Masarykova univerzita v Brn

Filozofick fakulta

Katedra anglistiky a amerikanistiky

Magistersk diplomov prce

2006

Ji Gol

Masaryk University in Brno

Faculty of Arts

Department of English
and American Studies
English Language and Literature

Ji Gol

Swearwords in translation
M.A. Major Thesis

Supervisor: Mgr. Simona Mazov

2006

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently,

using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.
..
Authors signature

I would like to thank my supervisor for her careful guidance.

Table of Contents
1

INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................. 6

1.1

Why swearwords?................................................................................................................................... 6

1.2

The thesis ................................................................................................................................................. 8

THEORY............................................................................................................ 11

2.1
What is expressive and its relation to swearwords......................................................................... 11
2.1.1
Basics of expressivity......................................................................................................................... 11
2.1.2
Kinds of expressivity.......................................................................................................................... 14
2.1.3
Expressivity in practical use............................................................................................................... 16
2.1.4
Summary ............................................................................................................................................ 17
2.2
The concept of equivalence .................................................................................................................. 18
2.2.1
The way to Nidas concept................................................................................................................. 18
2.2.2
E. A. Nida in critical view.................................................................................................................. 21
2.2.3
Germany and Wolfram Wills ............................................................................................................. 25
2.2.4
Ji Lev ............................................................................................................................................. 25
2.3
Nidas equivalence in detail.................................................................................................................. 27
2.3.1
Requirements on the translator........................................................................................................... 27
2.3.2
Principles of dynamic equivalence..................................................................................................... 28
2.3.3
Formal equivalence and the clashes with dynamic equivalence ........................................................ 32
2.3.4
Translation in theory and practice...................................................................................................... 33

ANALYSIS......................................................................................................... 35

3.1
Trainspotting......................................................................................................................................... 37
3.1.1
General literary analysis..................................................................................................................... 37
3.1.2
Translation analysis............................................................................................................................ 38
3.1.3
Analysis of specific cases................................................................................................................... 41
3.1.4
The result ........................................................................................................................................... 53
3.2
Glue ........................................................................................................................................................ 53
3.2.1
General literary and translation analysis ............................................................................................ 53
3.2.2
Analysis of specific cases................................................................................................................... 54
3.2.3
The result ........................................................................................................................................... 61
3.3
Fever Pitch............................................................................................................................................. 61
3.3.1
General literary analysis..................................................................................................................... 61
3.3.2
Analysis of specific cases................................................................................................................... 61
3.3.3
The result ........................................................................................................................................... 64

RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS...................................................................... 65

BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................... 66

5.1

Primary works....................................................................................................................................... 66

5.2

Secondary sources................................................................................................................................. 66

1 Introduction
1.1 Why swearwords?
There are two major reasons that motivated the researcher to take interest in this
particular area of language use. The first is the increasing usage of explicit language in works
of art, media content and communication in general. The second is the lack of theoretical
works covering this area.
My interest in this kind of research is motivated by the rise of explicit language and its
shifting towards still younger age groups. Everyone who does not live in separation from
society can observe that politeness in common communication is on the decline. In regular
everyday communication, people tend to use words that were considered harsh and vulgar
fifty years ago. This tendency can exactly as well be observed from another point of view:
that the speakers use less of their polite vocabulary, but are aware of its existence and can use
it if needed. Regardless of whether the speakers use less of their polite style or more of their
colloquial and vulgar style, the practical result (i.e. the withdrawal of polite communication)
is the same for both of these views
One of the areas where explicit vocabulary gains prominence is the slang of the young.
Teenagers use a specific slang containing vulgar vocabulary to support their social position
among their peers. This is observed especially among male teenagers involved in
neighbourhood groups and gangs. What kind of vocabulary the teenager uses is usually
determined by the group norm. Members of a neighbourhood gang regardless of their
individual intelligence and usual language register tend to switch to a special mode of
behaviour and expression when they interact with their peers in the gang. This, of course,
does not alter their individual abilities of using standard language outside the gang.

The language of the young is gradually becoming more and more vulgar. Whereas the
children of the 1970s and 1980s were hardly calling each other vole in their teens, the
teenagers of today use far worse expressions without a blink. In addition the vulgar
vocabulary moves into the younger age groups. Anyone who is not completely deaf to his
environment must have noticed that pre-teen children now use staggering vulgarities that were
formerly used only by adults or teenage gang-members. Simply, this area of language
gradually gains importance for the translators, because it will increasingly penetrate the works
they translate. In the case of literature about the young, the translation of vulgarities poses
even a greater difficulty, because the gradual shift of expressive language usage and
expressive creativity towards younger age groups increases the distance between the
translators and the language they should make use of in translation.
The second reason for me to choose this topic is the desperate lack of material in this
area of language use. There are many works on dialects of the Czech language. There are
even works about youth cultures and subcultures, there are works about jargon and slang, but
there are virtually no works concerning the way the young generation talks and how they
employ slang to establish themselves among their peers. In addition, when we narrow the
search down to literature that could contribute to the debate on the field of translation from
English to Czech, the result gets very close to nothing. Of course there are many monolingual
slang dictionaries in English as well as in Czech. There are even bilingual dictionaries that a
translator can very well make use of, but the theoretical body of literature concerning
translating slang and vulgar expressions seems to be lacking.
To sum it up, language evolves and in my opinion it evolves very fast. What is
considered expressive or even vulgar today, can become the standard of tomorrow. Of course,
this proposal does not presume massive use of vulgarisms in the higher registers of the
language, but a loosening of standard Czech among the ordinary folk can be presumed with

a fair chance of future fulfilment. Therefore I think that translators who come across
vulgarisms and expressive language in their work shall dedicate as much attention to the
development of this language area so as to keep the language of their translations authentic for
their readership and the analytical part of this work shall throw more light on whether they do
or do not.

1.2 The thesis

This work is based on several ideas concerning the world of language and translation.
The first of them is the undisputable fact that translators are humans and the quality of their
translations is varied.
The second idea is hidden in a question - what leads the reader or the critic to
downgrade the translation as a bad one? Misunderstandings and misinterpretations of the
original should not practically occur in contemporary translation, because the resources the
translator can make use of are plentiful from using dictionaries to consulting the author via
e-mail. Should these occur after all, they are usually not of such extent as to degrade the
translation as a whole. The answer to the initial question is that the kind of factor that can
degrade a translation as a whole is the inappropriate use of the target language. As Peter
Newmark writes a good translator has to make sure that his translation reads naturally, ... is
written in ordinary language, the common grammar, idioms and words...(Newmark
2004:24). As Newmark says a translation is good when it does not sound like a translation.
The third idea is the concept of equivalence in translation. This concept, especially the
dynamic equivalence (the equivalence of effect), is most appealing in the works of E. A. Nida
and therefore it will be dealt with extensively later in this work. With the help of equivalence
supporters I will try to advocate the preservation of the original impact in translations of prose
works about the young.

When translating works about such a specific environment as a neighbourhood gang,

there is often very much that can disappear in the translation process. Given the harsh nature
of a neighbourhood gang, language together with the fist is the mightiest tool a teenager can
use to establish his position:

...physical superiority can be accompanied or substituted with strong expressive

utterances or the use of slang denominations... ...A better position in the group is
gained by those with an interesting way of expression by good storytellers and
entertainers. (translated from Krmov, 2004:1)

The works I chose to analyze tend, at least in my opinion, to describe the interesting
environment of the gang as is, with all its harsh attributes. In order to transmit the genuine
experience of the gang to the reader they seem to shape the dialogs to match their real-life
models.
The translator then finds himself in a difficult position when he should not destroy the
experience by smoothing the dialogs over, which can happen easily, especially when
translators are mostly educated people. They come under a different age group than the
characters they translate and they use completely different modes of behaviour and expression
from those displayed in the books.
All three above ideas combine to form my analytical approach. In the analytical part of
this work I will try to track the expressive material in chosen prose works and even more in
their corresponding translations and I will try to judge the degree of naturalness and the
degree of equivalence. The chosen works are Trainspotting and Glue by Irvine Welsh and
Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby. The hypothetical presumption that I intend to test in the
analytical part of this work is that the quality of the translations with respect to their

equivalence of effect and with regard to the authenticity of their explicit language will be
lowered.

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2 Theory
2.1 What is expressive and its relation to swearwords
2.1.1 Basics of expressivity
An inseparable part of a work concerning slang, vulgar language and stylistic devices
connected with these should be a closer look on its parent category expressivity. A great
help in the area of expressivity is an article called Expresivita a peklad umleck przy by
Oldich Ulin. Although it dates back into the year 1988 and is concerned mainly with
translation from Russian, the basic principles still seem to be valid in 2006 and can be very
well applied to English. It supplies us with thorough definition of expressivity, its subcategories and attributes.
Ulin, when writing this article, experienced the same difficulties in obtaining
resources as I am experiencing now. He writes that although there is a vast body of theoretical
literature on translation and translating, works about expressivity are scarce:

A monography that would systematically describe the expressivity of language means

in all the layers and units of language, in the text and in relation to reality, with regards
to various functional styles or style formations as the case may be is missing.
(translated from Ulin 1988:329)

The lack of a single publication covering expressivity of language in different stylistic

contexts can indeed still be felt today.

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His definitions of expressivity follow. The expression of oneself can take as Ulin
puts it various forms and ways. Expression can be achieved by behaviour, by the way a
person dresses, by gestures and what is interesting for the cause of this work in verbal
communication. In his opinion, every language hosts a subsystem of conspicuous language
devices and rules by which one can shape non-expressive utterances into expressive ones.
Just like almost every scientific theory or concept, expressivity too has a wide range of
interpretations and definitions. Ulin quotes Zmas constitutive attributes of expressivity.
The first of them is personal interest of the speaker on what is being communicated. The
second is markedness of the utterance in the system of language. This then divides into formal
and semantic markedness for inherent expressivity and semantic-only markedness for
adherent expressivity (the various kinds of expressivity will be explained below). The third
attribute is emotionality and volitional effort.
There are other views of expressivity by Czech and Slovak linguists. Ulin mentions
Mistrk who regards expressivity as a personally motivated bias of a language tool which
comes to work in emotionally tense communication. Right below we find Mikos opinion
who puts expressivity into his system of expressional categories as a part of subjectivity he
sees it as an amplification of the subjective aspect in communication.
Ulin concludes that these contributions make it obvious that the notion of
expressivity has been ever evolving. However, he seems to disagree with certain aspects of
the definitions and I have to agree with him.
His argumentation is in my opinion based on sane logic. He argues against the
volitional basis of expressivity by stating that we can only scarcely find expressive
connotation of such semantic features as orderliness, endurance, courage, self-discipline and
the like which are volitional personal qualities. The only volitional quality that we use
although not always in the process of creating an expressive text is purposefulness aimed on

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language and text, that is the intention to use expressive devices. Ulin sees the dependence
of this quality on the circumstances of the communicative act as his main reason for not
considering it a constitutive element of expressivity.
In addition, in his very right opinion, there are communicative situations where wilful
expressivity is out of question. In some contexts people are expressive without knowing it.
Sometimes the speaker does not have the intention to be expressive, but due to his regional
dialect or his personal idiolect he is. In that case the receiver of the message perceives the
utterance as expressive, but can not decipher whether this is or is not an intention.
Ulin has shown that the volitional effort then is not a constitutive factor of
expressivity. What about the other two, constitutive factors? The first of them is based on
conspicuousness (and/or contrast) of the word or construction. This presumes that the
expressive word or construction has to be differentiable from the other, non-expressive, parts
of the text or utterance that it should visibly deviate from the language norm or custom.
Under these contrast based expressive words and collocations we find swear words and
vulgarisms which are the main focus of this work. Ulin uses the example of abbreviations
which are not expressive in themselves, but when used too much in a text they become
expressive. They signal the subjective interest of the speaker which is the second constitutive
factor of expressivity. Terminology is a similar case:

However conspicuous in the system of language, subsystems of terminology are not

inherently expressive, because they do not have connotations to subject. A term can
become an expressive element only from the point of view of textual expressivity
that is, as soon as it is used in a text with the intention to connote some of the
attributes or intentions of the subject. (translated from Ulin 1988:336)

13

In short, certain lexical units not expressive in themselves (inherently) can become
expressive devices when used in a text to connotate intentions of a subject.
Ulin comes to widen the argumentation of his colleagues by synonymy. He argues
that when contrast or conspicuousness is needed to evoke expressivity, there has to be
something that allows for this contrast to exist. He includes synonymy into the scheme by
saying that expressivity of a language device when based on (at least potential) comparison
with a parallel less conspicuous or even neutral device or text implies that synonymy is an
important identifying feature of expressivity. This should, in his opinion, be valid even with
inherent expressivity.

