Susanna Roth Award 2018: Bomb ★ Funk
Karel Veselý: Bomba Funk (BiggBoss, 2017)
It is the year 1988 and the president of Czechoslovakia, Gustáv Husák, decides to make one last attempt to save the communist regime. He entrusts the devoted party member Jiří with a cardinal task – to assemble a funk band that would reignite the spirit of revolution with its lively, optimistic songs. However, this is not easy at all, as the star group Funky Leninz must also deal with obstacles placed in their way by the party's general secretary, Miloš Jakeš. The mystifying grotesque BOMBA★FUNK is the literary debut of Karel Veselý (1976), author of the book Music of Fire or Radical Black Music from Jazz to Hip Hop and Beyond (BiggBoss, Prague 2010) and a music journalist known from Radio Wave, the monthly Full Moon, or the cultural magazine A2. The novel about the power of music that transcends all ideologies was illustrated by Jiří Franta and David Böhm.
Participation in the competition
Czech Centres: Bulgaria, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Hungary, Germany, Poland, Austria, Russia, Ukraine, Great Britain
Representations of the Czech Republic: Belarus, Croatia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Serbia
Number of received translations: 122
About the author
Karel Veselý was born in the year when Stevie Wonder released the famous double album Songs in the Key of Life. However, black music did not mean much to him for a long time, although he primarily listened to black metal during his teenage years. Everything changed when, in the early nineties, he saw clips of Cypress Hill and Snoop Doggy Dogg on MTV and caught the virus. In the songs of Prince, he found the answer to the question of what sex is, James Brown taught him to "feel good," and while listening to Funkadelic and Parliament, he boarded the spaceship of eccentric music piloted by George Clinton. Since then, he has been working on establishing universal funk. After publishing sci-fi fanzines, he moved on to writing about popular music after university, which he has been doing since 2008. He has published everywhere that had a bit of printing ink. He has long collaborated with the radio station ČRo-Radio Wave, the online newspaper Aktuálně.cz, and the cultural magazine A2. Since 2015, he has been a member of the editorial board of the music monthly Full Moon. His observations on the history of so-called black music were published in the book Music of Fire or Radical Black Music from Jazz to Hip Hop and Beyond (BiggBoss, Prague 2010). He also contributed to the publications Tribes , Tribes 90 , Made in Japan and Fordlandia . Karel Veselý is married, has two children, and lives in Znojmo.
Translation workshop in Prague
The translation competition in 2018 took place in the foreign network of Czech Centres in cooperation with the representations, and a total of 122 applicants from 16 countries including South Korea and Japan, registered. Lithuania and Macedonia joined newly. The winning translation was ultimately not announced in Croatia. 15 emerging translators from Europe and Asia , who successfully competed with the translation from Karel Veselý's book Bomba Funk, then headed to the Czech Republic in the July summer, where a professional program was prepared for them in Prague and Zlín (as part of the Bohemistic seminar). The Susanna Roth Prize 2018 was also included in the program of celebrations commemorating the anniversary of 2018.
Awarded translators
Belarus – Nadezhda Kochnovich (*1988)
She was born in Minsk. She graduated from the Faculty of Philology at Belarusian State University (Russian and Polish philology as the first major, Czech studies as the second major), where she currently works. She is the editor of the poetic almanac Minská škola, writes poems, and translates. She also collaborates with the Czech Centre in Kyiv.
Bulgaria – Teodora Todorova (*1996)
A student of Slavic studies at St. Kliment Ohridski University in Sofia. In 2016, she participated in a summer language school at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, and a year later, she completed one semester at Ostrava University as part of the Erasmus program. Her interests include music, theatrical and film arts, literature, and folklore. In the future, she would like to focus on translating artistic literature from Czech into Bulgarian.
Italy – Giovanna Siviero (*1993)
She has always had a passion for foreign languages and a dream of becoming a translator. She is currently studying Czech, Russian, and Portuguese at the Faculty of Language Mediation at the University of Padua. Her studies focus on understanding cultural specifics, which represent the greatest challenge in translating both literary and academic texts. She is also interested in other aspects of culture, such as art history and folklore. In 2016, she collaborated on the Italian translation of the interview with Czech writer Tomáš Zmeškal, "Czech literature has not had to be ashamed for a long time" (Tvar).
Japan – Junko Shimada (*1989)
Since 2008, she has been studying at the Institute of German Studies at Osaka University. From October 2012 to August 2014, she was on an exchange study program at Charles University in Prague, focusing on German studies and Czech studies. In 2014, she won an award in a translation competition held to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Bohumil Hrabal. Two years later, she completed her master's degree in Osaka and began her doctoral research in Prague. In her research, she deals with the literary work of the German-speaking Czech writer Libuše Moníková in the context of Central Europe.
South Korea – Pak Hyo-jin (*1994)
She comes from the third largest Korean city, Daegu, and is a final-year student of a double major – Czech and Slovak language and English – translation at the Korean University of Foreign Languages in Yongin. She also studied Czech at Charles University in Prague and Palacký University in Olomouc. Even during her studies, she gained extensive experience as a translator and interpreter. She worked for the Korean agency for trade and investment support KOTRA, Korean companies Kia and Haklim, Korean filmmakers, television stations, etc. She chose to study the Czech language because she wanted to engage in the study of an exotic culture and a non-traditional, difficult language. In the future, she would like to continue her studies at Charles University in Prague and become a professional translator and interpreter. She would like to focus on translating Czech literature into Korean, as Czech literature is rarely published in Korea and often not translated directly from the original, but through one of the world languages.
