Why study Czech today? Neil Bermel on language, translation and the future of Czech studies
Neil Bermel is Professor of Czech Language and Linguistics at the University of Sheffield, where he has been teaching for nearly three decades. He was among the scholars who gathered in Prague for the Seventh World Congress of Bohemian Studies and, during the event, received the Josef Dobrovský Medal for outstanding contributions to Czech studies. I sat down with him to talk about what first drew him to the Czech language, who chooses to study Czech today, and the challenges and opportunities facing the field.
You've spent nearly three decades teaching Czech language and linguistics at the University of Sheffield. What first drew you to the Czech language, and what made you devote your career to it?
"Well, I was trained actually as a Russianist as an undergraduate and went on to postgraduate study really to continue work in Russian and in linguistics, which I found interesting. In my first year there, I was more or less assigned to study Czech as a second Slavonic language.
"The Czech teacher at the time was Hanna Gaifmanova, and she was just incredibly inspirational. She really encouraged us to combine the study of the Czech language with Czech culture, and she created an entire group of enthusiasts out of us. So I went away sort of converted.
"I did continue continue on and write my PhD on a topic involving Russian linguistics, but it was always a bit of a secret ambition to see whether I could somehow combine that with Czech.
"Russian was already well covered, and I really felt that when I worked on Czech, I was making more of a contribution."
"When I finished and a post came up in Czech linguistics at Sheffield, I thought, well, I've got to try this. To my great surprise, I was offered the job, and I decided, okay, let's give this a try.
"But I think what drew me to Czech was not only feeling more comfortable in the place, but also the sense that, at least in the West, the study of these smaller Slavic languages was more of an open field. It felt to me like there was so much to do and so much of interest, and there was a very rich vein of material to mine. Russian was already well covered, and I really felt that when I worked on Czech, I was making more of a contribution."
Who chooses to study Czech today? Has the profile of students changed? What draws them to the field?
"We do have the occasional heritage student. With Czech, I think that's always been a real minority. Many more of those heritage speakers go to study Russian or Polish.
"With Czech, it tends to be some interest sparked by having taken a trip here as a teenager or earlier. Sometimes it's just a desire to try something a little bit different.
"I think most students at 18 come to university and they don't know Czech authors. They don't know a lot about Czech history. Something draws them to it, and then it's our job as the teaching staff to deepen that interest and show them what else there is to stay interested in Czech. That's what we try to do over the course of the year."
So to convert them as you had been converted more than 30 years ago?
"Fundamentally, yes. Just following in my teacher's footsteps, I guess."
Much of your research has focused on how the Czech language is used and how it changes. What do you find most fascinating about Czech?
"I think when you approach a language like Czech as a non-native speaker, especially as a speaker of a language like English that can be quite analytic and isolating, our words don't have a lot of different forms to them. There's just a couple in each case.
"And you encounter a language like Czech that has so many different forms for every word. At first, it feels a bit overwhelming.
"If you are the sort of slightly nerdy person who can get interested in that sort of thing, and I guess I am, you do start to ask yourself why and how it works. What extra do the Czechs get from having all of that abundant material to work with?
"I think that was the first impulse that drew me into the study of morphological variation because it's something we just don't have a huge amount of in English. I wanted to understand why."
You have also translated several books into English. What were the biggest challenges in translating those texts?
"I think every book that I did was very different.
"I've translated novelists like Pavel Kohout, whose style is quite complex, and translating those quite long, complicated, playful sentences into English while still having them come out reading like an English text was the biggest challenge for me there.
"With an author like Daniela Fischerová, it was, in a way, the simplicity of the text and how stripped back it was that posed certain challenges as a translator. You have to recreate that in some ways for the reader.
"And doing a historical memoir, like I did with Helga Weissová, again presents the challenge of making sure that an English reader who doesn't have that cultural background can still understand it and approach it and have the same immediacy that it has for the reader in the Czech Republic."
At a time when the humanities face increasing pressure in many countries, what do you see as the biggest challenges, or perhaps opportunities, for Czech studies?
"Well, I think in general you're absolutely right that especially the study of languages is coming under a lot of pressure. With the advent of AI, there is a feeling, I think, in the public and among students that maybe it isn't actually worth learning these things.
"We need a new way of thinking about how to work with AI to make the study of languages seem meaningful again."
"Things that we used to sell as a usable skill, like translating and interpreting, can now at least be done partially well, or adequately, by machine translation. We need a new way of thinking about how to work with AI to make the study of languages seem meaningful again.
"I think Czech has some of the best resources for the study of language that are available across any language. I'm thinking here of many of the tools that are available through the Czech Language Institute and the Czech National Corpus.
"There's also a lot of expertise in the field, just really absolutely world-class people working in it. So for us, I think there's a real opportunity there to do work on Czech that is meaningful in a world context."
How important is it to meet Czech studies scholars from all over the world at events such as this one?
"I think it's really important. Of course, we can see each other on Zoom and exchange emails, but it's at events like this where you get talking to people, someone else joins the conversation, and ideas start to bounce off each other.
"It really leads to the kind of collaboration that can spark new ideas, new collaborations and new projects."
And finally, you have just received the Josef Dobrovský Medal for your outstanding contribution to Czech studies. What does receiving this award mean to you personally?
"Oh, it means a huge amount. It's a great honour. It's recognition, I guess, for a lifetime of work in the field.
"I feel slightly strange that I'm old enough to now be receiving things for a lifetime.
"More than that, I think I was just very touched and very honoured by the reception of my colleagues, and I think that expression of appreciation meant a lot to me."
