Reporting Verbs in Translation PDF

Masaryk University
Faculty of Arts
Department of English
and American Studies
Lucie Váňová
Reporting Verbs in Translation

Master Thesis
Supervisor: Ing. Mgr. Jiří Rambousek
2007
I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the sources
listed in the bibliography.
…………………………
Author´s signature
I would like to thank Ing. Mgr. Jiří Rambousek for his valuable
comments and help that he provided me when I was writing this
thesis.
Table of Contents
1 Introduction ....................................................................................1
2 Reporting ........................................................................................3
2.1 Reporting Sentences................................................................................................... 3
2.1.1 Reporting Sentences in English.......................................................................... 3
2.1.2 Reporting Sentences in Czech............................................................................ 4
2.2 Reporting Verbs ......................................................................................................... 4
2.2.1 Reporting Verbs in English ................................................................................ 4
2.2.2 Reporting Verbs in Czech .................................................................................. 4
3 Analysed Diploma Theses..............................................................6
3.1 Methods Used in Analysed Diploma Theses ............................................................. 8
3.1.1 Paragraphs ........................................................................................................ 10
3.1.2 Distribution....................................................................................................... 13
3.1.3 Medium ............................................................................................................ 13
3.1.4 Categories......................................................................................................... 14
3.1.5 Punctuation....................................................................................................... 22
3.2 Tabulated Results ..................................................................................................... 22
3.3 Individual Diploma Theses ...................................................................................... 24
4 Treatment of Material...................................................................32
5 Comparable Corpus Research ......................................................42
5.1 Kačenka.................................................................................................................... 42
5.2 Methods Used in Kačenka........................................................................................ 43
6 Results ..........................................................................................47
6.1 Summary Table ........................................................................................................ 47
6.2 Comparisons with Český národní korpus................................................................. 62
7 Conclusions ..................................................................................67
8 Works Cited and Used..................................................................71
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1 Introduction
“Dialogue is the flesh and blood of most fiction. It is used to dramatise interaction
between the characters, and usually plays a key role in developing and establishing their
personalities, their relationships and in moving the plot forward” Parrott (2000).
Introductory or reporting sentences and expressions play a very important role in a
dialogue in any novel showing the narrator’s approach towards all characters. This is one of
the reasons why they should also be treated carefully in Czech translations. The number of
introductory verbs and expressions varies in Czech and English languages, and one of the
questions arising when writing this diploma thesis is without any doubt if there is a certain
rule/procedure how to translate each verb, and if not if there is a certain repetition or pattern
used in translations.
I have had at disposal several diploma theses from previous years about reporting
sentences in English and in Czech translations. After a short analysis I decided to develop the
chapter concerning reporting verbs and their treatment during translation.
The reporting verbs were collected from six diploma theses, each thesis dealing with one
English novel. The authors of the theses excerpted all reporting verbs, I used them in my
thesis, and added verbs from another English novel – The Jungle Book, and its two Czech
translations.
All the collected verbs were put into one grid and developed further according to many
criteria.
The data obtained from the grid were analysed, and the results are presented in several
tables and figures in chapter 6. All tables and the main grid are also provided on a CD which
is an integral part of this diploma thesis.

