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Czech > English Translation Melvyn Clarke |
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Rozloučení prezidenta republiky Václava Havla s občany Česká televize, Český rozhlas 2. února 2003 Milí spoluobčané, zásadní proměna poměrů v naší zemi mne vynesla koncem roku 1989 až sem, na Pražský hrad. Stalo se to tak náhle, že jsem vlastně ani neměl čas se pořádně zamyslet nad tím, zda na takový úkol stačím. Byl jsem tehdy upřímně přesvědčen, že ho přijímám jen na několik měsíců, do prvních svobodných voleb. |
Farewell Address to Czech Citizens by Václav Havel, President of the Republic Czech Television, Czech Radio, 2nd Feb, 2003 My dear1 fellow citizens, In late 1989, the profound transformation that took place in this country brought me here to Prague Castle. It all happened so suddenly that I did not even have time to properly consider whether or not I was up to the task, and I was sincerely of the opinion that I would just take it on for a few months until the first free elections. |
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Jak patrno, všechno dopadlo jinak: jsem tu, nepočítám-li krátkou přestávku v druhé půli roku 1992, už více než třináct let. |
Clearly, things turned out quite differently: I have now been here for more than thirteen years, if we discount the short break in the latter half of 1992. |
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Byl jsem po tu dobu svědkem a přímým účastníkem mnoha převratných dějů, jak v naší zemi, tak v celé Evropě a v celém světě. Považuji to za velký dar osudu, za který mu nikdy nepřestanu být vděčen. |
During this time I have been witness and party to many epochal events at home, in Europe and in the world at large. I consider this to be a great gift that fate2 has bestowed on me, for which I shall never cease to be thankful. |
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Zrušit všechno jemné předivo občanských institucí a vztahů, které vznikaly po dlouhá desítiletí, všechno zestátnit a podřídit život celé země jednomu politickému centru, je jednoduché. Ale skládat po desítiletích bezčasí všechno znovu k sobě, je nesmírně náročné a trvá to dlouho. Podobně, jako by restaurace starožitného kusu nábytku trvala určitě mnohem déle, než jeho rozkopnutí. |
It is easy to destroy the fine web of civic3 institutions and relations that developed over the long decades, to place everything under state control and to subject the life of the entire country to a single political entity4. But it has been extremely challenging and time-consuming to put everything together again after those decades when time stood still5, just as it would certainly take a lot longer to restore a piece of antique furniture than it would to kick it to pieces. |
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Trpělivost, s níž se naše společnost vyrovnávala se všemi nároky této dramatické doby, nároky, jejichž rozsah asi málokdo z nás dokázal ve vzrušených revolučních dnech předvídat, zasluhuje velký obdiv. |
One has to greatly admire6 the patience with which our society has come to terms with all the challenges of these dramatic times, the extent of which few of us could have anticipated in those heady, revolutionary days. |
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Dobré i chybné kroky, které jsem ve své funkci za tu dlouhou dobu udělal, nechť posoudí jiní, posuďte je vy, jistě se nad nimi zamyslí někdy i historikové. Tím samozřejmě neříkám, že se časem nepokusím i já vydat o svém působení nějaké svědectví. Možná jsem ho veřejnosti dokonce do jisté míry dlužen. Ale chce to čas, rozmysl, zdraví a soustředění. Doufám, že to vše mi bude ještě dopřáno. |
Let others judge the soundness or error of the measures that I have taken during my long period in office; you judge them too, and the historians will also surely consider7 them at some time. Of course, I do not mean that I myself will not attempt to publish an account of my work in due course. Perhaps to a certain extent I even owe this to the public. But it needs time, reflection, health and composure. I hope all this will yet be granted to me. |
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Dnes bych rád ze srdce poděkoval vám všem, kteří jste mi důvěřovali, sympatizovali se mnou nebo mne tak či onak podporovali. Bez vaší chápavé náklonnosti bych býval nemohl svou funkci zastávat snad ani pár vteřin. Vaší podpory si vážím o to víc, že jsem se ji nesnažil získat za každou cenu. Mnohdy jsem dokonce zastával zřetelně menšinové stanovisko a vydobyl si tím spíš odpor než uznání. Někdy jsem v takových případech možná chyboval. Rád bych vás ale ujistil o jediném: vždycky jsem se snažil řídit diktátem té instance, na niž jsem skládal svůj slib: totiž diktátem svého nejlepšího vědomí a svědomí. |
Today I would like to thank from my heart all those of you who have trusted me, sympathized with me or in any way supported me. Without your understanding and goodwill8 I would not have been able to stay in office for even a few moments. I appreciate your support all the more for the fact that I did not try at all costs to obtain it. I frequently even took what was clearly a minority position and so reaped more opposition than recognition. Sometimes I may have been mistaken in this but I would like to assure you of one thing: I have always tried to abide by the dictates of the authority under which I took my oath of office: the dictates of the best of my awareness and conscience. |
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Všem, které jsem tak či onak zklamal, kteří nesouhlasili s mými činy, nebo kterým jsem byl prostě jen protivný, se upřímně omlouvám a věřím, že mi odpustí. |
To all of you whom I have disappointed in any way, who have not agreed with my actions or who have simply found me hateful9, I sincerely apologize and trust that you will forgive me. |
