Orð og tunga - 01.06.2016, Page 121

Orð og tunga 18 (2016), 111–129. © Stofnun Árna Magnússonar í íslenskum
fræðum, Reykjavík.
_
Marie Novotná
Adaptation of foreign words into Czech:
the case of Icelandic proper names
1 Introduction
Czech is a highly infl ectional language, and the adaptation of for-
eign linguistic elements into Czech can pose interesting challenges to
translators and to language management in general – a situation not
unlike that of Icelandic.
The language policy of a nation mirrors both its history and its
contemporary social and political situation, and since the aim of this
article is to describe the way in which foreign words are rendered in
Czech, it is necessary to provide an historical overview of the Czech
language with the focus on the transcription and declension of for-
eign words in general (Chapter 2).
In Chapter 3, the current state of rendering foreign words in Czech
– i.e. both loanwords in general and proper names in particular – is
described, as well as how this has developed.
In Chapter 4, an att empt is made at reviewing the situation as con-
cerns words from the foreign language in focus here, i.e. from Icelan-
dic. I also provide a short review of translation practices from Old
Norse into Czech, while a much more detailed account of that topic is
to be found in a recent article, Novotná & Starý (2014).
Diff erent characteristics of the original and the target language
cause specifi c problems in translations. When using Icelandic and
Old Norse words in Czech, the following questions arise concerning
tunga_18.indb 111 11.3.2016 14:41:17