baroni can be considered to be written in more standard
language than the remaining three texts. In this text no forms half of the interjections used in the
novel and another quarter is made up by the empty vocatives, on the other hand there is no ach
(which I chose as a representative of primary interjections and for comparison of the use and
frequency of appearance of ach in the translations and in the original Czech texts).
In Šabach´s Hovno hoří and Poláček´s Muži v offsidu the level of language is approximately
the same, though Šabach language is, obviously, more up-to-date. The difference is in the use of
the empty vocatives, in Poláček´s text they represent only 5.4% of the interjections whereas in
Šabach´s text it is 32.4%. I think that in Poláček´s times authors were more careful with the empty
64
vocatives and used deviated forms of the vocatives (jemine, panečku) because of the religion and
the taboo (the name of God). The use of no and ach remains the same.
Čapek´s Povídání o pejskovi a kočičce is rather a specific case, as was said above in chapter
II.4, the text is meant for the children who are just beginning to learn to read. The density of
interjections is great because the interjections belong to the first words a child utters and they
remain an important part of their speech for a long time. The choice of interjections also shows
the fact – panečku, jeje, and especially heč.
On the whole, Czech prefers secondary interjections to primary interjections and that particularly
in the literary language.
Table 50: Average numbers of primary/secondary/onomatopoeic interjections in original Czech
and English texts and translations
primary int. secondary int. onomatopoeic int. English texts 59% 34% 7% Czech texts 24% 67% 9% translations 40% 40% 20%*
*The onomatopoeic interjections are very frequently translated by equivalents, that is why there is
such a high number of them.
The most often used secondary interjections are the empty vocatives, and while the use of
primary interjections differs significantly in Czech and English original texts, the empty vocatives
are used approximately the same way (the empty vocatives make up 17.3% of all interjections in
Czech texts and 14.1% in English texts). Here is the comparison of the use of the empty vocatives
in the original English texts, in their translations and in the original Czech texts.
65
Table 51: Use of the empty vocatives in Lucky Jim, The Cool World and Confederacy of Dunces
used to express number % of the total number of empty vocatives (172) anger 33 19% surprise 32 19% fear 28 16% disgust 25 15% sorrow, pity 10 6%
Table 52: Use of the empty vocatives in Šťastný Jim, Prezydent Krokadýlů and Spolčení hlupců
used to express number % of the total of translated empty vocatives (166) anger 31 19% surprise 31 19% fear 26 17% disgust 22 13% sorrow, pity 9 5%
Table 53: Use of the empty vocatives in Muži v offsidu, Hovno hoří and Černí baroni
used to express number % of the total number of the empty vocatives (77) anger 28 36% fear 18 23% sorrow, pity 12 16% joy 6 8%
Tables 51-53 show that while the emotions that are expressed by the empty vocatives are
approximately the same, the frequency with which they are used differs. To return to the previous
section I would say that this fact is related to the Czech preference for secondary interjections and
also to the difference in numbers of interjections used to express various emotions which will be
discussed later.
There is another interesting feature in the Czech translations – in A Confederacy of Dunces or
The Jungle Book – there is a tendency to use a greater variety of primary interjections than the
original, especially with interjections that are used once or twice. For example in The Jungle Book
there are 22 interjections used once which makes up 15.4% of the whole. In Knihy džunglí there
are 18 interjections used once and that makes up 30.5% of the whole. In A Confederacy of Dunces
66
interjections used once make 0.4% of the number, whereas in the translation they make 1.7% of
the whole number. It may be argued that with the reduction of interjections in the translation it is
natural that there are more interjections appearing once, but the fact is that if, for example, an
interjection appears in the original four times it is translated by three different Czech interjections
and once omitted. For example, Kořán translates whoo, which is used five times, by five different
interjections – juchúúúú, žúúú, páni, hergot and chacha. Translators in this case seem to be
translating the emotion the word expresses rather than the word itself. Unfortunately, this cannot
be proved with the remaining texts, there is not enough interjections appearing once to make a
significant comparison.
The last difference I would like to explore here is the difference in the use of interjections to
express various emotions. In this case the numbers do not speak as clearly as in the case of the
primary and secondary interjections. I counted the percentage, the average numbers, which show
the proportion of interjections that express given emotion. The results are these:
Table 54: Mean percentage of interjections expressing given emotions in all texts
used to express English originals
translations (only int.)