2.1.2 Kinds of expressivity

Expresivity
Systemic
Inherent

Textual

Denotative

Adherent

1. Ulins categories of expressivity

Expressivity can be categorized in various ways. The two key concepts are the
inherent and adherent expressivity. When used about a lexical unit, inherently expressive
means that the unit is expressive in itself. That is, it is a somehow marked word, for example
a vulgar one. Adherently expressive means that the unit is not expressive in itself, but only
when used in a conspicuous way, for example in an unusual context or unusual quantity. The
concept of denotative expressivity is based on the notion of markedness of the denoted object.
This means that words denoting objects that are considered vulgar or taboo (e.g. sexual

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organs) are denotatively expressive. Ulins classification of kinds of expressivity is based

on Zmas model and broadened by the concept of denotative expressivity. Zimas inherent
expressivity comes here under systemic expressivity and his contextual expressivity under
textual. His adherent expressivity is lexicalized and semantically bound, thus it comes under
systemic, but it comes into play only in a text and so is put under textual as well.
As Ulin puts it, it is also very useful to distinguish between an expressive language
device and his expressive use. We can identify the expressivity of a language device by its
conspicuous form (inherent expressivity) or conspicuous meaning (denotative expressivity).
We can identify the expressive use of a language device by its conspicuous meaning (adherent
expressivity) or by discrepancy in style (textual expressivity).
Below we find that expressivity of a language device depends on it use. In its root
style the otherwise conspicuous device looks neutral. Only as a result of a functional shift into
different communicational environment the expressivity of that device comes to be visible.
This is a disturbing thought, but Ulin explains below that as a result a whole stylistic layer
then becomes expressive in comparison to neutral layers. He demonstrates the rising
expressivity on various functional stylistic layers. Expressivity can not exist in academic
style, because of the aim of communication. The expressivity of marked words is neutralized
when they become the objects of scientific research. He mentions the word hnj as an
example. In a technical text about agriculture it works completely different than in a linguistic
essay about taboo expressions. Expressivity rises up in journalistic style and even more in
colloquial style. In artistic style it becomes a tool of the artists intention.
To summarize what has been said above, what is expressivity then? Expressivity is a
concept that represents the differentiability of a language device and its use from other neutral
language devices and neutral use. This can be applied to whole texts and their parts, i.e. that
expressivity is basically is the differentiability of the text from other neutral texts. This

15

markedness of language devices and texts is a result of the subjectivity of the author and his
use of language devices when building a text. It is the projection of ones subjective self into
the realm of language. The intention of the author doesnt always match the impact on the
receiver and thus the intention of the author to use expressive devices in order to create an
impact on the receiver is not always visible to the receiver.
Together with Ulin, we can label as expressive those marked language devices and
texts that connote semantic qualities of emotions, emotionally biased evaluations; aesthetic,
intensifying, associative, evocative and figurative attributes. (translated from Ulin
1988:339) On the other hand, expressivity can be also carried by language devices connoting
the dialectal origin of the speaker, social status, education, age, sex, etc.
Expressivity is an important attribute, because it is the main quality by which we can
distinguish those constructions that we are planning to analyze later on with respect to
translation. In fact we will not be looking solely for swearwords. We will try to examine
many of those different kinds of words and constructions which have one thing in common
expressivity.

2.1.3 Expressivity in practical use

The artistic style is expressive in itself. Whatever the author produces, it is always
stylized in his own subjective way and by the definitions mentioned above subjective equals
expressive. The writer seeks expression, a presentation of his subject. He intends to create his
own genuine message while at the same time stylizing the language of his characters again
with the use of his subjective artistic means.
Artistic style makes use of almost all language devices of the respective language
shaping them to suit the authors intention. The authors are free to bind words in new
unexpected ways, they can combine various styles, registers and dialects. Ulin quotes

16

Filipec and ermk, proclaiming that expressivity is most productive in the area of lexis and
phraseology.
He goes on to describe the contrasting of artistic style versus the neutral expression of
a given period. The written work of art can compare its style with the neutral written and
spoken language, style norms and the stylistic canon or the writing of a major author or a
powerful group of authors. He states that every innovation of the given canon can be
considered as expressive.
In translation, expressivity takes a very specific position. His next sentence is crucial
for this work and I will be returning to it later in the analysis The aim and the purpose of
translating prose is to translate mainly the connotations in such a way that the translation is
adequate to the original even in this respect.(translated from Ulin 1988:340) Here we can
see a notion of equivalence or adequacy which will become prominent later in this work
where I will be discussing it from various points of view.
Concerning the practical use of expressivity evaluation in translation, Ulin
concludes that the comparison of expressivity of the original and the translation is an
important part of translation analysis. The quality of the translation can be determined by the
distribution of expressivity in the text. A translator, who is aware of the hierarchy of
relationships between the expressive devices used in the source and the target language, can
achieve a certain similarity of the expressivity distribution curves of the source text and his
translation. Certainly, some constructions in the source language have a higher degree of
expressivity and therefore should be translated with different construction in the target
language with the matching expressive potential.

2.1.4 Summary
Expressivity is an attribute of language that is constituted by conspicuousness, the
subjective intentions and bias of the language user and can be observed on a wide variety of
17

levels of language from a single lexical unit to whole books. It is also influenced by regional
origin, social status, sex, age, intelligence and language skills of the language user. This factor
is very useful when it comes to analysing the expression of teenage gang-members who use
their specific expressive constructions in speech.

2.2 The concept of equivalence

2.2.1 The way to Nidas concept
In a way Nidas concept originated from a crisis in the area of translation in the
Western world. The so called American translation workshop with its emphasis on practice
did very little to contribute to building of a theory of translation. As we read in Gentzler when
he cites Graham:

Much that has been written on the subject of translation yields very little when sifted
for theoretical substance because it has always been written as if spoken in the
workshop. The personal anecdotes and pieces of advice may well provide some help,
but certainly not the coherent and consistent theory required for translation. (Gentzler
1993:43)

Gentzler goes on in the sense that the lack of theory is not just a contemporary
problem in America, but one that troubles translation historically. People are used to translate
usually giving the best of them, but they were never sure what is it they are doing, what
processes go on in their minds, how do they grasp the languages.

18

Clearly, a more systematic approach to translation was needed, and the discipline that
appeared to have the theoretical and linguistic tool necessary to address the problem
was linguistics. (Gentzler 1993:43)

This is then where linguistics enters the scene in the person of Noam Chomsky. He
developed a model called generative transformational grammar that is based on underlying
structures of language. The model presumes several levels in every language, the main of
them being the deep structure and surface structure. At the bottom of the model was the
initial element which he later abandoned. This is followed by the base component which
consists of two types of rewriting rules the phrase structure rules and lexical rules. He
believes that these two types are universal and common to all languages.

The phrase structure rules generate the deep structure of a sentence, which, according
to Chomsky at the time of the writing of Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, contained all
the syntactic and semantic information that determine its meaning. Finally,
transformational rules modify the deep structure, resulting in the surface structures
all the sentences in a given language. (Gentzler 1993:48)

Although the existence of the base component that is universal and common to all
languages could be doubted, the theory was given importance. His phrase structure rules
represent the internalized and unconscious workings of the human mind. The deep structure
determines the meaning underlying sentences and surface structure determines the sound. One
of Chomskys most important thoughts was that most of the linguistic knowledge is innate.
He claims that babies can have a large body of prior knowledge about the structure of
language in general, and need only actually learn the features of the language. Gentzler seems

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to be a bit sceptical about these ideas when he mentions that many people have raised
objections concerning Chomskys assumptions about the human mind and its innate ability to
know language. Besides these suspect concepts of innateness, his theory can be criticized
from a different stance. Chomskys empirical evidence concerning the language structure is
based on an idealized form of communication, regarding errors, distractions, slips of the
tongue and other normal phenomena occurring in communication as irrelevant. He works
with an idealized speaker-listener, homogenous speech community and perfect language
knowledge. The translation practitioners see this as the greatest problem of the generative
transformational model. In their view, as Gentzler describes, the model is

overly idealistic...divorced from all the problems of translation from contemporary

neologisms to archaisms, from proper nouns to metaphors, from high registers to
dialects and mistakes and all those knotty problems that make translation both
impossible and fascinating. (Gentzler 1993:50)

There is no need to go any deeper into this model. What is important in the context of
this work is Chomskys idea of a deep-structure/surface-structure and the interactions between
them. The fact that Chomsky revolutionized the field of linguistics, is supported by another
fact that Chomsky is the eighth most often cited scholar in history (Wikipedia). Despite
criticism, the theory was adopted by translation scientists to support their aims, even though
Chomsky himself warned against such use of his work. Most important for us is that his work
produced theoretical grounds and thus inspired Eugene Albert Nida and others to create
models of their own, working with functional equivalence.

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2.2.2 E. A. Nida in critical view

Previously to his famous Toward a Science of Translation Nida was writing for
missionaries, not translators. His field of study was biblical exegesis and his work was based
on religious presuppositions. Gentzler writes that although he was moving towards scientific
analysis in the communication of the Christian faith, his work had still strong theological
motivation. His major text of that time was the Message and Mission which can be considered
a pre-Chomsky version of Toward a Science of Translation.

The books general thesis was that biblical translators should not take communication
for granted, but should bring it about, employing all the resources of linguistics and
communication theory to aid their task. (Gentzler 1993:52)

Nida worked with large-scale field work that revealed that the religious message
sometimes could not be communicated because of the different cultures to which it was
presented. Nida, in my opinion quite rightly, came to the realization that meaning is received
under the influence of personal experience and world view of the receiver. He concluded
and this is not so positive that ideas must be modified in order to fit in with the experience
of the different culture.
Although I feel that the basic thought of an equivalent impact on the receiver is good, I
would not go as far as Nida. Changing the idea of a work in translation to produce an
equivalent impact on the readership of that translation is rather excessive. Translating in such
a way that the translation achieves effects equivalent to those of the original should not alter
or distort the original message. If we have to reach to modifications of the message they
should be as minimal as possible. Anyway, let us go back to Nida and return to the evaluation
of his ideas later.

