National Styles and Non-standard Elements in Literaturę

The concept o f national styles has not broken through significantly in Czech stylistics, would it concem complex concept (determination by national language and national character - Kareł Svoboda) or limitations to the specificity of national language (Vilem Mathesius, Pavel Trost). It has become the prevailing concept that there is no style in languages as whole entities, but there are important differences between the types of st> le (e. g. functional styles) within the lfamework o f individual languages and cultures (Kard Hau senblas). In this context, the paper concentrates on significant features of modem Czech literary style (the vast use of non-standard language varieties, especially colloąuial Czech) and on the possibilities o f translating Czech literary texts into languages with different structure and stratification. The main focus is on the novel Sestra (1994; English version City Sister Silver, 2000) by Jachym Topol and its translations into German and Polish