The Prague Post Online: Tempo: Translating the Czech Golden Age
"The years of the First Republic, 1918-1938, were the golden years of Czech culture, particularly in literature," translator Mark Corner says over coffee at the French Institute's café. "It's the Čapek Age, though many of the writers were never translated for English audiences. The double blow of the Nazis and the communists saw to that."

There are many names associated with this period from Čapek to Seifert (one of two Czechs to have received the Nobel prize).

Corner, however, is seeing to it that these overlooked Czech greats — Vančura, Poláček and Jirotka — are finally gaining a readership among Anglophones. His translation of Jirotka's Saturnin quickly sold out its first print run of 3,000 copies, and has inspired its publisher, Charles University's Karolinum Press, to launch translations in German, Italian, Spanish and Chinese.

Corner's recent translation of Vančura's comic idyll, Rozmarné léto (Summer of Caprice), is selling at a slower pace than Saturnin, but has certainly gained a foothold in shops selling English titles. His latest project, Poláček's Bylo nás pět (There Were Five of Us), has just been completed and will make its debut in May at the Prague Book Fair.

Funnily enough, I know of at least one alternative (unpublished) translation of both Saturnin and Capricious Summer. Corner's planning to translate plays, as well. However, the most significant cultural achievement of that period was poetry represented by the crowning achievements of Vítěslav Nezval. To do these justice in translation, however, is probably not going to be easy.