translations (substitutions)
Czech originals
anger 9,3% 7,5% 1,3% 12,1% surprise 11,5% 9,3% 3,5% 8,3% joy 4,3% 4,7% 0,4% 7,1% fear 3,7% 3,7% 1,2% 5,5% sorrow, pity 4,5% 5,8% 0,9% 8,4% objection, disagreement
7,1% 2,8% 3,3% 6,1%
understanding 4,3% 3,8% 1,2% 3%
The numbers show that the there are differences between Czech and English original texts, which
is natural and can be partly caused by the different stories in the texts. I would like to pay
attention to the translators´ individual style here. Table 54 shows that in all but one cases the
67
number of translated interjections is higher or lower according to the number of Czech
interjections. This tendency is, in my opinion, not surprising; the translators did this intuitively
with feeling for their mother tongue. The only exception is anger where the number of translated
interjections is lower than in the original English text even though the number of interjections
expressing anger is even higher in the Czech texts. I would ascribe this to the fear of
overtranslation – fear as an emotion is usually expressed by an empty vocative or by a taboo word
in Czech originals, these words are quite expressive and the translators may have been afraid to
use them more often. I would also like to draw readers’ attention to the two highest numbers of
substitutions in cases of surprise and objection, disagreement. For example: “‘Erran? Hey! I
thought this a sweepin and moppin job.’” “‘Pochůzku? Tak to prrr! Já jsem najatej na zametání.’”
“Aw, Santa! I’m too old, girl.” “Ale di ty, Santo. Na tohle jsem stará.” (Toole). In Czech example
may be: “‘Hej, tatíku!’ zvolal, ‘dejte tu ženskou z ruky. Copak se to patří?’” or “No, já myslím, že
to tak honem nešlo.” (Poláček). Substitution makes up more than 3% in both cases, while the rest
of interjections is substituted in around 1% of cases or less (0.4%-1.3%, see table 54). This is also
caused by the translators´ intuitive use of the parts of speech that are used to express these
emotions in Czech. These are expressed by a verb (objection, disagreement) – “počkejte”,
“heleďte” – or by “ale”, “kdepak” etc. Surprise is usually expressed by “ale, ale”, “heleďme”,
“tak”.
As was said above, the empty vocatives may be the cause of the difference in the numbers of
interjections expressing anger, fear, joy and sorrow, pity. When tables 51-53 are compared and all
of them then compared with table 54 the result will be that empty vocatives are used most often
for these emotions and that these emotions are more often expressed by an interjection in Czech
than in English. I think that the connection here is clear. Because Czech uses more empty
vocatives to express these emotions than English, they are more often expressed by an interjection
(by an empty vocative) in Czech.
68
The translators chose different methods of translations. On the average, they translated 62.5%
of interjections found in the original texts. On the whole, the interjections in the translations were
reduced regarding the original texts – in the translations the interjections make up 0.236% of all
words, in English and Czech it is 0.353% and 0.347%, respectively. The differences between the
translators are quite great. Mucha in his translation of Amis´s Lucky Jim translated 29% of
interjections, Skoumals in Knihy džunglí translated 65% of the interjections, Kořán in Spolčení
hlupců translated 76% and Škvorecký in Prezydent krokadýlů translated 80% of interjections.
Why Mucha omitted so many interjections is not clear.
The translators´ methods are connected to the previous discussion of the use of primary and
secondary interjections in all cases, I think, because all the translations in this sense share some
characteristics: omission of primary interjections that appear often, translation of the empty
vocatives by equivalents or by approximate equivalents; on the whole, reduction of the total
number of interjections. Kořán´s and Skoumals´ translations also share one characteristic – though
the number of the primary interjections in the translations tends to be reduced, those interjections
that appear less frequently (up to 5 times) are usually all translated and the translation is done
according to the emotion the interjection expresses, not by a dictionary equivalent. The reasons
why the remaining two translators do not fulfil this characteristic are, I think, these: Škvorecký in
his translation of The Cool World did not increase the number of interjections like Kořán because
the language of the novel is very specific and he did not want to add anything of his own
invention. And Mucha was very careful with the translation of interjections, maybe because the
use of interjections in his source text is not varied and he was afraid of repetition on one hand or
overtranslation on the other.
Translators also added interjections in places where Czech usually uses them. The most often
added ones were aha (“I see”), no (added, “come on”, “well”). On the whole, they added 20%
interjections - Mucha 33 (60% of interjections translated by interjections), Škvorecký 24 (13% of
69
the number of interjections translated by interjection), Kořán 50 (12% of the number of
interjections translated by interjection) and Skoumals none.
70
4. Conclusion
The aim of this corpus study was to find out whether there is any difference between the use of
interjections in the original English texts, in their translations and in the original Czech texts and
which strategies the translators used when dealing with interjections.
The results of my study can be summarized as follows. The most numerous English
interjections is oh, in Czech it is no. The next most numerous group in both language are the
empty vocatives. Czech uses fewer interjections than English (interjections make up 0.353%
among all words in English and 0.347% in Czech); translations are in the middle, with the average
number of translated interjections around 62%. The reason seems to be that Czech does not have
many primary interjections in texts written in standard literary language; it prefers secondary
interjections, mainly that group of them which is called empty vocatives. These are used more
often in texts written in both literary and colloquial language. Empty vocatives are used more
often in Czech; on the average they represent 17.3% of all interjections in Czech texts, 28% in the
translations and 14.1% in English texts. This has an influence on the numbers of interjections used
to express chosen emotions (those that appeared in every text).
