This thesis examines the use of folklore and the folkloresque in Haruki Murakami’s novel Hitsuji wo meguru bōken, or, as it is translated by Alfred Birnbaum, A Wild Sheep Chase. Murakami blends together Japanese and Western folklore to present a Japan that has been colonized by a post-national, global capitalistic force. At the same time, Murakami presents a strategy to resist this colonizing force by placing agency onto the individual and suggesting that it is still possible to craft a meaningful identity within the Japanese/Western blended, globalized society in which these individuals now exist. Alongside examining the use of folklore in this novel, issues of translation are also considered by comparing Murakami’s original Japanese text to Birnbaum’s English translation. The fields of folkloristics and translation studies inform this comparison, and a new way to discuss translations (especially those that come from a text in which folklore is central) is developed. These two major threads are pulled together in an analysis of Murakami’s role as a multinational writer. His blending of multiple cultural references and languages make his message on constructing an identity from a globalized culture more accessible to those outside of Japan; rather than focusing on what is lost in Birnbaum’s translation, this thesis uses a folkloristic perspective on translation studies and explores how Birnbaum expands upon Murakami’s process.

The thesis looks at fan translation of fiction, a phenomenon that, unlike fan translation of anime and videogames, has been mostly overlooked by translation studies until recently. More specifically, we examine fan translations of Harry Potter books. The thesis aims to address a wide range of aspects pertaining to fan translation of fiction. In the opening chapters, it gives a brief overview of the history of fan translation in general and of research papers dedicated to the subject. Based on comparison with fan translations of anime and videogames, the thesis defines functions of fan translations of fiction in relation to official translations. The phenomenon of fan translation of fiction is then set in a wider context, one chapter detailing its relation to fan communities and one addressing the question of copyright. The nature of fan translations of fiction is further explored through comparison with official translations, which in this particular case focuses on Czech translations of Harry Potter books. First, we compare the translation process in case of both official and fan translations and then chosen extracts from the last book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. We also focus on differences between the collective fan translation and the fan translation done by an individual. We draw...

The main goal of this dissertation is comparison of different translations of the poem Zone in the czech languague. The key part of this work is an analysis of the translation of selected passage od Zone. The summary which describes each translation of the poem is elaborated on the basis of this part. We can divide the translations of Zone into three basic streams: Karel Čapek and Petr Kopta hold the reproducing style of translation. Petr Skarlant and Karel Sýs prefer a less precise translation enriched with their own invention. Gustav Francl tends rather to the reproducing concept, but we would describe his style more as modernizing. To create sufficiant information foundations for the analysis of translations, the whole first part of the dissertation is dedicated to the theory of artistic translation, the personage of Guillaume Apollinaire, the analysis of Zone and the personages of the Czech translators. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

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