21

As Gentzler writes, Nida showed a strong interest in the response of the person
receiving the communication. Nidas goal was to bring about the appropriate response, that is
to convert the readers to Protestantism. Unlike Chomsky and many other structural linguists
he does not prefer the sign, but the response to that sign. If his translation can solicit the
response God intends, then the translation is successful.(Gentzler 1993:53) He considers
words and symbols to be only labels and the form of the message is thus unimportant.
The philosophy hidden behind this is again quite sane. In real life, it is usually more
important what one says and not how he says it, although there are situations when this
relation works better when turned vice-versa, but in translating literature it should be always
the message and the form in balance, because most of the prose works elaborate on a plot that
can be rewritten in a single paragraph (see book reviews) and it is the form which makes them
extensive and artistic works.
Nidas next publication, Toward a Science of Translating (1964), has the theological
ideas edited out of it, but Gentzler voices his opinion that they are still prominent, although in
an implicit form. Whereas Chomsky was interested in the sign torn out of its cultural context,
Nida is primarily concerned with how the sign functions in any given society. Although Nida
and Chomsky seem to be worlds apart in their opinions, Nidas pragmatics are not
differentiated from Chomskys concept of deep structure; they merely add to it.(ibid.) His
pragmatic aspect of meaning is fitted into the system at the base which hosts a core of
syntactic structures and a vague core of universal human experience. Nida believes that the
deep structure of the language, which consists of the sign in context, can be inferred in
prolonged study of the language and culture.

22

Nida builds his theory on the premise that the message of the original text not only can
be determined, but also that it can be translated so that its reception will be the same as
that perceived by the original receptors. (Gentzler 1993:54)

The theory prefers functional equivalence to the correspondence of the form. It prefers
dynamic equivalence to literal meaning. Simply it focuses on how language works and not on
what it communicates.
According to Nida, the translated text should produce a response in a reader today
essentially like the response of the original receptors. This in itself is a creditable thought. But
already the next one is more than suspect, because it says that if the translation does not
produce that equivalent response, the text should be changed in order to solicit that original
response. Nida does not really mind making changes in the the text, the words or the
metaphors as long as the target text functions in the same way as the source text.
Once the meaning is observed solely in terms of its function and the concept gets
abstract enough to take universal structural status, the use of Chomskys model is at hand.
With the support of Chomskys model, Nida can claim that he has moved from missionary
work to scientific analysis of translation. Nida, although he has different goals than Chomsky,
uses similar terminology and comes to similar conclusions about the nature of language. He
speaks about the same kernel structures and their transformations, but he is not as ready as
Chomsky to claim that the kernels are universal. He rather seems to attribute them with
supernatural status.
Gentzler claims that Nidas theory exhibits significant differences from Chomskys
model and that the intentional differences only illustrate that Nida used Chomskys theory,
simplified it and misappropriated it so that it can be applied to translation.

23

Nida, although he used the model for his aims, works with a different methodology.
He prefers to:

...work backwards from the surface of the original text to its deep structure, transfer
that deep structure to the deep structure of the new language and then generate a
surface structure in the second language. (Gentzler 1993:56)

He simply works with decoding and recoding in which the original message never
changes. In his own words as cited by Gentzler:

It is both scientifically and practically more efficient (1) to reduce the source text to its
structurally simplest and most semantically evident kernels, (2) to transfer the meaning
from source language to receptor language on a structurally simple level, and (3) to
generate the stylistically and semantically equivalent expression in the receptor
language. (ibid.)

These are not Chomskian procedures and again reveal that Nida has largely
misappropriated Chomskys model.
Nidas theory does presuppose that the translator is able to feel into the author and
recreate his speech and ways to the smallest detail. The translator should have a great
admiration for the author, the same background and the same amount of talent. This approach,
according to Gentzler, gets very close to total dependence on the original authors intent.
Gentzler concludes that what a work says and what the author intended it to say are two
different things (Gentzler 1993:57).

24

To sum it up, Gentzler seems to be very critical about the science of translation.
Although he is right with most of his points, I suggest not to bury the theory so fast. As a
contrast to this critical voice, later we shall examine closer what Nida wrote himself and try to
find some points that should not be dismissed and could prove useful.

2.2.3 Germany and Wolfram Wills

Nidas and Chomskys theory found its most detailed application in Germany at the
University of the Saarland in Saarbrcken. Wolfram Wills, although he does not admit, is
very close to Chomsky in his ideas. Translation in his model works because of the existence
of syntactic and semantic universals in the deep-structure. There are universal forms as well
as a core of common experience (Gentzler 1993:63). His science is thus, as Gentzler puts it,
a simple matter of creating syntactic, semantic, and reception equivalents. Wills performs his
empirical research on largely idealized material he strips the sentences of their form,
reformulating the message in the most basic vocabulary and grammar. Only the effect is
designed to be the same as that of the original. His model is also based on a concept of a
universal language (including universal forms and a core of shared experience) and on the
existence of deep structure transfer and a generative component that can generate surface
structures. This model appears to be very similar to that of Chomsky and exhibits even almost
the same mistakes and idealizations.

2.2.4 Ji Lev
When speaking about functional equivalence, one should not omit the contribution of
Ji Lev in this area. He claims in his Umn pekladu that the translator should translate the
aesthetic content of the work and not only the text, because the text is just a carrier for the

25

aesthetic content. He continues that the text itself depends on language in which the work is
stylized and many values thus have to be expressed with different means in the target
language (Czech).
Theorists like Nida and Chomsky explain translation on the grounds of vague
linguistic structures and the transfers that take place in them. Lev describes it in more
worldly terms as perception and new stylization in the target language.
I understand that perception and stylization are the key terms in his theory, because he
makes it the basis of his concept of equivalence. He himself compacts the whole concept into
one sentence:

The relation of a written work and its translation is like a relation of a work of art and
its rendering in another material. What shall remain constant is not the unity of content
and form, but its concretization in the mind of the perceiving person - put in a popular
way: the resulting impression, the effect of the work on the reader. (translated from
Lev 1963:79)

From this standpoint he divides translators into two groups those who work wordfor-word (faithful translation) and those who want to reproduce the original (free
translation) in such a way that it works as a target language written work. Anyway, he does
not observe these two norms as opposites and rather claims that they should compromise and
cooperate. His view was meant to look detached and not to favour any of the two groups, but
the functionally equivalent translation still seems to be of higher value in his writing.

26

2.3 Nidas equivalence in detail

2.3.1 Requirements on the translator
First of all he requires that the translator has a satisfactory knowledge of the source
language. A general sense of the meaning is obviously not enough. The translator must
understand all the subtle details emotive values of individual words and stylistic features
in order to determine the flavour and feel of the message.
Secondly he has to have a complete control of the receptor language.

Certainly the most numerous and serious errors made by translators arise primarily
from their lack of knowledge of the receptor language. (Nida 1964:150)

Thirdly the translator must possess a thorough knowledge of the subject matter in
order to be able to translate specialized text (e.g. technical or slang).
These requirements are easy to agree with and I think that anybody is not afraid to sign
his name under these. It is the next requirement that causes trouble when it says that the
translator is not really competent unless he has also a truly empathetic spirit. (Nida
1964:151) He quotes Basil Anderton (Anderton 1920:66) who compares this empathy of the
translator for the author to an actors ability to feel into his part. It is here that the above
mentioned objection by Gentzler comes to play. Just like every actor understands his role in a
slightly different way and performs it according to his understanding, no translator can ever
achieve such a degree of empathy to fully feel into the author and his intentions. In my
opinion, the only thing that the translator actually can feel is the authors work.

27

Next Nida quotes OBrien who says that one should never translate anything one
does not admire (OBrien 1959:85). He suggests that there must be a natural affinity between
the translator and the translated. This, again, seems to be unnecessary and can be disproved
with the fact that there are many commercial translators translating whatever the publishers
give them and still the works do not seem to be damaged in any way.
But a good knowledge of language, subject matter and the possession of empathy does
not seem to be enough to make a brilliant translator. The thing missing is the ability of literary
expression. Nida again gives some examples in quotes which in short say that the translator
should possess a literary talent very similar to that of the author in order to produce a
translation that can match the qualities of the original work. Certainly this is an agreeable
requirement, because some prose or poetry really exhibits such genuine style that not
everybody can reproduce. The translators should have a very well developed sensitivity to
artistic style indeed.
Although it is important to judge these requirements, more important is to judge
Nidas principles of correspondence or equivalence which should be the theoretical
background for my analysis of translations.

2.3.2 Principles of dynamic equivalence

In translations based on dynamic-equivalence (Nida calls them D-E translations) the
focus is not on the source message but on the receptor response. What Gentzler forgot to
quote in his sharp critique of Nidas theory is the following:

It is important to realize, however, that a D-E translation is not merely another

message which is more or less similar to that of the source. It is a translation, and as
such must clearly reflect the meaning and intent of the source. (Nida 1964:166)
28

Here we can see that Nida was not as fanatic about his model and felt that the
importance of equivalence should not be overvalued. He defines the D-E translation as the
closest natural equivalent to the source-language message. The word natural as such is a bit
vague and Nida proceeds to define it closer. The natural rendering must fit the receptor
language and culture as a whole, the context of the particular message, and the receptorlanguage audience. The accordance of the translation to the target language and culture is, in
Nidas view, an essential ingredient of any stylistically acceptable translation. This was
basically one of my initial thoughts in the introduction of this work the style of the
translation determines how easy it reads and thus influences the evaluation of the translation.
Nida voices a great opinion that this stylistic quality of the translation is usually noticeable
only when absent an opinion I can more than agree with. Nida quotes J. H. Frere who states
that

the language of translation ought, we think, be a pure, impalpable and invisible

element, the medium of thought and feeling and nothing more; it ought never to attract
attention to itself (Frere 1820: 481)

This is it, this is the noble thought that I intend to support. The translations should read
as well as any domestic literature.
If we follow Nidas arguments on D-E translations further, we get to know that a
natural translation includes two major areas of adaptation, first of them being grammar and
the second lexicon. To translate in such a way that we adapt the grammar for the target
language should be easy, because the grammatical rules of the target language are set firm.
We simply have to use the valid rules for the given target language otherwise the translation
would be regarded a mere rewriting of the original using target language vocabulary.

29

Adjusting the lexical structure to fit the semantic requirements of the target language is a far
bigger problem, because there are no firm rules at hand. The translator can choose from a
wide variety of alternatives. As Nida puts it, there are three kinds (or difficulty levels) of
vocabulary. The first is universal terms for which there are easily accessible parallels and
which describe items almost identical in the source as well as the target language. The second,
a bit harder to translate, are terms that identify culturally different objects but with similar
(equivalent) function. The third category contains culturally specific terms which cannot be
easily replaced by a target language equivalent.
Nida sees this as an obstacle that prevents the translator from reaching perfect
equivalence, or better to say a complete transposition of the work into the target culture. In
this, I think, he shows a far greater degree of equivalence fanatism. In my opinion, no work
of art can ever be and should not be completely divorced from the culture of its origin.
Luckily for the target readership. If, for example, one took a novel taking place in London,
exhibiting English characters, rituals and habits and translated it in such a way that it took
place in Prague with Czech characters, rituals and habits, then the Czech readership can never
get to know any foreign facts. It would be the same story, containing characters with basically
the same qualities, it would create an effect equivalent to the original story, but all the cultural
differences that can be so interesting for the target reader would get lost. If we expanded
Nidas seeking of perfect transplantation to all literature and all languages, the world would
end up full of universal stories that would not convey any cultural difference between
nations.
In his following thoughts Nida gets again overly religious, finding all his examples on
the field of exegesis. Let us quickly sift through these to see if there is something not so much
contaminated that it could serve our purpose. He states that the naturalness of expression in
the target language is essentially a problem of co-suitability on several levels, of which the

30

most prominent are: word classes, grammatical categories, semantic classes, discourse types
and cultural context. Stripped of the biblical examples, these categories seem to be quite
useful. What can be expressed by a noun in one language requires a verb in another
(adaptation in a word class).
With the adaptation of semantic classes he uses an example working with swear
words:

swearwords in one language may be based upon the perverted use of divine names, but
in another language may be primarily excremental and anatomical (Nida 1964:168)

Another exclamation mark for the analysis of translations from the point of view of
how they work: we have to take into account different origins of the various swear words in
both Czech and English.
The next requirement on a natural translation is that it should be in accordance with
the context of the particular message. Here we go back to Ulins article on expressivity. As
we found out there, the expressivity of a word is given by its conspicuousness in the given
context, although a text that observes expressivity almost as a norm (as is the case with the
works we will analyze later) becomes expressive as a whole and thus the words lose much of
its conspicuousness. In such a text it would rather be sophisticated technical terms or upperclass way of expression that would become conspicuous. This is another warning for the
ensuing analysis: we should be aware of the coherence of the work with regards to the
language level in the context of the whole text.
The third element which Nida sees as crucial to the naturalness of a D-E translation is
the extent to which the message fits the target language audience. Although he largely
underestimates that audience, because he is again concerned mainly with the translation of the

31

Bible for certain remote indigenous peoples, there is still something that we can make use of.
Simply, the translator has to bear in mind for what kind of audience he translates and if he is
or is not to change the difficulty of the text. Still, adjusting the difficulty only takes place in
special cases today and moves the translation close to a mere adaptation of the original.
Serious translators rather keep the original level unchanged.

