The Concept of Untranslatability in the Translation Theory of Early Czech Structuralism: The Cases of Vladimír Procházka (1942) and Pavel Eisner (1938)

Abstract

Untranslatability, the word and the thing, appear frequently in the texts of the first period of Czech functional structuralism, from 1926 to 1948. According to the particular dynamic and systematic perspective observed by the authors of the Prague Circle, any text is always and in any case untranslatable, because it is impossible to transpose the set of functional interactions and correlations in which the original was imbricated. Indeed, untranslatability, in one way or another, has historically always haunted any theory of translation. During the classical period and also the during linguistic paradigm of the second half of the 20th century, the fact of essential inter- or intralinguistic untranslatability was either denied or tragically experienced as an irreparable loss. After the so-called cultural turn in translation studies, a shift occurred whereby untranslatability has come to be considered as a zone of emergence of creativity and generation of innovations. In this paper, I will focus on two articles written by V. Procházka and P. Eisner in order to examine how they can enrich the current conceptions of translation and evolution of literary systems.

Keywords

• untranslatability
• theory of translation
• czech structuralism
• prague circle