Lithuania – Jurga Ralytė (*1977)
She was enchanted by the Czech Republic at an early age when she first visited Prague from the former Soviet Union. During her bachelor's studies at Vilnius University, she studied, among other things, the Czech language, which she continued to improve at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen. Later, she worked at the Embassy of the Czech Republic in Vilnius as an assistant in the commercial section. She currently translates from Czech into Lithuanian. The Susanna Roth Prize competition is her first attempt at translating a literary text. In addition to economics and the Czech language, she later studied social work – she dedicates much of her free time and energy to volunteering in children's homes and charitable activities in her community.
Hungary – Anna Deák (*1990)
She was born in Romania. Since childhood, she has had a great interest in languages – she always wanted to learn one of the Slavic languages and eventually chose Czech. She lived in Prague for a year and a half, where she first worked as part of the European Voluntary Service and then studied at Charles University in Prague through Erasmus+. She graduated in computer science in Cluj, Romania, and currently works as a developer in an IT company. In her free time, she enjoys translating from Czech and Romanian into Hungarian. She viewed participation in the translation competition as a challenge but also as an opportunity to stay connected to the Czech language.
Macedonia – Sanja Pavleska (*1994)
She graduated in English language and literature from St. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje. She studied Czech as a second foreign language and participated in a three-month ERASMUS program at Palacký University in Olomouc. She speaks English, Czech, Spanish, Serbian, and can also communicate in Italian. She enjoys reading novels by English authors in the original, playing basketball and tennis. In the future, she would like to pursue a master's degree in diplomacy in the Czech Republic.
Germany – Ines Spieker (*1992)
She comes from a family of Polish immigrants. She was born in Passau, where she studied linguistics and literary studies. As part of her master's program in Regensburg (2014-2017), she began learning Czech. In 2016, she started working as a freelance lecturer and interpreter. She currently lives in Regensburg with her husband and two children and works as a written consultant at a local university. She is also interested in music and enjoys drawing. She likes to translate Polish and Czech texts – especially lyrical ones – into German. She loves chocolate (she knows it's not healthy) and herbal tea (at least that's not unhealthy).
Poland – Krzysztof Wołosiuk (*1984)
A Bohemist and Hungarist. Originally from Kraków. He studied at Jagiellonian University in Kraków. He currently lives in Budapest and works on translations and interpreting from Hungarian and Czech into Polish.
Austria – Nadia Baha (*1983)
She was born in Vienna. While studying translation of German, English, and French (master's degree 2008), she attended Czech language courses. Her great passion is writing satirical texts, cabaret plays, and very short stories. She regularly writes music reviews for the Austrian cultural online magazine Kulturwoche. She spent two years of her life and work in the city of the Beatles, Liverpool. She loves music above all and therefore performs as DJ(ane) DEWA in Vienna clubs. She also worked for Radio Africa International. In 2012, she founded the music-literary project Changeover (www.changeover-online.net). Translating the book Bomba Funk was not only an interesting experience for her but also a fun trip into the Czech music world.
Russia – Anna Agapova (*1986)
A freelance translator and Czech language teacher in St. Petersburg. She graduated in Russian studies from St. Petersburg State University (2008) and completed her doctoral studies at the Department of Slavic Studies at Palacký University in Olomouc with a thesis titled Contemporary Translations of Czech Prose into Russian: Cultural-Translatological Analysis (2014). She worked as a teaching assistant in the charity organization Perspektivy and then as a translator and interpreter of English at the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg. She currently works as a Czech language teacher and translator from Czech and English and collaborates with translation agencies and publishing houses (Symposium; Mann, Ivanov i Ferber). On her Facebook profile, she writes about new releases of Czech literature in Russia.
Serbia – Milka Kovacević (*1993)
She grew up in a house with a large library, and thus fell in love with literature and poetry from an early age. She began writing poems and short stories when she was 14 during the holidays, and later in high school, she contributed to the school magazine with texts about various cultures and languages. After graduating from high school in Bečej, she began studying Czech language, literature, and culture at the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade. She completed her bachelor's degree in 2016 and then continued her master's studies in culture at the same faculty, which she completed in January 2018. Before this competition, she had experience with translation in her third year of undergraduate studies when she translated two poems from Jiří H. Krchovský's poetry collection for a scholarship for a summer school in Brno and won third place. In addition to Czech literature and language, she has a great interest in Scandinavia and Scandinavian languages and hopes to have the opportunity to translate "Nordic" authors in the future.
Ukraine – Maksym Gorabek (*1987)
He was born in Kerch in Crimea. He graduated from the Ukrainian Academy of Typography in Lviv, majoring in publishing and editorial editing. He has lived in Kyiv for over 10 years, where he works as a literary editor. He is studying Czech and would like to enroll in a Czech university this year (2018). He enjoys sports and traveling, is interested in literature, and is involved in music. He cannot imagine his life without the sea.
Great Britain – Andrew Wallace (*1987)
A professional translator translating mainly from Spanish and Italian into English in the field of law and finance. He recently started translating from Czech as well. After completing his studies at the University of Glasgow, where he earned an M.A. in Italian and Czech studies under Prof. Jan Čulík, he began his career as a part-time translator in Turin, Italy, and later worked full-time for five years in Mexico City – among the clients he translated for were the Organization of American States, the Mexican federal government, and the state agency VisitMexico. In 2016, he returned to Europe and began working in Prague at an international law firm as an editor and language consultant. At the beginning of 2018, he returned to freelance translation. He has also recently resumed distance master's studies at the University of Genoa in the field of specialized translation in law.
