Chance, Passion and Necessity: Translating from Czech and Slovak into French since the 19th Century – Some Reflections
Prof. Antoine Marès
(Emeritus Professor, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)
16 September 2026 (Wednesday) at 14:00 CET
Institute of World Literature SAS + online, in French with online simultaneous translation into Slovak via Zoom
Lecture Description in French
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The lecture is organized as part of the VEGA project Translation and translating in the history and present of the Slovak cultural space. Transformations of forms, status and functions: texts, personalities, institutions.
Why and how did a historian of international relations come to study translation? The answer to this question must be sought within the broader context of interstate relations in the twentieth century, with a focus on the trajectories of those involved in translation. The lecture aims to propose a typology of translators and to examine their motivations and professional backgrounds: how did Czech, Slovak, or French speakers come to translate from Czech or Slovak into French? What kind of language training did they receive? What ideological frameworks shaped their translations? Particular attention will be devoted to translations into Slovak, approached primarily from a historian’s perspective, with emphasis on the historical context in which these translations were produced and received rather than on their literary dimension.
Antoine Marès is an Emeritus Professor of Central European History at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. He is the author or editor of some fifty volumes, including Histoire des Tchèques et des Slovaques (History of the Czechs and Slovaks, Tempus, 2005, to be republished in 2026); Edvard Beneš de la gloire à l’abîme. Un drame entre Hitler et Staline (Edvard Beneš: From Glory to the Abyss. A Drama Between Hitler and Stalin, Perrin, 2015); L’onde de choc tchécoslovaque. 1968 en Europe médiane et occidentale (The Czechoslovak Shockwave: 1968 in Central and Western Europe; co-edited with Françoise Mayer and Jacques Rupnik, Institut d’études slaves, 2020). He is currently preparing a history of Czech-to-French translators Le hasard, la passion et la nécessité: traduire du tchèque en français. Une histoire de trajectoires depuis le début du XXe siècle (Chance, Passion and Necessity: Translating from Czech into French. A History of Trajectories since the Beginning of the 20th Century) and a two-volume book Histoire des relations franco-tchécoslovaques (1918 – 1992) (History of Franco-Czechoslovak Relations /1918-1992/).
