Faculty of Arts of Comenius University > Departments and Research Centres > Department of Romance Studies > Research

Research

Research

Docents (Associate Professors):

Doc. PhDr. Katarína Bednárová, CSc., does research in the following areas:

The history of translation – the historiography of translation: methodology, the history of Slovak literary translation, the history of Slovak literary translation in the Central European context, the history of the translation of French literature into Slovak, the history of the translation of Slovak literature into French. While at the Institute of World Literature, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bednárová participated in a number of projects (1992–1994: Dejiny a teória umeleckého prekladu na Slovensku v kontexte dejín recepcie inonárodných literatúr [‘The History and Theory of Literary Translation in Slovakia in the Context of the History of the Reception of Foreign Literatures’]; 2005–2007: Preklad a národná kultúra, okolnosti, vzťahy, súvislosti [‘Translation and National Culture: Circumstances, Relationships and Context’]; and 2011–2014: Preklad ako súčasť dejín kultúrneho priestoru [‘Translation as a Part of the History of Cultural Space’]). From 1994 to 1996 Bednárová led the grant-funded research project Dejiny a teória prekladu na Slovensku [‘The History and Theory of Translation in Slovakia’], which published its findings in a series of collectively authored monographs entitled K otázkam teórie a dejín prekladu na Slovensku I., II., III. (1993, 1994, 1995) (‘On Issues of the Theory and History of Translation in Slovakia’, Vols. 1, 2 and 3 [1993, 1994, 1995]) and in individual volumes of Stručné dejiny umeleckého prekladu na Slovensku (‘A Concise History of Literary Translation in Slovakia’). Currently Bednárová is putting together a synthetic history of translation in Slovakia in a five-volume collection entitled Dejiny umeleckého prekladu na Slovensku (‘The History of Literary Translation in Slovakia’) I. Od sakrálneho k profánnemu (2013) (Vol. 1, ‘From the Sacred to the Profane’ [2013]), II. Od úžitkového k literárnemu → 18.-19. storočie (od B. Tablica po J. Hollého) (Vol. 2, ‘From the Utilitarian to the Literary → the 18th and 19th Centuries [from B. Tablic to J. Hollý]’), III. Od literárneho k umeleckému → 19.-20. storočie (od J. Hollého po P.O. Hviezdoslava) (Vol. 3, ‘From the Literary to the Artistic → the 19th and 20th Centuries [from J. Hollý to P. O. Hviezdoslav]’), IV. Od závislosti k emancipácii prekladu (1. polovica 20. storočia) (Vol. 4, ‘From Dependence to the Emancipation of Translation [the First Half of the 20th Century]’), and V. Od estetického pluralizmu k politickému totalitarizmu (2. polovica 20. storočia) (Vol. 5, ‘From Aesthetic Pluralism to Political Totalitarianism [the Second Half of the 20th Century]’).

Bednárová is the author of the detailed study ‘Kontexty slovenského umeleckého prekladu 20. storočia’ (‘Contexts of Slovak Literary Translation in the 20th Century’), which has been published in Slovník slovenských prekladateľov umeleckej literatúry. 20. storočie (2014) (‘The Dictionary of Slovak Translators of Artistic Literature of the 20th Century [2014]’). She also wrote the dictionary’s entries concerning translators from French literature. Bednárová also wrote on the history of translation in Slovakia for a research project undertaken at INALCO in Paris which dealt with the history of literary translation in Central Europe (2009–2014). 

Translation theory – authorial translation, French translation theory, translation and cultural asymmetry, translation criticism. Bednárová researches authorial translation in Francophone literature (Francography) and French translation theory. From 2008 to 2010 she was an investigator in a grant project at the Department of Romance Studies entitled Teória a prax umeleckého prekladu v románskych krajinách (‘The Theory and Practice of Literary Translation in Romance Countries’), within which she researched the theories of translation by H. Meschonnic and A. Berman, and the translation of relatively rare languages into French. Bednárová is currently working on this last theme as translation in a situation of cultural asymmetry as a part of the project Slovenská literatúra v preklade (‘Slovak Literature in Translation’) based at Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra.