These emotions were surprise, objection, understanding, anger, joy, fear and sorrow, pity. The
first three of these were more often expressed by an interjection in English; the remaining four
were expressed by an interjection more often in Czech. Anger, joy, fear and sorrow, pity are more
often expressed by an empty vocative and surprise, objection and understanding have the highest
number of substitutions in the translations - it follows that when there are those emotions that are
expressed by an empty vocative in Czech, translators do so and when there are emotions for
which Czech does not use an interjection translators prefer substitution or omission.
The translators had different approaches to the translation of interjections. Their attitude to
translation of interjections differed according to the text they translated. Those translators that
translated texts written in standard language used fewer interjections than those who translated
71
texts in colloquial language. The only translator who differed in his translation method was Jiří
Mucha (Šťastný Jim). His by far the most preferred method was omission; he omitted more than
70% of the interjections.
The translators also added some interjections, Mucha, surprisingly, added the highest number
of them. The added interjections appeared in places where “I see” (aha), intensifiers (empty
vocatives) and invitations or question tags were used (no). Kořán and Mucha also employed a
greater variety of interjections in their translations. They tried to reproduce the emotion rather
than the interjection.
As there is no study on the use of interjections it was no clear what the outcome would be.
I expected there would be greater differences in the emotions and the numbers of interjection by
which these emotions are expressed. These did not appear to be so significant. On the other hand,
it was surprising for me that such a high number of empty vocatives appear in both languages and
that there is such a difference between use of primary and secondary interjections in both
languages.
It would be interesting to find out how the differences between the use of primary and
secondary interjections work in different genres and to compare these differences. Comparison of
texts of different genres translated by one translator could also come up with valuable results. As
was shown here, every translator has his own translation method and it would be interesting to see
whether he holds to it irrespective of the genre he translates.
72
5. Sources:
Primary Literature:
Amis, Kingsley. Lucky Jim. London: Victor Gollanz Ltd, 1957.
Čapek, Josef. Povídání o pejskovi a kočičice. Praha: Albatros 1984. <http://go.to/eknihy>
Kipling, Rudyard. The Jungle Book. New York: The Century Co. 1909.
Kořán, Jaroslav, trans. Spolčení hlupců. By John Kennedy O´Toole. Praha: Odeon 1985.
Miller, Warren. The Cool World. New York: Crest Books, 1964
Mucha, Jiří, trans. Šťastný Jim. By Kingsley Amis. Praha: Odeon 1970.
Poláček, Karel. Muži v offsidu. < http://go.to/eknihy>
Skoumal, Aloys and Hana, trans. Knihy džunglí. By Rudyard Kipling. Praha: Odeon 1976.
Šabach, Petr. Hovno hoří. Praha: Paseka 1994. <www.e-kniha.webovastranka.cz>
Škvorecký, Josef (as Jan Zábrana), trans. Prezydent Krokadýlů. By Warren Miller. Praha: Odeon
1990.
Švandrlík, Miroslav. Černí baroni. Praha: Mladá Fronta 1991.
<www.e-kniha.webovastranka.cz >
Toole, John Kennedy. A Confederacy od Dunces. London: Penguin Books 1981.
Secondary Literature:
Curme, George O. A Grammar of the English Language. Vol. 2: Parts of Speech and
Accidence. Boston: D.C. Heath and Company 1931.
Curme, Gerge O. A Grammar of the English Language. Vol. 3: Syntax. Boston: D.C. Heath
and Company 1931.
Encyklopedie Universum. Praha: Odeon 2001.
73
Grepl, Miroslav and Petr Karlík. Skladba spisovné češtiny. Praha: SPN 1986.
Havránek, Bohuslav and Antonín Jedlička. Česká mluvnice. Praha: SPN 1981.
Holub, Josef - Stanislav Lyer. Stručný etymologický slovník jazyka českého se zvláštním
zřetelem k slovům kulturním a cizím. Praha: SPN 1968.
Jovanovic, Vladimir Z. "The Form, Position and Meaning of Interjections in English".
Linguistics and Literature 3.1 (2004) 17-28.
Trávníček, František. Neslovesné věty v češtině, díl 1. Věty interjekční.
Brno: Masarykova universita 1930.
Trávníček, František. Nauka a slovní zásobě. Praha: SPN 1958.
diploma theses:
Kamenická, Dana. Slovesa a citoslovce vyjadřující zvuky, jejichž původcem je zvíře, popř.
neživotná substance. Brno 1987.
Uhrová, Zdeňka. Slovesa a citoslovce vyjadřující zvuky, jejichž původcem je člověk.
Brno 1987.
Zbořil, Jiří. Translation of Interjections. Brno 1998.
web pages:
OneLook Dictionaries <www.onelook.com>
Merriam-Webster Dictionary <www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/dictionary>
Rap Dictionary <www.rapdict.org/Category:Interjections> 25 January 2007
Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia <en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interjection> 18 October 2006
<en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle_Book> 9 March 2007
Slovník Seznam <slovnik.seznam.cz>