2.3.3 Formal equivalence and the clashes with dynamic equivalence

As an opposite to D-E translations Nida sees F-E translations, those based on formal
equivalence. This kind of equivalence is useful in translating, for example, poetry, where
translators tend to preserve the meter of the particular poem if possible. His description of this
kind of equivalence is again supported by biblical examples which are of almost no use for us.
Formal equivalence simply steps into play when we need, whatever the reason may be, to
preserve the form of the document we translate. The extreme variant of it can be used by
linguists to show the word order of a foreign language or to demonstrate various linguistic
phenomena. It can be of importance for historians who want to demonstrate for example
various idioms or sayings from distant times and cultures.
Although the D-E and F-E translation are basically opposite, the range is not binary.
The area between these two is more of a gradual transition and it is towards the middle of the
range where, in Nidas opinion, problems start to occur. There may arise situations when a
word refers to an object the target culture does not know, but it can be replaced by a
functional equivalent. Or there are situations when the referent is known to the target culture
but its function there is completely different. There may be situations when there is no
equivalent either formal or functional. Nida suggests that these conflicts can be resolved

32

with the use of explanatory marginal notes or footnotes or with adding descriptive classifiers
to a borrowed foreign term.

2.3.4 Translation in theory and practice

In his The Theory and Practice of Translation, a work that is again focused on
translating religious works, he advocates a new concept of translating. He distinguishes
between the old and the new focus in translating, the old one being obviously the focus on
form and the new one the focus on equivalence. This time he is again underestimating the
target language reader when he concludes that in order for the translations to communicate
effectively they must be free of those expressions that are likely to be misunderstood and the
heavy expressions which are likely to discourage the receptor from reading. He suggests
that each language has its genius, which is quite right. He suggests that to communicate
effectively one has to respect that genius. He suggests that anything that can be said in one
language can be said in another when the form is not an essential part of the message. And he
suggests that to preserve the content of the message the form must be changed. I presume that
this change is not necessary.
The following chapter reveals some good-sounding slogans, but sometimes they
become less attractive when one reads what Nida really means by them.
The translator must aim primarily at reproducing the message (Nida 1982:12) and
therefore he has to make many grammatical and lexical adjustments. This radical adjustments
may have proven effective for translating idioms, but otherwise they could pose a problem.
The focus should be on equivalence rather than identity (ibid.). A translator should
not work word for word. This idea can be very well employed for the sake of translating
swearwords. For example the English fuck off should, in my opinion, be translated in

33

different ways depending on the context. It is definitely different when uttered by an educated
character (more polite or acceptable) and a drug-addicted down low character (very coarse).
The equivalents chosen by the translator should be natural. The best translation does
not sound like a translation. (Nida 1982:12) Of course Nida does not suggest transplanting
stories from history to present day, he advocates authenticity as well, thus the translation
should sound like it was translated right after the publishing of the original at least the
dialogs should. Here he does not propose cultural translations or transplantations as was the
subtext with his Towards a Science of Translation.

34

3 Analysis

As I already mentioned in the introduction to this work, the analysis will focus on
contemporary prose works about the young and containing expressive constructions and
explicit vocabulary. The main aim of the analysis is to judge the adequacy of the translations
with regards to the degree of expressivity, dynamic and functional equivalence. Does the
translator keep the speech of a character as coherent as in the original? Does he keep the
language evolution of a character as close as possible to the original? Do the swear words and
the slang exhibited in the translation sound authentic? I will try to answer all of these
questions on the following pages.
The prose works I chose are more than suited for this kind of analysis, because they
contain an abundance of explicit language and represent contemporary writing.
The first of them, Trainspotting, was written by Irvine Welsh in 1993 and translated
by Ondej Formnek and John Comer in 1997. The second is Glue by the same author written
in 2001 and translated by Eva Poskoilov in 2003. The third book is called Fever Pitch, it
was written by Nick Hornby in 1992 and translated by Richard Podan in 2002.
Especially the works of Irvine Welsh represent literature that is difficult to translate,
because the plot takes place mostly in Scotland and the characters are Scottish. They also
speak Scottish English most of the time, for which Welsh moved to create a transcription of
the specific pronunciation:

Everybody would have a story at the pub or at parties, even at the clubs and raves.
They were all so interesting. Then I'd read stories in books, and they'd be dead. I got to

35

thinking that it had a lot to do with standard English. I mean, nobody talks like that in
cinema, nobody talks like that on television, nobody sounds like that in song. In any
other cultural representation, we don't talk like that, so why do we in the novel?
(Powells.com Interviews Interview with Irvine Welsh. 11 January 2006
<http://www.powells.com/authors/welsh.html>.)

We can read for example: Ah go back doon tae the pub n huv another couple ay
pints (Trainspotting, 230). Notice the special spelling of I, down, and, have and
of. Some characters, for example tourists visiting the Edinburgh festival, speak different
dialects of English or even their own idiolects which is again reflected in the spelling, starters,
hesitation-markers, gap-fillers, choice of vocabulary and overall tone and register.
Hornbys Fever Pitch, on the other hand, does not play with language and does not
present large amounts of vulgarisms. It is rather penetrated with football-slang, but as one
would presume in such a context swear words and expressive constructions can be found
and analyzed.
The analysis is performed on randomly chosen passages that are formatted in tables
together with their translation. The left cell of the table is always the source text (abbrev. S)
and the right cell is the target text (abbrev. T). The underlined locations in the source text are
the clusters of expressivity be that individual swearwords or whole expressive phrases.
The underlined locations in the target text represent the corresponding expressive potential in
the translation.
We have to take into account that colloquial language and expressivity in Czech and
English works in a different way. A single lexical unit can have various meanings and
different degrees of expressivity depending on the context. Thus we will come across
expressive clusters in the original that simply can not occur in the translation (do not have an

36

underlined counterpart in T). There are also expressive clusters that have to be translated
rather freely in order to work equivalently. There are also clusters that seemingly have to use
different degree of expressivity in order to keep the actual degree of expressivity equivalent.
We have also to take into account that judging the adequacy of a translation is very
subjective. Although I use percentages in the results for the sake of transparency, the results
still have to be observed more as qualitative rather than quantitative data.

3.1 Trainspotting
3.1.1 General literary analysis
Irvine Welsh was born in Edinburgh in 1958. He lived in London after leaving school,
but returned to his native city where he worked in the Council's housing department. He
gained a degree in computer science and studied for an MBA at Heriot Watt University.
Being Welshs first novel, Trainspotting was a marvellous success. It was published in 1993
and has reached the top ten for the Booker Prize. It was also adapted for the screen by Danny
Boyle in 1996 and starred Ewan McGregor and Robert Carlyle.
The book does not present a continuous story-line; it is more a collage of short
narratives, although these do keep at least an approximate time sequence. It covers an unclear
time-span (of several years probably) in the lives of the four main characters Mark Renton,
Francis Begbie, Daniel Murphy and Simon Williamson. These characters, although they are
different, form a certain kind of a loose gang. What unites them is the use of addictive
substances and the aimless effort to make at least something of their so far futile lives. After a
vortex of drug taking, drinking, stealing, fighting, having sex, exploiting the welfare system
and being a good-for-nothing, one of the main characters, Mark Renton, steals the profit of a
drug deal from his friends and flees to Amsterdam to start a new life.

37

The main characters (together with other, less important characters) are at the same
time also the narrators of the individual stories. Each of them has his own style of narration,
his own way of speaking, his own gap fillers and pragmatic markers, which makes the
characters appear very lively and real.

3.1.2 Translation analysis

First, what is most striking about Welshs original text is the use of dialect and the
special spelling which is intended to emulate Scottish English. When creating the speech of
the characters, the translators tried to achieve similar effects, but the result can be disputed.
Ji Lev claims that Czech language means are insufficient to characterize the speaker
as a citizen of for example Bavaria or Bretagne.

The only aim we can achieve is distinguishing the speech of a countryman from more
sophisticated persons that speak the national language... ...It is advisable to use
regionally unmarked language when indicating rural speech we should not use a
specific dialect... (translated from Lev 1963:85)

Certain places in the text reveal that the characters use a language similar to the typical
Prague dialect with increased vowel length where it is not necessary: Jcejtim se tak k
lp, jakikm. (Trainspotting cz, p. 130) In addition, some of the characters (living in the
1980s) in the Czech version occasionally use vocabulary resembling that from pre-war Prague
rogues gallery slang:

38

Je znmou skutenost, e nem kurva anci dostat v tomhle mst cokoliv slunho,
jesis nechodil do inan koly. (Trainspotting cz, p. 70)

Tohle je prost takk voajstlich. (Trainspotting cz, p. 297)

The English giro, meaning the social welfare or the dole, is many times translated as
ro, which is a word that is not generally used to represent social benefit in this country,
not even in slang.
The translation of the characters nicknames is a case of its own. Renton, whose
nicknames are Rents or Rent Boy in the original, is translated as Renta and Rentovac
hoa. This nickname obviously comes from him cheating on the social welfare system and
collecting the unemployment benefits on five different addresses, but Rentovac hoa is a
complete miss, because of the gay connotations that do not seem to be present in the original
nickname. Simon is called Sick Boy in English and translated as oufek. There are
several puns in the book elaborating on his nickname and him being sick with drug
withdrawal, which obviously cannot work in Czech, because he would have to be called
oufl so that the nickname worked in je mu oufl. His name is localized into imon
whereas the names of the other characters are not, which is at least puzzling. Begbies
nickname Beggar is translated as Betl and it is obvious that the translators tried to keep
the Be- beginning of the nickname so that it matches the surname. Danny Murphys
nickname Spud (meaning potato) is inexplicably not translated for the target language
reader at all. These mistakes, at least for me, are signals that the translators were not
consistent and that the overall quality of the translation may be lowered.
As I emphasized above, the brilliancy of the original text is in the quasi-phonetic
spelling. The words are spelt out more in the fashion they are pronounced than in their written

39

form, which provides the readers with a lively impression of spoken Scottish English. The
authors of the translation moved to create a similar notation in their target language text. I
think that their effort was more or less in vain, because the Czech reader is not used to such
written and maybe even spoken spelling. The tradition in translation here is that the vulgar
characters should speak more or less standard Czech or at least colloquial Czech with only
some vulgar words inserted to imply their vulgarity. It is presumed that reading a longer text
which uses spoken grammar and spelling is exhausting the reader and that it often gives an
artificial impression. However, the translators went this way and thus we can read such
expression as tajdlety, e, dyby, ul, dycky, dy, ne, kym. They also
use never-heard-of expressions (at least for me) like firy (meaning money) that seem to
come from some Moravian dialect.
There are also places where the translators chose not to translate and rather provide the
reader with descriptive notes at the end of the book. The translators probably thought that this
will make the settings more authentic, but the result looks rather strange:

He turned tae Raymie, whae wis steadfastly

keeping shoatie at the windae. Raymie could
detect a labdick in a crowded street the wey
that sharks can sense a few drops of blood in
an ocean.

votoil se na Raymieho, kerej nenavn

zral z vokna. Raymie byl schopnej
identifikovat labdicka v davu na ulici
zpsobem, jakym dokou raloci ucejtit pr
kapek krve v ocenu.