20th-century French literature – the history of French literature in the second half of the 20th century; and reflections on the authors A. Ernaux, B. Vian, S. Beckett, L.-F. Céline and others. Bednárová is the author of a detailed chapter on French literature in the second half of the 20th century in the collectively authored monograph Dejiny francúzskej literatúry (1995) (‘The History of French Literature’ [1995]). She also deals with Francophone literature and Francography.

Bednárová has published a number of academic studies in Slovakia and in France (1977–2013).

She is an active translator of 20th-century French literature (Céline, Vian, Beckett, Tournier, Ernaux, Chedid, Arrabal and others). For a short time she dealt with the theme of the Enlightenment in French literature – Sloboda indivídua v priesečníku laického a religiózneho vo francúzskej literatúre 18.storočia (‘The Freedom of Individuals at the Intersection of Lay and Religious Perspectives in French Literature’) (from 1991 to 1993 within a project entitled Osvietenstvo ako teoretický, estetický a sociálny program [‘Enlightenment as a Theoretical, Aesthetic and Social Programme’]).

Doc. PhDr. Jana Páleníková, CSc., does research into Romanian literature. She focuses in particular on the interwar period (Rumunský medzivojnový román, 2011 [‘The Romanian Interwar Novel’, 2011]) and interwar psychological prose with Proustian reminiscences (a number of studies have been published in Philologica, a periodical published by the Faculty of Arts of Comenius University), and on the presence of myth in the literary work of M. Eliade with a particular link to his concept of religion (Mircea Eliade a cesta od mýtu k románu [‘Mircea Eliade and the Journey from Myth to Novel’]). Páleníková also translates 20th-century Romanian literature.

Doc. PhDr. Paulína Šišmišová, CSc., researches the interdisciplinary points of contact between literature and philosophy in the works of authors such as J. Ortega y Gasset, M. de Unamuno, J. L, Borges and E. Sabato. Their work was the subject of a monograph written by Šišmišová entitled Literatúra alebo filozofia? Dva portréty (Prešov, 2003) (‘Literature or Philosophy? Two Portraits’ [Prešov, 2003]) and dozens of studies and specialized articles. Literary translation and the reception of Spanish literature and philosophy in Slovakia is another area of research interest.  Šišmišová has published studies and specialized articles in Slovakia and abroad (‘Vklad J. L. Borgesa do diskusií o preklade’ [‘The Contribution of J. L. Borges to Discussions on Translation’]. In: Svět literatury, Vol. 22, No. 46, 2012, pp. 91–98). Šišmišová has compiled three edited volumes on the study of translation; she is the author of the introductory article and the compiler of a monothematic issue of Filozofia (Vol. 55, No. 2, Bratislava: Infopress, 2000, 208 p.) entitled ‘Sto rokov španielskej filozofie (od moderny k postmoderne)’ (‘One Hundred Years of Spanish Philosophy [from the Modern to the Postmodern]’). She has also paid detailed attention to the core work of Spanish literature, Cervantes’ novel Don Quijote de la Mancha (Šišmišová, P.: Itinerario donquijotesco en la literatura eslovaca. In: Paralelo 50, Revista de la Consejería de Educación, Vol. 3, 2006, pp. 50–57).

Doc. PhDr. Jana Truhlářová, CSc., researches 19th-century French literature. She is the author of a monograph entitled Krátka próza Guy de Maupassanta (1999) (‘The Short Prose of Guy de Maupassant’ [1999]). She studied French and Portuguese at Comenius University’s Faculty of Arts, and since 1994 she has been lecturing on French literature at the faculty. Truhlářová also leads seminars on literary translation and translation in the social sciences. She researches the cultural history of translation and reception, and she has published a number of studies in this area, including the monograph Na cestách k francúzskej literatúre. Kapitoly z dejín prekladu a recepcie na Slovensku (2008) (‘On the Roads to French Literature: Chapters from the History of Translation and Reception in Slovakia’ [2008]), which was dedicated to a number of key figures (Mária Rázusová-Martáková and particularly Jozef Felix) and periods of translation from French (the 1940s and 1960s). She is the editor of a collectively authored monograph. Truhlářová translates from French into Slovak, focusing on literature dealing with the social sciences (Jacques L Goff: Život v znamení histórie [original work: Une vie pour l’histoire], 2003; Antoine Compagnon: Démonteórie, 2006).

