Publication details
Sinuhet za mřížemi : K osudům jednoho překladu a životnímu příběhu překladatelky Marty Hellmuthové
| Title in English | Sinuhet behind Bars : The Fate of one Translation and the Life Story of its Translator, Marta Hellmuthová |
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| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2021 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Securitas Imperii |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| web | |
| Doi | http://dx.doi.org/10.53096/KQFA8951 |
| Keywords | Marta Hellmuthová; Mika Waltari; The Egyptian; translation; political prisoners; prison; Czechoslovak-Finnish relations; cultural policy; communism |
| Attached files | |
| Description | This study introduces the professional and life story of translator Marta Hellmuthová (1917–1988), both in the context of cultural and political history and as a contribution to translator studies. Hellmuthová, the educated and linguistically gifted wife of a diplomat, decided to learn Finnish in order to make Mika Waltari’s novel The Egyptian available to Czech readers. Thanks to archival research, it was discovered that the translation of one of the most popular books in the Czech Republic was partly done in the late 1950s behind the bars of the Pardubice correctional labor camp, where Hellmuthová had been unfairly imprisoned. While the 1950s and 1960s were a period in which she struggled to establish her position as a translator, the years of so-called normalization, which brought significant progress in Czechoslovak-Finnish relations, strengthened her reputation and allowed her to become Waltari’s “sole translator”. At the same time, thanks not only to her determination, hard work, and high-quality translations but probably also to her good relations with the diplomatic corps of Finland, she became a recognized translator from Finnish. |