Source, p. 7

Target, p.13

A note at the end of the book saying that a labdick is a colloquial word denoting a
member of the police force in the shire of Lothian is, in my opinion, not enough - especially
when there is no note in the vicinity of any instance of the word that says that it can be looked
up elsewhere. In addition, the foreign word looks very disturbing in the Czech text.
Another thing that should have probably been omitted in the process of translation is
the English rhyming slang. The translators kept it in their text and provided explanation only

40

for some of the rhymes. One can read for example Nebude ti vadit, dy pojedu tvym Joe
Baxkem? which a reader experienced in English instantly identifies as rhyming slang for
taxi. What do the other readers do is a question, because this rhyme is not provided with an
explanatory note at the end of the book.

3.1.3 Analysis of specific cases

Before proceeding to analyze the individual cases containing swear words, I
performed a test count on selected swear words. I counted the prominent vulgar expressions
on forty pages ten narrated by each of the four main characters to get a sample and a
clearer picture which swear words to focus on.
I found that the most vulgar character in the book is Frank Begbie who uttered on ten
pages of his narration cunt 114 times and fuckin 196 times. These two words are the most
popular with all of the four characters and that is why I will focus on them and their
translation with respect to dynamic equivalence.
3.1.3.1 Frank Begbie
Oh ya cunt ye! Ma heids fuckin nippin this
morning, ah kin fuckin tell ye. Ah make
straight fir the fuckin fridge. Yes! Two boatils
ay Becks. Thatll dae me. Ah down the cunts
in double quick time. Ah feel better right
away. Huvtae fuckin watch the time, but.

Do pi, voe! Teda neska rno m bol kebule

jak svin, to ti teda muu c, voe. Razim si to
rovnou k lednici. Jasn! Dv flaky Becks,
voe. Ty bodnou. Vythnu je dvakrt tak
rychle, voe. Hned je mi lp. Musim ale
sledovat as voe.

S, p. 109
T, p. 117
It is obvious from this paragraph that in order to function in an equivalent way and
sound authentic, the translation indeed has to abandon the form to a certain degree. But is the
translation authentic and equivalent? The first sentence, as we see, is an expressive
exclamation addressed to the reader (or a virtual listener, because the stories are stylized to
41

look like a spoken narration). However, the target text contains only an expressive
exclamation without a straightforward address, moving the expressive element from the
English cunt to Czech vole, spelt as pronounced voe. The omission of the direct
address, in my opinion, slightly changes the function of the sentence and thus the dynamic
equivalence is not fully achieved here. To achieve DE, the sentence would have to use the
Czech exclamation Ty vole!, Ty pio! or Ty kundo! depending on how vulgar do we
want the translation to be the latter being the closest lexical equivalent to the original
cunt.
In the second sentence, whereas the expressive power is concentrated in the two
occurrences of the word fuckin in the original, the translation dissolves or suppresses this
power. The sentence in Czech only makes use of colloquial words instead of vulgar words.
The function of the first fuckin is divided between Teda and jak svin and the function
of the second fuckin is again divided between teda and voe. The degree of DE is much
higher here, although the equivalence is far from perfect. The sentence would perform much
better with constructions like Dneska rno m svinsky/zatracen/kurevsky bol hlava and
to ti sakra/kurva povm, vole. Using these expressive adjectives would also ensure greater
authenticity, taking into account how vulgar the character of Begbie is and the fact that the
translators formulation to ti teda muu ct is an obvious Anglicism.
The expressive element is missing in the next sentence. The following exclamation is,
in my opinion, not equivalent, because one does not exclaim Jasn! in a situation when
something happens exactly as he presumes. This exclamation is the typical English Bingo!exclamation (often accompanied with the typical gesture) should be translated with Jo!,
which is the proper Czech equivalent for this kind of exclamation. The next sentence of the
translation adds an extra voe.

42

In the sentence after the next the original cunts is exchanged for a low-expressivity
voe. The translators move the expressive element from the bottles to the address of the
listener, which is not present in the original. A translation with higher DE should stick to the
original distribution of expressivity Vyahnu ty svin dvakrt tak rychle.
The last sentence again creates an address of the listener where there is none in the
original and shifts the expressive element. Musm si ale kurva hldat as would perform
much better, I think.

Thill be a couple ay draftpaks gittin well filled

up oan the train gaun doon, he sais.
Sometimes ah dinnae understand that cunts
sense ay humour. Me n Rents go back a long
fuckin wey, but its like the cunts changed, n
ahm no jist takin aboot the drugs n that shite.
Its like, hes goat his weys n ahve goat
mines. Still great cunt though, the rid-heided
bastard.

Tage bude ve vlaku prek dobe nalitejch

tuplk, povid von. Nkdy ten jeho styl
humoru nechpu. Znm se s Rentou hodn
dlouhlo, ale ten zmrd se jako zmnil, a to
nemluvim jenom vo drogch a podobnejch
srakch. Prost, von m svoje spsoby a j
svoje. Ale furt je to skvlej zmrd, tohleto pako
jedno zrzav.

S., p.113

T., p. 121

This piece of text seems to exhibit more dynamic equivalence than the previous one.
The translation of the second sentence, in my opinion rightly, omits the cunts, because it
would be difficult to implement the expressive element into this sentence structure in Czech.
The next sentence does not produce a fully equivalent effect, because the fuckin was
transformed into the weak hodn which does not deliver a sufficient amount of expressivity.
Znme se sakra/kurva dlouho would work much better. The following cunt has
changed is translated, I think, in a stronger way than necessary one usually does not call his
friends zmrd in this country, but taking into account how vulgar the character of Begbie is, I
think we can consider the translation still within limits of authenticity. Srakch is used
very often among the young and in this sentence works perfectly authentic in the role of
etcetera. The last sentence contains cunt again and red-headed bastard. The cunt is

43

again very coherently translated as zmrd, but I would again call for a lighter expression.
Pako jedno zrzav seems to substitute the red-headed bastard quite well, although the
term pako is used still less nowadays and becomes outdated.
Now we should concentrate on some dialogs, because the communication is much
more lively there and there will probably be more equivalence and authenticity problems.
- Any change fir the boy Franco? Rents sais, n
this daft-lookin wee cunt hauds oot the fuckin
cup; lookin it us wi they fuckin sappy eyes.
- Git tae fuck ya gypo cunt! ah sais, knockin
the cup oot ay his hand, n fuckin pishin masel
it the daft cunt scrambling around oan the
deck between cunts legs, tae git his fuckin
coins.
- Whair the fucks this flat then? ah sais tae
Rents.
- No far, Rents sais, lookin it us like ah wis
fuckinthe wey that cunt looks it ye
sometimeshes gaunnae git a sair face one
ay they fuckin days, mates or nae fuckin
mates. Then the cunt jist turns away n ah
follay um doon oantae the Victoria Line.

- Franco, ned tomu klukovi k drobky?

povid Renta, a ten vl, co vypad jak dyby
byl debil, zvedne ten posranej kelmek a dv
se na m tma svejma ebravejma voima.
- Di do hajzlu, cikne posranej! povidm j a
vyrazim mu ten kelmek z ruky a chcpm
smchy, jak ten debil leze po zemi, lidem mezi
nohama, aby sebral ty svoje posran drobky.
- Tak gde je kurva ten posranej kvartr? ikm
Rentovi.
- Neni to daleko, povid Renta a podiv se na
m, jak dybych byl kurva kej to, jak se
ten zmrd na tebe nkdy kouk jednoho
krsnho dne ho bude bolet huba, kamardi
nebo nekamardi, voe. Pak se ten zmrd prost
voto a j du za nim dolu na Victoria Line.
T., p. 127

S., p. 119
The daft-lookin wee cunt surely has more impact than its translation. Stretching the
expression to such spatial extent deprives it of much of its expressive power. Also the wee
is lost somewhere in translation. Something similar to malej mentln/debiln kretn/zmrd
would work much better.
The fuckin cup is quite well translated as posranej kelmek. I shall only argue for
using a za- prefix (zasranej), because it would create pleasant alliteration with the
preceding zvedne which is often the case in spoken communication which uses these
devices to boost or emphasize the emotional and attitudinal element.

44

In the next sentence, the authors have omitted the expressive adjective and
misinterpreted sappy which in fact means wet or idiotic as ebrav taking some of
the expressive impact away.
The next replica presents more mistakes when it misinterprets gypo as cikn.
Although it comes from the English gypsy (Thorne 1990:177), gypsy does not mean the
same as the Czech cikn it denotes people with low standard of living, often nomadic.
Czech people understand an ethnic minority under cikn. In addition, Thorne in his slang
dictionary notes that the term is often extended to encompass all Arab nations in uneducated
speech. The gypo here should be translated as socka or ebrk to indicate only the
mans low status, because the main point here is that Begbie does not like his begging and
does not want to give him any money.
Another fuckin is left out in the translation, this time quite rightly, because an
adjective would look rather strange in the Czech construction again.
The relation chcpm smchy is quite right, but can be replaced with mnm se
pochcat smchy which is also quite frequent and in addition is semantically equivalent to the
original.
Daft cunt as debil is an appropriate and equivalent term of contempt and the
cunts translated as lidem is in this context right as well. Fuckin coins translated as
posran drobky sounds authentic and should not be disputed.
The next sentence translates well the typical phrase where the fuck, but it adds the
word posranej and translates flat with the more expressive kvartr which is not even
implied in the original. Tak kde je kurva ten byt? would be perfectly equivalent to the
original.
The relation kurva njakej is all right, but I suggest again translating the cunt with
lighter expressions such as vl when denoting friendly characters.

45

I would oppose the use of jednoho dne ho bude bolet huba, because this phrase is
not commonly used in this country and in addition it does not suit the character of Begbie. I
suggest translating he is going to get a sore face one of these days simply with the common
jednoho dne dostane pes drku/po tlam to achieve an effect equivalent to the original. The
same is valid for the following kamardi nebo nekamardi which should not insert the
nebo although there is an or in the original, because in colloquial Czech one does not use
nebo in this kind of relations (see hlava nehlava). The last sentence does not need to be
commented on, because the case has been examined here before.
3.1.3.2 Mark Renton
What can be said about the other three main characters? Only thing that can be taken
for granted is that they use less vulgar words. Let us judge the authenticity of their expression
starting with Mark Renton.

