Raymond Queneau and his novel Blue Flowers. Translation of one type of French experimental prose

Raymond Queneau's novel s ha ve been translated in to Czech since the 60's of the 20th century. This work focuses on two of hi s novels, typical of their experimentalism: Zazie in the Metro and The Blue Flowers. A stylistic analysis of the original text showed different aspects of Queneau's poetics and also difficulties faced by a translator. Unusually rich means of expression, such as puns and neologisms at the lexical level, changing of stylistic layers or new French - handwriting created by the author to draw nearer spoken and written language, intertextuality and mathematical structures incorporated into the composition of the novel s are typ i cal features of Queneau' s work. We examined possibilities of Czech while translating Queneau's language experiments by comparing translations of two Queneau's novels, do ne by two different translators. Our work concentrates mainly on problems with translating puns, neologisms, phraseology, and new French. Jiri Pelikan 's trans lati on of the novel The Blue Flowers proved that in spite of some divergences between the original and the target text (archaization of verba dicendi, compensation), it is, on the whole, possible to keep to the author' s complex poetics, and to create, within the given scope, a work of translation that can compare with the original. The..