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The main concern of my diploma thesis was to see if there is any difference in older and
more recent translations, if the number of the Czech translation of say as říci/říct differs
between the old and more recent versions of translation, and if the ratio that occurs here could
be valid for any other text of fiction. This is to be proved in The Jungle Book and its two
Czech translations that are at disposal in Kačenka which is an electronic database of texts.
It’s not my ambition to provide a thorough analysis on the use of reporting verbs in
English and in Czech translation, but rather to bring certain insight into this field.
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2 Reporting
Human being is the only creature in the world that can talk and produce some thoughts,
and talk about what he or other people said or thought. John Sinclair (1994) explains:
„One of the special features of a human language is that it can talk about
itself. No other communication system has this power. Musical themes can recall
each other, parrots can mimic other noises, but they cannot refer to each other. A dog
cannot build into its barking and whining some reference to the noise a neighbour´s
dog has been making. But the dog´s owner, using language, can say ´The neighbours
have been having an awful row´ and go on to report what they shouted to each other.
The ability of a language to report – to build into the talk a reference to other
talk – extends the power and flexibility of language enormously. Not only can distant
actions be talked about (with the use of verb tenses) but distant talk as well“.
2.1 Reporting Sentences
Reporting sentences are usually used to introduce what someone says or has said.
2.1.1 Reporting Sentences in English
Thompson (1994) describes the situation of reporting sentences in English:
“In English there are three basic possibilities to express what someone says or has
said:
• to repeat the bit of language more or less as it originally occured:
Í´d forgotten he was a gourmet cook,´Walter joked.
• to report the bit of language in your own words:
He admitted that much work still needed to be done.
• to report the occurence of a bit of language without actually saying what was said or
written:
In Sweden, Descartes was forced to rise at 5:00 a.m. in cold weather in order to
converse with the queen.
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The first example is usually called quotation or direct speech; the second is
called reported speech or indirect speech; and there is no special term for the third
option.“
This diploma thesis works with the first two types, where it is obvious and indisputable that a
piece of speech is being reported.
2.1.2 Reporting Sentences in Czech
Reporting sentences in Czech follow the same pattern as the English equivalents, i.e. they
could be a part of direct speech or indirect speech, and are also used for the same purpose. As
Josef Bečka (1992) describes “they have the function of capturing the accompanying means
of spoken language”.
2.2 Reporting Verbs
Reporting verbs are the most important phenomenon of a reporting sentence, and occur in
most of the reporting sentences.
2.2.1 Reporting Verbs in English
The most common verb for the purpose of reporting is the verb say. It is a neutral verb, i.e. it
does not show any emotions or a speaker’s attitude towards what was said. However, there is
also a big group (or rather several groups) of verbs that show the speaker’s attitude, the
manner of speaking, etc. Their division is further developed in the following chapter.
2.2.2 Reporting Verbs in Czech
The book Encyklopedický slovník češtiny (2002) defines the reporting verbs in Czech:
“In the terminology, verbs of utterance are called verba dicendi – they represent
activity arising from using speech. The main exponent of this group of verbs is the
verb říci/říkat, and other verbs could be characterised in relation with this verb:
1. to articulate a speech: říci/říkat, mluvit, povědět/povídat, possibly also mlčet
as a negative form.
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2a. říci + the way of speech: breptat, mumlat, koktat, slabikovat

2b. říci + sound characteristic of speech: šeptat, volat, křičet, řvát, bručet, syčet
3. říci + means of communication: telefonovat, telegrafovat, faxovat, mejlovat
4. říci+ determination of the phase of communication act: pro/domluvit,
rozmluvit se, dodat, odpovědět,
5. říci+ determination of communicational function of the speech: oznámit,
pomlouvat, poručit,…”
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3 Analysed Diploma Theses
There have been several diploma theses written concerning this topic mainly by Prof.
Tichý´s students, most of them more than twenty years ago. Some of them only analysed one
English novel from the linguistic point of view, the others focused on translation studies and
analysed not only English original, but also one or more Czech translations and sometimes
also a Slovak translation. The main area of my interest is to carry out in the research initiated
by Prof. Tichý and his students, and to develop further their findings in translation studies.
I started my research with going through diploma theses from previous years, and looking
for those which would analyse not only the English novel, but also its Czech and/or Slovak
translation(s). I did not want to copy any findings or ideas, I wanted to develop this topic
further, and see what conclusions can be drawn from the existing works.
These six of the diploma theses fulfilled all necessary preconditions for my research –
their main interest was the analysis of translation and their results were clearly summarised at
the end of each thesis:
Table No 1: Basic information about analysed diploma theses
Name of the English original Old Czech New Czech

author translation translation
Eva Vodičková Forster, E.M., 1926 Cesta do Indie,

A Passage to India Odeon, Praha 1974
(1924) translated by Josef
Schwarz
Ondrej Mikolášik Woolf, Virginia, Paní Dallowayová,

Mrs. Dalloway (1925) Odeon, Praha 1975
translated by Vlasta
Dvořáčková
Milena Pospíšilová Maugham, W.S., The Poslední půlšilink,

Moon and Sixpence ???, ??? 1947
(1919) translated by G.
Krásová
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Bohumila Greene, Graham, Černý chlapec, Brightonský špalek,

