Max Havelaar & The Discovery of Heaven

The first complete translation with the title Max Havelaar. Dražební řízení v holandské obchodní společnosti (Max Havelaar. Auction procedure in a Dutch trading company) was realized by the “Renaissance Man” Rudolf Jordán Vonka (1877-1964). The translation he worked on during the Second World War was published in 1947 by the publishing house Svoboda (The Freedom). The publisher placed the book in the prestigious Klasikové (The Classics) series. Max Havelaar was the very first title of this series.

The reason why Max Havelaar in its entirety was only released so late after the publication of the original is due to the fact that strict translation standards have been in force in the Czech Republic since the middle of the 19th century. According to these standards, it was not desirable to translate works of high literary quality via an intermediate language. As there were virtually no translators capable of translating Max Havelaar directly at that time, this had to wait several decades (Engelbrecht 2021: 110).

Although Vonka was one of the first two Czech translators (together with Lída Faltová) to specialize in Dutch, it can be noted that his translation was not very good. As some scholars, including Olga Krijtová, Wilken Engelbrecht and Veronika Horáčková, have noted, Vonka's translations are often erroneous and contain more text than the original. The term “the spirit of Vonka” has even become established in the Czech Dutch Studies, which refers to inaccuracies in translations (Engelbrecht 2019).

Another example of a Dutch canonized work translated into Czech, this time from contemporary literature, is De ontdekking van de hemel (The Discovery of Heaven) by Harry Mulisch. This translation also had to wait a few years. The Czech version was released in 2010, which means eighteen years after the original. The translation was published by the prestigious Odeon publishing house, specifically in the series Světová knihovna (The World Library). In addition to Mulisch, this series also featured other renowned authors, such as Joost Zwagerman, Haruki Murakami and Michael Cunningham.

The Discovery of Heaven is Mulisch's fifth and last work published in Czech. The first two were books translated by the grande dame of the Czech Dutch Studies Olga Krijtová (1931-2013), the last three by her student Veronika ter Harmsel Havlíková (*1972). Havlíková, who is one of the most active and renowned Czech translators from Dutch, has received a special award in the Josef Jungmann Prize for the translation of The Discovery of Heaven.

The translator and the chief editor of Odeon, who then worked as the editor of this book, note that the publisher decided to release The Discovery of Heaven because of the fame of the book and of the author himself. The success of the work on the German book market, which is often decisive for Czech publishers, also played a certain role in this. Odeon wanted to increase his prestige by publishing the novel. The Czech edition was therefore relatively successful (oral/written communication).