A. Den Doolaard and a remarkable case of pandemic literature in translation

This cluster focuses on a book that deals with a pandemic and recently received some (although modest) renewed attention in the Dutch language area due to the Covid-19 pandemic: de Goden gaan naar huis (the Gods will return home) by A. den Doolaard. The book was also translated into Slovak in 1974 by Júlia Májeková. After the Second World War, den Doolaard's works appeared only in reprint in Czech, whereas only this novel was translated into Slovak. The consequences of space travel, where American astronauts cause a pandemic upon their return from a Mars mission, was found to be a fruitful theme in the kind of "desired" literature during the Communist regime. Yet even this novel did not escape strict censorship. What makes this novel special is that both the author himself and the edition made interventions in the text. It is shown that although the literature was thematically approved by the regime, editing still allowed intervention in both source and target texts, therefore creating some unique evidence of manipulation in translation due to translation ideology and the official state ideology of socialist realism.

Júlia Májeková had her career as a translator from Dutch into Slovak mainly in the period of the communist Czechoslovak regime, when not every work of a foreign author was considered to be “good” literature or beneficient to the ideology of socialist realism. In order to classify some main translation issues, Bednárová (2015: 33-34) describes some characteristic features of literature in translation from 1969 to 1980. In particular, there was a "best-sellerization" of well-selling titles, but likewise, older non-desirable authors sometimes disappeared from circulation, and from 1969 an independent union of Czechoslovak writers, which also included translators, emerged, whose goal was to renew the principles of socialist realism. From 1971 libraries, bookstores, and distribution centres were more strictly supervised as to what literature could or could not be distributed. Censorship was actively imposed. Bednárová also gives a character sketch of censorship (2015: 35 - 36). Preventive censorship determined in advance which authors would appear in the editions of the publishing houses, often in the form of autocensorship, for example, at Tatran publishing house, where Májeková was active, there existed a file box with foreign authors not desirable to be translated. Editing texts with, among other things, overly religious or erotic connotations, or politically undesirable passages, also occurred. Each publishing house had its own internal rules on this and it is often only from testimonies and diaries that one can learn how and in which texts interference occurred and to what extent.

In this sense, the author's copy of Májeková of the Gods will return Home contributes to revealing these practices of deleting passages.

In researching the translation of the novel, I used the copy of The Gods will return home that Júlia Májeková used to translate the book. As a whole, there are six passages omitted, we will show through illustrations. The copy used by the translator and edited by both the translator, the author and/or possible an editor at the publishing house is a third edition from 1967 and is marked with an ex libris of the translator (see illustration 1). The book itself contains several words and expression marked in pencil and translated into Slovak. This copy was donated by the translator Májeková to the University Seminary Library of Dutch Studies at the Philosophical Faculty of Comenius University where it can be freely consulted. It is remarkable, that this copy contains a manuscript by the author den Doolaard himself in German with "Vom Autor gekürzte Aufgabe für Č.S.S.R. Hoenderloo, Holland, Február 1973" (The issue has been shortened by the Author for the publishing in the Czechoslovak socialist republic. Hoenderloo, Holland, 1973) with the author's signature (see illustration). Unfortunately, no correspondence has been found between the translator and the author and it is also unclear why den Doolaard, although Májeková had sufficient command of Dutch, wrote here in German. It raises the question about their main language of correspondence. Also missing from the archives is the report from LITA, the organization that handled the translation rights into Slovak with the publisher, in this case Querido. Furthermore, some passages in the book have been deleted with his pen and some words rewritten or passages crossed out (see illustrations).  

Den Doolaard himself writes in his looking back at books and contemporaries (1971: 141) "Perhaps the fierce debates between the two brothers occupy too much space in the beginning of the novel." It is therefore plausible that, when editing the novel for the Slovak translation, he would therefore simply completely delete the second chapter of the original, "Heraklion" (den Doolaard 1967: 35- 52) from his novel. In addition, several passages where the thoughts of the main character Nikos were described were indeed crossed out. I therefore assume that the author agreed to make some stylistic edits in his novel, in consultation with the translator. However, more passages were deleted in the edition than just those that were crossed out with pen. Some passages are especially critical of the former Soviet Union or the Eastern Bloc. As an illustration a picture of a passage on page 374 of den Doolaard (1967), where a nuclear disaster near Kharkov is mentioned in the Soviet Union, where Den Doolaard describes a cover-up operation (see illustration 2).

The Slovak edition of the novel (den Doolaard 1974) neatly states on the cover text that the translation is a "version corrected by the author from the original of the third edition" translated by Júlia Májeková (see illustration).

Some questions in this case remains to be answered, as we do not know if A. den Doolaard was aware of more modifications in his already adjusted version of his novel. It would also be nice to know the report written at the Tatran Publishing house why the work was recommended for publishing. It is however a revealing case that also Dutch literature was used for propaganda goals and adapted in the Slovak version.