Doc. Bohdan Ulašin, Ph.D., researches Spanish lexis and etymology. He has specifically focused on the influence of Slavic languages on Spanish (the monograph Los eslavismos en español, published in 2013; Etymologické dublety v španielčine [‘Etymological Doublets in Spanish’], published in 2012), and the contrastive grammar and semantics of Spanish and Slovak with a focus on the didactic application of research findings (the textbook Španielčina pre samoukov [‘Spanish for the Self-Taught’], published in 2009). He was the principal initiator and compiler of the first translation into Spanish of a selection of Pavol Dobšinský’s folktales (Cuentos eslovacos de tradición oral, published in 2012).

 

Assistant professors:

Mgr. Jana Benková Marcelliová, Ph.D., researches Portuguese phonetics (the university textbook Fonetika portugalského jazyka [‘The Phonetics of Portuguese’] with M. Drobník, published in 2005) and specialized terminology in Portuguese (Ph.D. thesis: Portugalská odborná terminológia. Aspekty vývinu právnej a technickej terminológie [‘Specialized Terminology in Portuguese: Aspects of Development in Legal and Technical Terminology’], defended in 2008). More recently she has worked on a collection of vocabulary in electronic form (the on-line Elektronický portugalsko-slovenský/slovensko-portugalský slovník [‘Electronic Portuguese–Slovak/Slovak–Portuguese Dictionary’], published in 2013 in cooperation with Universidade de Lisboa). Benková Marcelliová also translates from Portuguese (the works of António Lobo Antunes, José Cardoso Pires, Fernando Morais, Paulo Coelho, José Eduardo Agualusa and others). In 2011 she was given an award by the Literary Fund for her translation of Paulo Coelho’s novel O Aleph.

PaedDr. Zora Cardia Jačová, Ph.D., does research into specialized linguistic styles in Italy and specifically focuses on the current style of communication used by politicians. In addition, she analyses word order and the position of sentence elements in Italian from a comparative and contrastive perspective.

Mgr. Martin Dorko, Ph.D., researches general linguistics and the sociolinguistic aspects of the dynamics and internationalization of contemporary language and interlingual transfer with a specific emphasis on Romanian and Slovak as well as translatological issues relating to the equivalence and adequacy of translation. He has participated in a number of academic conferences in Slovakia and abroad.

Mgr. Stanka Moyšová, Ph.D., is an accredited interpreter for European institutions (language combination: FR, IT, EN → SK), a court translator for the French language and a free-lance interpreter. She researches the translation of legal texts.

PhDr. Eva Palkovičová, Ph.D., primarily does research into the history of translation in Slovakia, the reception of Hispanophone literature in the Slovak cultural context, literary translation and translation criticism. She actively translates from Spanish.

Mgr. Zuzana Puchovská, Ph.D., researches comparative grammar in the area of morphology and syntax. She examines the specifics of the French linguistic system from the perspective of a Slovak user, and researches the similarities and differences between these two languages (Ph.D. thesis: Polyfunkčnosť francúzskeho určitého a neurčitého člena z pohľadu slovenského jazyka [‘The Polyfunctionality of the French Definite and Indefinite Article from the Perspective of the Slovak Language’], 2009, 159 p., Faculty of Arts, Comenius University]). Puchovská studies the literary text from a linguistic perspective and examines the stylistic potential of linguistic phenomena (Francúzske osobné neurčité zámeno ON ako výzva pre interpretačnú kompetenciu recipientov rámci jazykovo heterogénnej komunikácie [‘The French Indefinite Personal Pronoun ‘On’ as a Challenge for the Interpretational Competence of Recipients within Linguistically Heterogeneous Communication’], pp. 209–219. In: Jazyk a jazykoveda v interpretácii, Univerzita Komenského v Bratislave 2014, ISBN 978-80-223-3695-6). The theorization of translation is another of her research interests alongside the translation of specialized linguistic texts into Slovak, specialized linguistic terminology and linguistic meta-language (Le défi terminologique et notionnel pour le traducteur du métalangage idiolectal de Gustave Guillaume. Troisième journées d’Etudes romanes Quo vadis, Romanistica? 19 and 20 September 2014, Faculty of Arts, Comenius University, Bratislava).