Kučerová Brighton Rock (1938) Práce, Praha 1946 Odeon, Praha 1971
translated by Libuše translated by Hana
Bubeníková and J. Žantovská
Valja
Miloslava Cronin, A.J., The Stars …a hvězdy mlčí, …a hvězdy mlčí,
Kovandová Look Down (1935) Orbis, Praha 1944 Práce, Praha 1970
translated by L. translated by J.
Plachý Urbánková
Věra Slaná Bowen, Elizabeth, The Skon srdce,
Death of the Heart Odeon, Praha 1966
(1938) translated by Jarmila
Fastrová
More details are given in chapters 3.3.1.1. – 3.3.1.6 where each of the theses is briefly
described. There is a short summary of their contents, but also of the findings and conclusions
arising from each of the diploma theses.
I collected all relevant data from the six diploma theses and also added data from The
Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. The Jungle Book was my contribution to existing data; it
was the novel I used for my personal research. I did not collect exactly the same data as my
predecessors, my research was based mainly on reporting verbs only. Although I used
different methods from those mentioned in analysed diploma theses, there was a possibility to
put all the collected data together and draw certain conclusions, because the output of the two
different methods was identical.
It needs to be said that except The Jungle Book all the researched books were written in
the 20th century. The Jungle Book was first published in the year 1893, so it is the only book
that was written in the 19th century. The rest of the books come from the time period between
the World Wars, a relatively short time period, and although they are not the same type of a
novel, they could possibly share some similar features.

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3.1 Methods Used in Analysed Diploma Theses
The method previously used was very demanding and time consuming. Students read
the English original and one or more translations and one by one wrote each reporting
sentence (English original and one or more translations) on an excerption card. Sometimes
they used all the reporting verbs that occurred in the book (e.g. in Ondrej Mikolášik´s
“Methods of Speech-presentation in Virginia Woolf´s ´Mrs. Dalloway´ and Its Czech
Translations”), sometimes only a representative sample of the verbs was used depending on
total number of the verbs in the book. It was suggested that 500 verbs is a good representative
sample. The sample usually contained first 500 verbs from each novel (if not stated
otherwise).
Each case of a reporting sentence or expression is given separately on one excerption
card. An excerption card is of A5 format, provides English text, and one or more Czech
translations, some of them also Slovak translations. The total number of texts (English
original, Czech/Slovak translation/s) on one card ranges from 2 to 4, some of them showing
just one single clause, the others longer sentences as it could be seen on two examples of
excerption cards below.
If there are more Czech translations, they are divided into old and new versions, in one
case the division is old and more recent translation. I am going to preserve these names, so all
the descriptions below are called OLD and NEW, depending on the fact if the translation is
older or more recent within the English original. NEW does not necessarily mean a new
translation, it is taken from the viewpoint of the authors 20 years ago, at that time the
translation from the year 1976 was considered to be new.
The excerption cards do not look the same, and classification symbols vary on each
card, depending on the author. See examples of excerption cards (scanned). All the symbols
written on excerption cards are described below in chapters 3.1.1. – 3.1.5.

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I have scanned two different examples of excerption cards to illustrate what the data
collection was like. First excerption card contains the English original and three translations -
two Czech ones and one Slovak. Unfortunately, it is impossible to say which thesis this card
belongs to. It only shows the reporting sentence and the fact that the reporting sentence comes
in the middle of the speech – there are quotation marks before and also after the reporting
sentence.
The second example is from Ondrej Mikolášik´s thesis. This card shows the whole
sentence - what was actually said together with the reporting sentence. This case is without
quotation marks, the reporting sentence is marked only with commas – it is not actually a
speech, but somebody´s thoughts that were never to be said aloud.

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The research in analysed diploma theses was based on five main criteria of distributing
the excerpted material: paragraphs, distribution, media, semantic categories, and
punctuation. Not all the categories were researched by all the students – authors of diploma
theses I have worked with. More detailed description of each of the theses is given in chapters
3.1.6.1. – 3.1.6.6. The following description is copied from the analysed theses.
3.1.1 Paragraphs
Paragraphs indicated the way in which reporting sentences and direct speeches were
grouped. The sentences were further divided into direct speech, free direct or indirect speech,
narrator’s speech and reporting sentence, paying special attention to punctuation marks.
These abbreviations are used for describing the above mentioned category, not all
abbreviations appear in all diploma theses:
RS – reporting sentence
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DS – direct speech
FDS – free direct speech
IDS – indirect speech
FIDS – free indirect speech
AS – author’s speech
UDS – unreported direct speech.
Primary symbols:
1 paragraph includes reporting sentence and direct speech only
2 reporting sentence plus two direct speeches of one speaker
3 reporting sentence plus two direct speeches of different speakers
4 reporting sentence plus direct speech plus author’s speech
5 reporting sentence plus two direct speeches of one speaker plus author’s speech
6 reporting sentence plus two direct speeches of different speakers plus author’s
speech
The following are only used in one thesis – in Eva Vodičková´s “Reporting Sentences in
E. M. Forster´s Á Passage to India´ and Their Czech Translations”:
12 reporting sentence plus direct speech plus unreported direct speech of the same
speaker
22 reporting sentence plus twice direct speech of one speaker plus unreported direct
speech of the same speaker
32 reporting sentence plus twice direct speech of two speaker plus unreported direct
speech of one of them
42 reporting sentence plus direct speech plus author’s speech plus unreported direct
speech of the same speaker

