Framing translation

Adolf Hoffmeister (1902–1973), a Czech translator, writer, painter, journalist and caricaturist was one of the Czech translators of James Joyce’s Anna Livia Plurabelle and the illustrator of Czech translations of George Bernard Shaw’s plays. His paratextual work for translated modernist literature — prefaces, caricatures, comic strips, travelogues and interviews — engaged with modernist practice in producing an abusive mimesis in his re-presentation of authors and their writing. This included a verbal and visual insertion of the translator and re-presenter that makes him visible and also fallible, unreliable and humorous. Hoffmeister’s use of humor and demystification made the complex modernist translations more accessible to a wider readership while also bringing into question the practices and mechanics of translation and cultural domestication. Analyzing non-English language modernist translation practices might provide a model for inventive translation paratexts in the modern English-language context.