Creativity and Normalization in Translation

Book excerpt: Translation requires a certain experience, a certain education and a substantial amount of talent. Translators must invest a considerable amount of time and skill to create a good and valuable translation. This work provides an analysis of the creative and normalizing strategies of the Czech and Slovak translations of Arundhati Roy s The God of Small Things. It studies and compares the normalizing and creative strategies of the two translators: Michaela Lauschmannová and Veronika Redererová. The work further compares the translator s attitudes to translation, language and creative passages of the source text. It also studies the influence of the shifts that occurred during the translation process, and studies the degree of their influence on the target text. Finally, it examines the transfer of all levels of meaning and all kinds of functions of the source text. The analysis should help to get a better understanding of the translation strategies and translators attitudes in order to improve one s own strategies and techniques when translating.