12
52 reporting sentence plus twice direct speech of one speaker plus author’s speech plus
unreported direct speech of the same speaker
62 reporting sentence plus twice direct speech of two speakers plus author’s speech plus
unreported direct speech of one of them
63 reporting sentence plus direct speech plus unreported direct speech of other speaker
23 reporting sentence plus twice direct speech of one speaker plus unreported direct
speech of other speaker
33 reporting sentence plus twice direct speech of two speakers plus unreported direct
43 reporting sentence plus direct speech plus author’s speech plus unreported direct
53 reporting sentence plus twice direct speech of one speaker plus author’s speech plus
unreported direct speech of other speaker
64 reporting sentence plus twice direct speech of two speakers plus author’s speech plus
unreported direct speech of other speaker
If the paragraph included more than two reporting phrases, their numbers were put in
brackets after the symbol (e.g. 6 /3/).
There were also secondary symbols completing the primary ones:
a.) before the primary symbol
0 – two or more reporting phrases in one sentence
7 – only RS in the paragraph, DS in the next paragraph
8 – RS does not introduce the whole of the preceding DS, because its beginning is
introduced by another RS
9 – RS appears after the beginning of at least the second sentence in DS

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b.) after the primary symbols in the same paragraph
2 – UDS of the same speaker
3 – UDS of another speaker
4 – indirect speech of the same speaker
5 – indirect speech of another speaker
7 – only DS in the paragraph, RS in another paragraph
8 – RS does not introduce the whole of the following DS, because a part of it is introduced
by another RS
9 – two or more DS, one RS
0 – the UDS precedes the DS
3.1.2 Distribution
Distribution, as the second criterion, showed the sequence into which reporting
sentences and direct speeches were arranged in the text.
Symbols:
I – RS plus DS
II – RS plus DS plus RS
III – RS plus DS plus RS plus DS
IV – DS plus RS
V – DS plus RS plus DS
VI – DS plus RS plus DS plus RS
3.1.3 Medium
This criterion described the medium in which the communication takes place – spoken
utterance, written utterance or a process of thinking. The symbols used for the classification
of the media are as follows:

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I vocal utterance
II written utterance
III process of thought
IV metaphorical utterance
V medium cannot be defined
X utterance which was not realised
L utterance that is indeterminate as regards time
C quotations
M formulations, their medium is irrelevant.
D communication of an undetermined speaker, writer etc.
A the speaker is not specified
B fixed text
F formula
R remembered action
P act of perception
* direct speech is presented as speech heard, perceived or read
[] subject of the sentence is not the person speaking
These symbols can be combined. Not all the symbols appear in all diploma theses researched.
3.1.4 Categories
The next criterion, categories, dealt with the semantic meaning of reporting verbs or
reporting sentences. This part was sub-divided into: verbs, ellipses of reporting elements,
nouns, and special cases in translation. Each diploma thesis provides a complete list of verbs,
ellipses, nouns and special cases in translation, all of them divided further according to their
semantic meaning.
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Basic classification:
1 – 69 verbs
71 – 79 ellipsis of reporting element
81 – 89 nouns
91 – 99 special cases in translations
Because this diploma thesis deals mainly with reporting verbs, further division of
verbs is provided.
The verbs were further divided into the following categories:
I Communication generally, vocal utterance (1 – 19)
A Communication and the way of communication
1 communication in general (to say)
2 communication with emphasis on the fact of vocal utterance
021 an action of speaker (to speak, to utter)
022 the presence of speaker is suppressed (to come from)
3 formulation of the contents of the speaker’s mind (to express)
031 general formulation
032 verbal formulation
033 formulation expressed by a copulative verb (except to be) (to run)
4 communication expressing the fact and way in which it is conveyed
041 communication of a fact to another participant (to tell)
042 general communication and the way in which it is conveyed
5 the way of incorporation of a speech into a stream of utterances (to repeat)
6 the way of utterance determined by a communicative channel or by the character of the text
or by the addressee
061 the way of utterance determined by the channel (to phone)