- Haud oan a second. Ah wanted tae see JeanClaude smash up this arrogant fucker. If we
went now, ah wouldnae git tae watch it. Ahd
be too fucked by the time we goat back, and
in any case it wid probably be a few days
later. That meant ahd git hit fir fuckin back
charges fi the shoap oan a video ah hudnae
even goat a deek at.

Pokej chvli. Chtl sem vidt, jak JeanClaude sejme toho nafoukanho zmrda. Dy
pudem te, nikdy se na to nedokoukm.
Vrtil bych se trochu moc sjetej a v mym
ppad by to stejnak nebylo dv ne za pr
dn, a to znamen, e bych musel v pjovn
platit za video, ker sem ani nevidl.

S., p. 4

T., p. 10
It is obvious that the author has shaped Renton to come from a better family. It is the

only character who went to university for some months before he left it because of drugs. He
uses far less vulgar words.
The translation of smash up and arrogant fucker is authentic and as far as I can
judge even perfectly equivalent. Although translating fucked with sjetej may appear to
be taking the expressive power from the concept, I am afraid there is no other suitable word

46

with the equivalent workings in this context. There is a shift in this particular sentence,
because Renton does not say in my case, so the translation should be kadopdn and not
v mym ppad. The next sentence omits the expressive adjective and even the back
charges and thus the translation does not convey a meaning equivalent to the original.

Ah wis shitein it that ah widnae get a shot

here. Fuck sakes Johnny, listen tae yirsel.
Git a fuckin grip. Wuv goat the fuckin hirays
here. Ah pulled some notes ootay ma poakit.

Byl jsem posranej starchy, e tady u dnou

lehu nedostanu. Kurva Johnny, v vbec
co ik? Spamatuj se, kurva. Tady mme
prachy. Vyth sem z kapsy k papry.

S., p. 10

T., p. 16

In the first sentence the shitein is not translated with the proper authentic term
although posranej strachy works well, only posranej is usually used among the young
with the notion of fear already built-in. The remaining two vulgar points in the text are
translated quite authentically, although a university character should probably use lighter
words, such as Doprdele Johnny and Vzpamatuj se, sakra.

The degree of expressivity of ones speech usually rises in tense situations. The book
seems to imitate this phenomenon, as we can se in a scene from a pub fight, where Rentons
narration gets more interspersed with swearwords.

Ahm doon thair, stickin a fuckin bar-towel

oan the draftpaks split heid, tryin tae stem the
blood. The cunt just growls at us, n ah dinnae
ken whether thats um showin gratitude or
ready tae stomp ma baws, but ah cairry oan.

Sem dole, dvm tuplkovi na rozpolcenou

hlavu barovej runk, pokouim se zastavit
krev. Ten zmrd na m jenom zamru a neni
mi jasn, jesi tim naznauje vdk, nebo jesi se
mi chyst nakopat koule, ale j v tom
pokrauju.

S., p. 80
T., p. 89

47

The first sentence in the translation omits the expressive fuckin, but in this context it
can be justified. What, in my opinion, can not be justified is the fact that the dull muscular
bouncer types are concistently translated as tuplci in the whole book. Although the original
draftpak is used to denote beverage containers as well as daft people, the Czech word
tuplk can not be used to speak about persons. Given the physical and psychical
characteristics of these people, we should be referring to them as hranoly, bouchai,
vazby, korby or drtii (see Rysov 2003) in order to be intelligible to the target text
reader and create an impression equivalent to the original.
In addition, the translation of the bar towel in this sentence is obviously wrong. I
suppose this was meant to be an utrka, because bars usually do not use runk.
Addressing an enemy draftpak with zmrd is authentic and accords with the above
mentioned usage of cunt for expressing distaste. The translation of the balls is also
authentic.
3.1.3.3 Simon Williamson
The character of Sick Boy is one of extreme self-confidence. He believes (and his
belief is justified) that he can pick up any woman he chooses. He cherishes them in his mind,
but he speaks of them as of mere sexual objects. He usually has some vulgar words at hand
let us have a look.

Now Rents is gibbering oan aboot Galileo and

Mother Courage and Baal and aw that shite.
The bitches seem quite impressed n aw. Why
fuck me insensible! This doss cunt actually
does have his uses.

Renta te mele o Galileovi, Matce Kuri a

Baalovi a podobnejch srakch. Ty buchty
vypadaj, jako e to na n udlalo docela
dojem. To mi ho teda podr! Ten pablb m ve
skutenosti i urit praktick vyuit.

S., p. 29

T., p. 36

48

The translation of aw that shite is quite authentic, because podobnejch srakch is

used in such situations. Using buchty for bitches on the other hand, seems to be reducing
the degree of expressivity. The swearword bitch is quite a strong expression in English.
Thorne notes in his dictionary, that it is normally highly offensive (Thorne 2003:33)
whereas the buchta in Czech has become, although still slang, almost neutral and outdated.
This point in the translation requires in my opinion a harsher sexist term from modern youth
slang such as loutka, va or even frnda in order to picture the self-confident sexist
character of Sick Boy in a way equivalent to the original.
The whole of the next sentence is disputable, because the Czech translation is not a
commonly used slang idiom and it seems to come from some geographically restricted area
slang or from the translators idiolect. Better would be the widespread and common No to
m poser!
In the next sentence doss cunt is translated as pablb which again reduces the
degree of expressivity and thus results in a non-equivalent effect, because pablb is an
outdated term and the doss cunt should be translated with debile, vole, blbe or other
more common term that would suit the overall expressivity of the text.

the socialist go on about your comrades,

your class, your union, and society. Fuck all
that shite. The Tories go on about your
employer, your country, your family. Fuck
that even mair. Its me, me, fucking ME,
Simon David Williamson, NUMERO
FUCKING UNO, versus the world, and its a
one-sided swedge. Its really so fucking
easy Fuck them all.

socialisti furt melou o tvejch soudruzch,

tv td, tvejch vodborech a spolenosti. Na
tyhle kecy seru. Konzervativci furt melou o
tvm zamstnavateli, tv zemi, tv rodin. Na
to seru jet vc. Sem to j, j, j jenom kurva
J, imon David Williamson, NUMERO
FUCKING UNO, versus svt, a je to nerovnej
boj. Vdy je to kurva tak snadn Na
vechny se vyseru.

S., p. 30

T., p. 37

All of the expressive clusters in this part seem to be translated adequately with the
exception of numero fucking uno which is inexplicably not translated at all. A trained eye

49

will also be surprised with the use of capitals and italics in the Czech translation, because
these meaning-bearing formal elements are usually directed by different rules in Czech.
Simply, these elements are usually removed where possible in translation. The final sentence
is inexplicably translated in future tense when it should sound Seru na vechny in order to
keep the tense established in the previous constructions beginning with fuck.

Ahthe enemy ish in shite, as the old Bond

would have said, and what a fuckin sight the
cunt looks as well. Skinheid haircut, green
bomber-jaykit, nine-inch DMs. A
stereotypical twat; and theres the woof-woof
trailing loyally behind. Pit Bull, shit bull,
bullshit terriera fuckin set ay jaws on four
legs.

ldm a topuju ve tnu a eru, jak by ek

starej Bond, a neptel je v dohledu.
Vylepanej na skna, zelenej bomber,
devtipalcov Martensky. Stereotypn debil; a
hele, kej baf-baf se vrn vlee za nm.
Pitbul, itbul, bulit terir posran dv
elisti na tyech nohch.

S., p. 178

T., p. 188

This passage of the translation successfully eliminates the pun with sight = shite
in the slight lisp of Sean Connery (with who Simon leads conversations in his mind) and the
ensuing mocking sentence what a fuckin sight. This could have been solved much better
with , neptel je na dohled, jak by ekl starej Bond, a e je na toho zmrda kurva pohled.
Stereotypn debil works allright, but as it should express strong hatred towards skinheads I
would advocate using the harder sense of the word stereotypn pia.
The ensuing sentence is again a bit shifted, because the English definite article signals
that the word kej cannot be used. It would work much better like a tmhle se v tsnm
zvsu vrn vlee hafan.
The use of the quasi-phonetic itbul and bulit terir looks quite daring. On the
other hand, the English shit is known quite well in the Czech Republic and is used by the
young as an equivalent to the Czech sraka, denoting something worthless, abortive
(Rysov 2003). With respect to this, the two expressions are translated in a very topical way.

50

The fuckin set ay jaws is translated adequately, but from the aesthetic point of view, it
should use something like sada elist or only elisti to avoid the accumulation of
numerals.

3.1.3.4 Danny Murphy

The character of Spud has an interesting idiolect in that he speaks about people as
about cats. In my opinion, these addresses are peculiar and conspicuous and thus can be
observed as expressive, which makes them additional candidates for analysis.

Pure jungle cat, ken, but even jungle cats sit

doon n huv a wee purr tae themselves now
and again, likesay, usually after theyve likes,
devoured somebody. Ah sortay cannae help
wondering who Franco n Lexos devoured
likesay.

Klasickej kocour z dungle, n, ale i kocoui z

dungle si tu a tam sednou a kapku si zavrnj,
jakikm, vobvykle pot, co nkoho, prost,
schlamstli. Takk se nemuu zbavit
mylenek na to, koho schlamstli Franco a
Lexo, jakikm.

S., p. 120

T., p. 129

Here, the cats are consistently translated as kocour. Spud also calls females
catgirls and males catboys. Whereas the former is translated adequately as koky, the
latter is inexplicably translated as kokodani in addresses. The translators presumably
aimed at distinguishing between cat and catboy, but the address kokodane does not
have anything in common with cats and there is a shift in meaning.
Spud uses swearwords only sparsely as can be seen in the following examples, but
even these sparse occurrences can be distorted in translation.

51

The doorbell rings. Me n Franco are a bit shit

up in case its the labdicks.

Zadrn zvonek. Sme s Frankem voba trochu

nesv, pro ppad, e by to byli labdickov

S., p. 284

T., p. 298

Being a bit shit up definitely has a higher degree of expressivity than jsme trochu
nesv which can cause changes in the perception and thus limit the equivalence of effect. The
translation should be closer to jsme trochu posran. In addition, the translation of the
construction in case is an obvious Anglicism, because one is not scared pro ppad, e by
to byli policist. I am not even mentioning the case of labdicks. The translation should be
similar to jsme trochu posran, e to budou fzli/flojdi/vestky.

The wee guy takes his dough n leaves. Perr

wee cunt goat nuthin really, aboot a couple ay
hundred quid fae nears enough five grand,
likesay. Still, bags ay loot for a cat that age, if
ye catch ma drift. Mind you, ah still say thit
Francos been a bit hard oan the nipper.

Ten malej sebere sv prachy a vodejde.

Chudk malej dostal vlasn velk kulov, pr
stovek ze skorem pti tc, jakikm. Teda
spousta fir na kocourka v tomhle vku,
jesi m kapruje. Ale pipomnm, stejnak
sem ek, e Franco byl na toho cvrka trochu
drsnej.

S., p. 286

T., p. 300

Chudk malej functions equivalently to perr wee cunt although the original seems
to be carrying more expressive charge than the translation. The tc in the translation,
although a bit older term, is still used quite frequently and is equivalent to the English
grand. I oppose to the use of the term fir which is not common and certainly does not
appeal to all Czech readers. Kapruje is a similar case as tc it is older, but
widespread. On the other hand, the original catch ma drift seems to imply something more
hip or trendy. The perfect equivalent would be the up-to-date construction jestli m
vnm/sleduje/sth.