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Dosud se nepodařilo Parlamentu České republiky zvolit mého nástupce. Je to mrzuté, ale není to žádná katastrofa. Prezidentské pravomoce dočasně přecházejí do rukou předsedy vlády a předsedy Poslanecké sněmovny, tedy dvou odpovědných lidí. Věřím, že se prezidenta podaří dříve či později zvolit. Bude stát v čele státu v době snad méně vzrušené, než v jaké jsem byl svou funkcí pověřen já, ale nikoli nezajímavé. Spíš naopak: teprve doba, která nyní nadchází, reálně ukáže, do jaké míry už jsme plnohodnotnou součástí demokratického světa. |
The Parliament of the Czech Republic has not yet managed to elect my successor. This is tiresome but it is no great disaster. Presidential powers pass temporarily to the Prime Minister and the Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, two responsible people. I do believe that a President will be elected sooner or later. He or she will be head of state during times which may be less agitated than when I assumed this office but which will in no way be uninteresting. Quite the reverse, only the time which is now at hand will truly show the extent to which we are a fully-fledged part of the democratic world. |
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Milí spoluobčané,
když jsem 17. července 1992 odstoupil z funkce československého prezidenta, poděkoval jsem mimo jiné i své ženě Olze za to, že tak dlouho stála ve všem při mně. Olga zemřela, já jsem se znovu oženil a má druhá žena Dagmar musela dostát svému postavení za velmi nepříznivých podmínek. Rád bych proto dnes poděkoval i jí za trpělivost, solidaritu a tvořivé přijetí jejího údělu.
Milí přátelé, loučím se s vámi jako váš prezident, zůstávám s vámi jako váš spoluobčan! |
My dear fellow citizens,
When I stepped down from the office of Czechoslovak President on 17th July, 1992, I thanked my wife, Olga, amongst others, for standing by me through everything. Olga died, I remarried, and my second wife, Dagmar, has had to perform her role under very unfavourable circumstances. Thus I would also like to thank her today for her patience, solidarity and active10 acceptance of her lot.
My dear friends, I bid you farewell as your President. I remain with you as your fellow citizen! |
1 There have been numerous debates on Czechlist
over the extent to which the prefabricated patterns and routines within
this kind of Czech text should be converted to an equivalent English
genre model and the extent to which the 'foreignness' of the original
should be preserved. Like most translators, I will try to achieve some
kind of balance. In this case, it could go either way, but as I feel
that "Dear fellow citizens" or "Dear anybody" is a somewhat
unusual way to open a speech in English, outside church at least, I'd
say there is little harm in adding the possessive pronoun in order to
make it sound a little more plausible and to bring out the warmth and
cordiality of "milí", which is perhaps lost in the epistolary-sounding
"dear".
2 One point of view put forward in the Czechlist debates was that a Havel speech should basically be adapted to sound as if it were uttered by a politician from the English-speaking world. I cannot agree.
I believe it is important to distinguish the basic ideas in
the text from the linguistic and rhetorical devices used to express
these ideas. The latter are negotiable, but the ideas themselves should
be rendered closely, no matter how 'foreign' they may sound. In this
case, it occurred to me that very few, if any, anglophone politicians
would include 'fate' in their (public) vocabulary. 'Providence' might
be more culturally acceptable, but IMHO 'fate' (not to mention 'Fate')
is often equated in the anglophone collective subconscious with mad,
staring eyes. But is this reason enough to alter it? Is fate here one
of the core ideas or is it just a rhetorical device? Can one feel
thankful towards a rhetorical device?
3 Civic or civil? The style guides tell us
that 'civil' is often used to contrast the community with the military
or the state while 'civic' pertains in particular to the community
within the city or the municipality. In practice, the meanings overlap
to a great extent and each word has its distinct collocation patterns
which do not necessarily accord with the dictionary definitions and
which need to be checked out in a corpus.
4 Centre? Body? Entity? I felt the idea of a
central authority was already implicitly expressed in 'subject to' so I
went for the more common collocation 'political entity'.
5 'The decades when time stood still' might
sound like something out of a 1950s B-movie, but I feel it is more
readily understandable than 'decades of timelessness', without losing
too much of the original idea…(?)
6 How else can we avoid the ungainly dangling predicate? For more examples of this fronting technique, see End-weight versus subject-before-predicate on the Czech<>English Translation Problems page.
7 Consider? Mull over? The latter is probably closer in meaning, but stylistically I feel it would stand out.
8 Transposition in order to avoid an inelegant collocation.
9 Obnoxious? Loathsome? Beastly? Horrid? Hateful? My choice can probably be faulted on the equal-frequency principle ('odporný' probably occurs rather more frequently) but I felt it best matched the original emotional colouring.
10 The phrase 'creative acceptance' certainly crops up in English from time to time, typically in religious and psychological texts, but 'proactive acceptance' and 'active acceptance' appear on the search-engines to be rather more common and the latter seems to me to be much less conspicuous, without losing too much of the original meaning. Am I guilty here of dumbing down the meaning and is this a cop-out from the principle put forward in 2?