PhDr. Roman Sehnal, Ph.D., researches Italian lexicology (the university textbook Praktická lexikológia talianskeho jazyka [‘A Practical Lexicology of Italian’], published in 2011), and places a special focus on Italian phraseology and paremiology (Veľký taliansko-slovenský frazeologický slovník [‘Big Italian–Slovak Phraseological Dictionary’], published in 2005) as well as on the lexicographical processing of current trends in Italian word-formation (Taliansko-slovenský a slovensko-talianský slovník s najnovšími výrazmi [‘Italian–Slovak and Slovak–Italian Dictionary with the Latest Expressions’], published in 2007). He is the author of the bilingual textbook Italian for Beginners, published in 2012. Sehnal translates contemporary Italian literature, and in terms of translation studies he has recently been making a contrastive comparison of idiomatic expressions in Italian with those in other languages. Sehnal was awarded a Literary Fund Prize in the category of lexicographical works for his Big Italian–Slovak Phraseological Dictionary.

Mgr. Pavol Štubňa, Ph.D., focuses on literary theory, examining all literary genres and the history of Italian literature from its origins at the turn of the first and second millennium to the present day with special attention paid to the dramatic works of 20th-century authors. He also works in translation studies. In terms of his publication activity and professionally, Štubňa’s primary focus has been on the theory and practice of simultaneous interpreting, and the theoretical and practical aspects of literary translation.

Mgr. Silvia Vertanová, Ph.D., researches comparative phonetics and phonology as well as issues relating to linguistic universalism, particularly in the area of phraseology and particles. She also teaches literary and literary translation.

Mgr. Júlia Žitná Ph.D., researches modern Portuguese literature, focusing primarily on exile literature.

 

Doctoral students and foreign teaching assistants:

Mgr. Lenka Cinková researches 19th-century Portuguese literature, focusing on the Portuguese realist Eça de Queirós. She is analysing his works in her Ph.D. thesis entitled O retrato da mulher nos romances de Eça de Queirós. 

Mgr. Barbara Ďurčová’s research interests include literary translation, audiovisual translation and translation criticism. She is primarily interested in the contemporary Spanish and Hispanic American short story and micro-short story.

Mgr. Cristina Simón Alegre researches 20th-century Slovak literature, focusing on women’s writing. She defended her thesis (entitled Amor, erotismo y sexo en la prosa de las escritoras del naturismo eslovaco) in 2010 and is writing her Ph.D. thesis, entitled Análisis del amor y el erotismo en la prosa de Margita Figuli. She has written on the Spanish–Slovak relationship (articles: La participación checoslovaca en las Brigadas Internacionales, published in 2008 and 2009; Aventuras y desventuras de una escritora eslovaca en España: Las Postales de España (Španielske pohľadnice) de Zuzka Zguriška, published in 2015; and Figuli a Fischerová na webe, Slovakistika v Madride [‘Figuli and Fischerová on the Web: Slovak Studies in Madrid’], published in 2014) and on issues faced when translating Slovak literature into Spanish (K prekladu názvov dvoch diel Margity Figuli do španielčiny - Pokušenie a Mámivý dúšok [‘On the Translation of Two Works by Margita Figuli into Spanish – “Temptation” and “Intoxicating Sip”’], published in 2012; and En torno a la traducción al español de los pasajes eróticos de un relato de la escritora eslovaca Margita Figuli, published in 2014). Recently she has analysed the works of Slovak and Spanish women writers from a comparative angle (conference paper: Retazos del dolor en la obra de Rosalía de Castro y Elena Maróthy-Šoltésová).