52

3.1.4 The result

The analysed material was picked randomly from the book in approximately the same
extent for all four characters. I aimed at picking pieces of text from the beginning, the middle
and the end of the book for each character so that I could track the development of the
character, although it was possible only in some cases. While giving the verbal analysis of the
individual cases, I kept a score sheet, counting the equivalent and non-equivalent translations
of the expressive words and constructions that are underlined in the examples.
The total count of the randomly chosen swearwords from this book was 54. Only 38.9
per cent of them (i.e. 21) qualified as equivalent and authentic, while 61.1 per cent (33) either
failed to produce the effect as equivalent as possible to the original or looked unnatural in the
target language text. Taking this into account we can regard the book a worse translation with
respect to dynamic equivalence.
My initial doubts about the coherence of the characters speech proved illegitimate,
because the way of expression of the individual characters remains almost constant
throughout the entire translation.

3.2

Glue

3.2.1 General literary and translation analysis

Glue was first published in 2001 and is Welshs sixth book. Just like Trainspotting it
tells the story of four friends from Edinburgh. It follows their life from their early childhood
to their middle-age. The story is similar to that of Trainspotting it displays the heroes as
they try to make the best of their lives. The characters speak Scottish English again, only in
the case of Glue the translator chose the more advanced way and did not try to emulate it in
his translation. Therefore the translation of this book displays standard and colloquial Czech

53

and the expression of the individual characters is more or less achieved with the amount of
swearwords they use in speech and narration.
Although this book contains a slightly different portfolio of swearwords, the most
prominent remain the same fuckin and cunt. Each of the characters has his own typical
way of expression again.

3.2.2 Analysis of specific cases

3.2.2.1 Terrence Lawson
The most vulgar character is called Terry Lawson. His speech is filled with different
words revolving around sex, because he himself lives the life of almost constantly having sex.

Blackpool. Fuckin barry doon thaire oan that

Golden Mile, aw the pubs n that. Plenty
fuckin shaggin doon thaire. Me n that bird fae
Huddersfield, n the yin fae Lincoln n aw. The
Huddersfield yin, Philippa, she wis the best
but. Banged that much wi broke the fuckin
bed.

Do Blackpoolu. Kurva, tam je to pardn, na

t Golden Mile, jedna hospoda vedle druh a
tak. Ohromn oustn. S tou holkou z
Huddersfieldu a taky s tou z Lincolnu. Ta z
Huddersfieldu, Philippa, ta ale byla nejlep.
ukali jsme tak, e pod nma rupla postel.

S., p. 38

T., p. 48

As this translation is much more adequate with respect to the naturalness of the overall
language and the language of the characters, we can only raise objections to minor
discrepancies and inconsistence of style. The swearwords create equivalent effect, but
surprisingly there is a shift in the rest of the sentence, because jedna hospoda vedle druh is
not the same as aw the pubs. The second sentence in Czech creates a different effect than
the original, because the notion of plenty and down there is not translated and the

54

expressive fuckin is missing. The following two sentences are equivalent. The last sentence
omits fuckin again, but not at the cost of equivalence.

Thats one thing aboot Doyle; ehs a crazy

cunt, but yuv eywis goat a tale tae tell wi him.
Like that time we choried aw that copper
wire, that wis fuckin radge. Cunts still no
peyed us fir that but.

Jedinej problm je s Doylem; je to cvok, ale

pokad si s nim pijdete na sv. Jako tenkrt,
co sme lohli ten mdnej drt, tak to byla
naprost lenost. A ten hajzl nm za to pord
et nezacloval.

S., p. 55

T., p. 63

The first sentence is slightly shifted in the translation. To express the same as the
original, it should say jedinej problm s Doylem je, e The following cvok is a shift as
well, because the original crazy cunt is a bit harder, implying that he is perverted, sadistic or
fanatic, and it should be translated using magor. The rest of the sentence is obviously
shifted as well, but the function is, I think, preserved almost intact. The next sentence does not
exhibit any shifts in meaning and function. Only the verb chory which probably comes
from Romany could be translated with rnout which is the Romany equivalent in Czech.

The cheek ay that fucker is that eh owes it aw

tae us. If eh hudnae been mates wi me n
Birrell eh would have been bullied tae fuck at
school, thats a cert. Fuckin guaranteed, the
fuckin Milky Bar Kid thair. And then eh
widnae have hud the confidence tae ponce
around behind a set ay decks like eh hud a
cock the size ay the Blackpool Tower.

Ten vl m ale drzost. Dy by nm ml bejt

vdnej! Kdyby se nekamardil se mnou a
Birrellem, ve kole by si uil ikanu jako
krva, to je jist, malej Mlk. A kde by pak
byla ta jeho sebejistota, aby vail z vody za
mixkama, jako kdyby ml urka velikosti
Eiffelovky.

S., p. 259

T., p. 251

The first sentence in this example presents a nice natural translation the Czech
sentence is almost idiomatic. On the other hand bullied to fuck contains a notion of finality,
that he would be (figuratively) bullied to death, which is not present in the translation and
thus the effect of the formulation is not equivalent. In addition the translation omits the two

55

instances of the intensifying fuckin. The final sentence rightly replaces Blackpool Tower
which is not generally known to the Czech readership for Eiffel Tower.

3.2.2.2 Billy Birrell

The next three examples are extracted from various chapter narrated by the character
of Billy Birrell whose idiolect involves frequent usage of brutal.

The perr auld gadge wis shitein it; aw they

wee thugs or, in Gentlemans case, big thugs
hingin roond um. Brutal really, bit what ken
ye dae?

Ten chudk ddek byl doista v prdeli; kolem

nj byli sam gaunei, nkter men, jin,
jako Gentleman, velk. Brutln, fakt, ale co
se d dlat?

S., p. 63

T., p. 69

Whereas the chudk ddek in the first sentence works quite well, the following
formulation shifts the meaning. Byl doista v prdeli does not create the same effect as the
original which implies rather that chudk ddek sral strachy. The idolectic brutal is
translated with the contemporary Czech youth slang brutln which is perfectly adequate.

Doyle laughs along at this, so does that

Polmont wanker. Every other radges goat
boots oan, its only me wearin trainers n ah
feel a bit ay a toss n its fuckin brutal
The cunt couldve been oan a burst mooth
if eh kept that up.

Doyle se pi tom checht a ten debil Polmont

taky. Vichni ostatn maji na nohou holinky,
jenom j mm tenisky a pipadm si jako
magor a je to cel dsn brutln Jestli s
tm vas nepestane, koleduje si o jednu do
drky, kretn.

S., p. 72

T., p. 77

Translating wanker with debil is rather weak and does not connote the sexual
subtext of the word. Some sexual swearword as urk or uln would be perfectly
equivalent. Translating toss using magor creates another shift, because toss should have
the connotation of something futile or someone hopeless (see Thorne 1999) which indicates
56

that using simply pipadm si jako blbec would be much more precise. The last sentence
seems to be again slightly shifted, but works well as a whole.

Polmont took a step back. If any cunt was

killin Gally, it wisnae gaunny be him. Eh
wisnae even intae a square-go.

Polmont ustoupil o krok zptky. Jestli njakej

blbec chce Gallyho zabt, tak on to bejt nem.
Dokonce ani do poctivho souboje se mu
nechtlo.

S., p. 201

T., p. 197

Using only blbec in this context, where the plot inevitably rushes towards a fight is
rather weak. The cunt in the original seems to be carrying much more expressive power
containing readiness to fight and hatred. The translator should have used mejd, hajzl,
zmrd or any other suitable more vulgar word. The second marked case is another mistake,
because no Czech schemie (this is Welshs own term and is translated as sdlik) would
ever use poctiv souboj in this context. Square-go is translated and should be translated
as frovka accompanied with the preposition na ani na frovku se mu nechtlo.

3.2.2.3 Andrew Galloway

The character of Andrew Galloway is one of the more polite, but during his life he
gradually stagnates towards a more wasted and vulgar personality.

- Andrew Galloway, sir, ah goes. The dressindoon the cunt wis giein us wis fuckin
mortifyin, cause thir wis gadges gaun past fae
the other classes, n lassies n aw, n they wir aw
laughin at us

Andrew Galloway,pane, povidm. To jak

nm umejval hlavy, to byl teda kurevskej
trapas, p kolem ns chodili kluci z jinejch
td a taky holky a vichni se nm
vychechtvali.

S., p. 83

T., p. 88

57

The dressing-down again is harder than just umejval hlavy not taking into
account that umejval hlavy is outdated and not cool. Using simply sjet or sevat
would convey the mood of the original much better. Kurevskej trapas works well in the
given context, only the structure of the sentence as a whole would need re-building to avoid
the English look.

Blackies rabbittin oan n oan, but ehs oaf ehs

fuckin heid n McDonalds telling the cunt tae
sit doon. Then wir dismissed. Its aw gaun
roond the school, every cunts aboot wettin
thirsels.

Blackie pod nco mele a je doslova bez sebe

a McDonald mu ik, aby si sednul. Pak ns
pustji. Cel kola nemluv o niem jinm,
vichni se z toho mou posrat.

S., p. 134

T., p. 135

Off his fuckin head is again underestimated in the translation, because doslova bez
sebe is a neutral idiom and lacks the expressivity of the original. Using totln/kurevsky
mimo is much closer to the original. Omitting the two occurrences of cunt is all right in
this context, but the final wetting themselves is translated with the wrong bodily function,
because this idiomatic phrase is used in the sense of pissing with laughter vichni se mou
pochcat smchy.

It couldnae be McMurray, no Polmont; no

that fuckin nervous drippy cunt, that shitein
puppet ay Doyles.
She went oan n oan, and ah wanted her tae
shut up. Telt her tae shut her fuckin dirty slut
mooth

Nemoh to bejt McMurray, ne Polmont; ten

zasranej, nervn, ukouranej hajzl, ta
Doyleova loutka, co je v jednom kuse posran
starchy.
Jene ona to omlala pod dokola a j chtl,
aby u konen sklapla. ek jsem j, aby
zavela tu svoj zasranou, sprostou, pinavou
kurevskou klapaku

S., p. 215

T., p. 210

The translation of the first marked case works well, although if we take into
consideration how much Andrew hates Polmont, the cunt should have been translated with

58

some harsher word like zmrd. Translating the shitein cunt using a subordinate clause and
inserting v jednom kuse which is not present in the original seems to be a bit unlucky
solution. Using ta strachy posran Doyleova loutka would be perfectly enough.
Considering how tense this piece of narrative is and how it is loaded with emotions,
even these marked words should have been translated with harder words. To create an
atmosphere equivalent to the original, I would use zavela hubu instead of the smoother
sklapla and drku instead of the smoother and outdated klapaku.

3.2.2.4 Carl Ewart

The last fourth of the book is narrated by the character of Carl Ewart who becomes a
successful D.J. in the second half of the book.
It wis fuckin useless though: their sex
education lessons. Gallagher fae Science
showin ye aw they diagrams ay cocks n baws
cut in half, n the insides ay lassies fannies;
canals n tubes n unborn bairns n aw that
sortay stuff. Stuff that would put ye oaf huvin
a ride.

Jenome to bylo absolutn na hovno, ta jejich

sexuln vchova. Jak nm Gallagher, co u
prodopis, pedvdl vechny ty nkresy
urk a koul rozznut napl a vnitky
holich kund; kanlky a trubiky a
nenarozen dti a tak podobn. Takov vci,
co by ns od oustn akort odradily.

S., p. 138

T., p. 139

The first marked case is a perfect equivalent. It uses a very natural, almost idiomatic
Czech construction. The next two marked places work exactly as well. I will only advocate
the use of rozznutejch instead of rozznut for the sake of proper object-modifier
congruence. The last marked case is also very natural.

59

Nearly fuckin sixteen. Cuntsll never believe

that ye goat yir hole unless ye act cool, cause
thats the best part ay it, no telling every cunt
ye goat it, but makin sure that they ken, sortay
bein a quiet authority oan the subject.

Doprdele, necelejch estnct. dnej pius by

mi nikdy nevil, e jsem u pchal, kdybych
se choval jako pako, protoe takhle to je
naprosto nejlep, nikomu neikat, e u to
mte za sebou, ale pitom si zadit, aby to
kadej poznal, jako bejt v tomhle smru tich
autorita.

S., p. 178

T., p. 176

As the first case works fairly equivalent, the second one shifts the degree of
expressivity, because the cunts in the original are in this case neutral and functioning as
they, anybody. In the third case the cunt is translated exactly as the context requires.

Ahm shoutin at the toap ay ma voice, Cmoan Galloway, ya attention-seeking wee

prick! Huv a fuckin heart! These people huv
been lookin eftir us. Were oan holiday! They
didnae need aw this shite!

Zavu, jak nejvc mu: No tak, Gallowayi,

ty malej urku, co furt vyaduje pozornost
Mj sakra slitovn! Tyhle lidi se o ns staraji.
Jsme na dovolen! Takovhle hovadiny
nemaji zapoteb!

S., p. 341

T., p. 325

The first case works quite well, although a more idiomatic construction should be used
such as z plnch plic. The second sentence is not very natural, because it uses a subordinate
clause to convey the meaning of attention-seeking. Subordinate clauses are used only
seldom in youth speech, because their usage signals that a person is educated and thus not
cool. On the other hand, we have to admit that in this case there is no better possibility than
this.
The other two cases seem to be translated under the original degree of expressivity and
should be substituted with stronger words like kurva and pioviny.

60

3.2.3 The result

The analysed material was again chosen randomly from the beginning, the middle and
the end of the book in approximately the same extent for each of the characters. Glue seems to
contain less expressive words and phrases than Trainspotting. The total count of analyzed
cases (those underlined in the examples) in this book was 38. Out of these 42.1 per cent were
translated satisfactorily and 57.9 per cent were either not equivalent or unnatural.
This translation as a whole is much better mastered than the translation of
Trainspotting, although the percentage of successful swearword translations is only slightly
higher. The translation keeps the individual characters degree of expressivity and imitates the
changes in their expression as they grow older.

3.3 Fever Pitch

3.3.1 General literary analysis
The successful first novel by Nick Hornby, Fever Pitch represents the opposite side of
the swearword spectrum. Compared to the the books of Irvine Welsh that literally spout
explicit vulgar language, Fever Pitch is an ordinary book. It describes Hornbys life and his
passion for football from its beginning in 1968 to 1992 when the book was published. It uses
swearwords economically and therefore it presents a different point of view.

3.3.2 Analysis of specific cases

And if this theory of fandom as therapy is
anywhere near the mark, what the hell is
buried in the subconscious of people who go
to Leyland DAF Trophy games?

A pokud je tahle teorie o fandn jako terapii

aspo piblin sprvn, co je propna
zakopno v podvdom lid, kte jezd na
zpasy Leyland DAF Trophy?

S., p. 9

T., p. 16

61

Here we can see that the intensifying the hell is translated with propna which
indicates that the book uses rather decent language. Although this case could be translated
with sakra, the expression would not match the overall style.

It wasnt the size of the crowd that impressed

me most, however, or the way that adults
were allowed to shout the word WANKER!
as loudly as they wanted without attracting
any attention.

Jenome na m nejvc ze veho nezapsobila

velikost obecenstva, ani to, e se tu dosplm
dovolovalo hulkat URKU! tak hlasit,
jak se jim zlbilo, ani by to kohokoli
vyvdlo z mry.

S., p. 12
If, as seemed probable, I provoked the entire
terrace into a deafening chant of HORNBY
IS A WANKER

T., p. 18
A jestli, jak se mi zdlo pravdpodobn,
vyprovokuji cel ochoz, aby ohluiv hulkal
HORNBY JE URK

S., p. 66

T., p. 78

As the book makes impression of a very decent text, the occurence of urku is
rather striking. On the other hand, the original displays wanker without hesitation. In order
to be faithful to the original, the translator had to reach for a stronger expression.

Who done him? Scousers?

At this point the man lost patience. No. Hes
had a heart attack, you little prats. Now fuck
off.

Kdo ho sejmul? zeptal se taktn.

Liverpoolsk? V tom okamiku mu ztratil
trplivost. Ne. Dostal prost infarkt, vy
parchanti mrav. A thnte do hajzlu.

S., p. 63

T., p. 74

In this example the phrase do someone is very well translated as sejmout nkoho
which is deeply integrated in youth slang in this country. The second marked case shows a
slight shift, because prat should not be translated as parchant it has the meaning of
idiot or stupid. The last case is translated precisely at the niveau of expressivity set in the
original.

62

Dad grumbling about still watching the

same bloody Arsenal

ttu vr nco o tom, e se pod mus

dvat na ten star pitom Arsenal

S., p. 129

T., p. 147

The case of bloody proves again that the translation is set to be polite the translator
could have used a stronger word such as zatracen or mizern. The case is equivalent.

I know more than you ever will, you snotty

little fuckwit!

Vm toho vc, ne ty kdy v ivot bude, ty

mizernej usmrkanej parchante!

S., p. 131

T., p. 149

This translation is semantically completely non-equivalent there is no original for

mizernej, little is not translated and parchante definitely does not mean the same as
fuckwit. On the other hand if we consider only the function of the phrase in separation, it is
perfectly equivalent.

Fucking tear gas! somebody shouted, and,

although thankfully it wasnt, the alarm
inevitably induced panic.

Slznej plyn, kurva! zaval nkdo, a i kdy to

natst slzn plyn nebyl, stail ten poplan
vkik zpsobit paniku.

S., p. 134

T., p. 152

This case presents another well mastered functional equivalent. The word order and
even word classes have to yield the function of this exclamation. The expressive cluster has
moved to the end of the exclamation in translation.

Here come the fucking Wongs, remarked

one of a group of young men

Hele, pili i rkosci, poznamenal jist

mladk

S., p. 194

T., p. 216

63

Here we can observe an offensive address that lost the expressive adjective in
translation. In addition, a slang-aware translator would use rkosnci (see Rysov) which is
more widespread.

You can stick your fucking two points up

your arse, the crowd sang gleefully

Strrrte si ty zasran dva bdy do

prdle! zpvali divci naden

S., p. 232

T., p. 256

The last case exhibits functional equivalence, although the form has slightly changed.
There is nothing in the original that would imply the changes in spelling that can be observed
in the translation which leads us to see them as an unnecessary invention of the translator.

3.3.3 The result

This text seems to achieve a much higher degree of equivalence than the previous two
with the score of nine satisfactory translations to four unsatisfactory randomly picked cases.
The higher functionality of the translation can be attributed to the low saturation with
swearwords and its aim on language decency.

64

4 Results and conclusions

We have defined what is expressive and we have shown the main features of the concept
of functional (dynamic) equivalence. Then we have judged the degree of functional
equivalence in three contemporary translations with special respect to expressive elements
they contain. The analysis showed that two of the three contemporary translations of chosen
prose works lack adequate and equivalent translation of expressive phrases and vocabulary.
Although there are virtually no misunderstandings or directly wrong translations, the
overall quality of the translations indeed seems to be lowered. This is caused, in my opinion,
by the low naturalness of the expressive phrases and vocabulary used in the target language
text. Considering the fact that naturalness is one of Nidas basic requirements on a successful
D-E translation, we have to note that these translations lack dynamic equivalence, because
they are not natural.
What is the cause of this? First, the translators sometimes choose an inappropriate
degree of expressivity for their target language text when working with expressive source
material. Second, they choose expressions that do not match the overall slang they chose for
the individual characters which causes the occurrence of anachronisms or words from diverse
language layers.
Since I observe equivalent translations as adequate and good in my view of the matter,
the result is that two of the three analysed contemporary novels proved as inadequate. This
leads us to the suggestion that translators who translate works containing explicit expressive
phrases and vocabulary from English to Czech need to pay more attention to this language
phenomena in their future work.

65

5 Bibliography

5.1 Primary works

Welsh, Irvine. Glue. Vintage 2002, London: Vintage, 2002. ISBN 0 09 928592 4
Welsh, Irvine. Lepidlo. Peloila Eva Poskoilov. Praha: BB/art, 2004. ISBN 80-7341-268-3
Welsh, Irvine. Trainspotting. London: Vintage, 2001. ISBN 07 49336501
Welsh, Irvine. Trainspotting. Peloil Ondej Formnek. Praha: Maa, 1997. ISBN 80-8601328-6
Hornby, Nick. Fever Pitch. London: Penguin Books, 2000. ISBN 0140293442
Hornby. Nick. Fotbalov horeka. Peloil Richard Podan. Praha: BB art, 2002. ISBN 807257-861-8

5.2 Secondary sources

Baker, Darren Varadkov, Eva. Konverzace slangov anglitiny - A Book of American
Slang and Conversation. Ostrava: Osna a.s., 1994. ISBN 80-85859-09-2
Bassnett, Susan. Translation studies. London: Routledge, 1991. ISBN 0-415-06528-3
Chomsky. Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia. 11 January 2006
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chomsky>.
echov, Marie et al. Souasn esk stylistika. Praha: ISV, 2003. ISBN 8086642003
Gentzler, Erwin. Contemporary Translation Theories. London: Routledge, 1993. ISBN 0415-09172-1
Krmov, Marie. Stratifikace souasn etiny Linguistica ONLINE. 10 January 2006
<http://www.phil.muni.cz/linguistica/art/krcmova/krc-012.pdf>.
Krmov, Marie. Slangov vrazivo jako soust zbavnch text Linguistica ONLINE. 10
January 2006 <http://www.phil.muni.cz/linguistica/art/krcmova/krc-010.pdf>.
Krmov, Marie: Proces konstituovn souasn bn mluvy Linguistica ONLINE. 10
January 2006 <http://www.phil.muni.cz/linguistica/art/krcmova/krc-007.pdf>.
Kstek, Michal: Zpsoby vymezovn stylov pznakovosti v lexiku (na materilu souasn
etiny) Linguistica ONLINE. 10 January 2006
<http://www.phil.muni.cz/linguistica/art/kristek/kri-007.pdf>

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Lev, Ji. Umn pekladu. Praha: eskoslovensk spisovatel, 1963.

Newmark, Peter. A Textbook Of Translation. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2003.
ISBN 0-13-912593-0
Nida, E. A. The theory and practice of translation. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1982.
Nida, E. A. Toward a science of translating. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1964.
Obrtil, Karel Jaroslav. Velk slovnk sprostch slov. Praha: Lege Artis, 1999.
Powells.com Interviews Interview with Irvine Welsh. 11 January 2006
<http://www.powells.com/authors/welsh.html>.
Rysov, Kateina. Slangov projev mldee: slovnk souasn hovorov etiny. esk
Budjovice: Pedagogick centrum esk Budjovice, 2003.
Thorne, Tony. Dictionary of Contemporary Slang. London: Bloomsbury, 1990. ISBN 074754594-4
Ulin, Oldich. Expresivita a peklad umleck przy Slavica Pragensia 32, p. 329 354
Praha 1988.
Zima, Jaroslav. Expresivita slova v souasn etin: studie lexikologick a stylistick. Praha:
Nakladatelstv eskoslovensk akademie vd, 1961.

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