16
062 the way of utterance determined by the text (to sing, to dictate)
063 the way of utterance determined by the addressee (to pray)
7 a way of communication with other participants
071 generally (to turn)
072 a question (to ask, to inquire)
073 an answer (to answer, to reply)
8 communication in a given situation (to remark)
9 vocal qualities of communication
091 objective vocal qualities (height, strength, intonation, cadence, presence of voice) (to cry)
092 vocal qualities that express the speaker’s mental state and attitude (to murmur, to mutter)
093 vocal qualities expressing the speaker’s immediate responsive feelings and reactions (to
rap out, to burst out)
B Contents of communication and its interpretation
11 interpretation of the speaker’s attitude to the contents (to asseverate)
12 interpretation of the narrator’s attitude to the contents
C 13 interpretation of the function of the direct speech in the process of communication
D 14 interpretation of the speaker’s mental attitude
15 interpretation of actions of a speaker (verbs without communication qualities pass
into communicative verbs – to wonder)
E Actions accompanying communication
16 gestures and mimicry (to mimic, to improvise)
17 accompanying action (to dance)
18 action of organs of speech (to open one’s mouth)
F 19 interpretation of the utterance as an action (to make use of one’s power)

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II Perception of vocal utterance (21 – 29)
21 to hear
22 to perceive
23 to catch (the words)
24 vyslechnout
27 to bubble away
III Written communication (31 – 39)
31 to write
33 to record, to inscribe
34 to cover the page
35 to read (the notice read)
36 to print, to wire
37 označit písemně
IV Perception of written communication (41 – 49)
41 to read
42 to see
49 to look
V Speech in thoughts (51 – 59)
51 process of thought in general (to think)
52 action of thought (to consider, to reflect)
53 to remember, to come over, to remind
54 to feel, to suspect
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VI Understanding to utterances of other speakers (61 – 69)
Some groups were represented by many verbs, some groups remained without a single
verb. This is a list of all English verbs that appear in old diploma theses. They are divided into
categories described above:
Table No 2: Division of English verbs according to semantic categories
Number of Verbs which belong to this category

category
1 to say,
021 to speak, to burst, to utter,
022 to come (the voice),
3
031
032 to put,
033 to run,
041 to tell,
042 to declare, to announce, to inform, to supply, to remark,
5 to add, to begin, to echo, to go on, to pursue, to put in, to repeat, to break the
silence, to continue, to step in, to resume, to break, to break in, to interject, to
plunge into, to interrupt, to proceed, to keep on, to end up, to interpose, to
intervene, to join in,
6
061
062 to quote, to sing, to advertise, to spell,
063 to pray,
7
071 to address oneself to, to talk, to turn to,
072 to ask, to demand, to enquire, to inquire, to want to know,
073 to reply, to return, to answer, to retort,
8 to remark, to comment, to observe, to tell,
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091 to call, to call down, to cry, to exclaim, to whisper, to call out, to shout, to roar,
to cry out, to stammer, to strike out, to chatter, to hoot,
092 to bawl, to bellow, to mutter, to wail, to wail over, to yell, to murmur, to sigh, to
gasp, to crow, to grunt, to whimper, to shriek, to groan, to blubber, to bluster, to
sob, to moan, to howl, to squeal, to croon, to twitter, to pipe, to scream, to
screech, to splutter
093 to break out, to grind, to breathe, to explode, to report, to snap, to gush, to burst
out, to bubble over, to flare, to blurt out, to rush on, to retort, to rap out,
11 to agree, to ask, to begin the question, to chaff, to command, to correct, to
explain, to improvise, to persist, to protest, to suggest, to sum up, to take leave,
12 to lie, to break out, to burst out, to flash, to force out, to retort,
13 to admit, to assure, to agree, to complain, to explain, to insist, to suggest, to
amend, to apologise, to approve, to appeal, to beg, to challenge, to confide, to
contradict, to entreat, to expostulate, to fight, to implore, to indicate, to moralise,
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to persist, to protest, to reassure, to remonstrate, to soothe, to taunt, to urge, to

warn, to bid, to call, to clamour, to encourage, to grumble, to sneer, to open fire,
14 to flame, to hesitate, to venture, to hazard, to marvel, to notice, to reason out, to
wonder,
15 to bring out, to deride, to manage, to mimic, to soothe, to stop sb., to exchange
confidences, to jest, to joke, to wager, to hold up a hand, to laugh, to shake a
head, to shiver, to smile, to yawn,
16 to giggle, to lean across, to dart a glance at, to light up (eyes), to frown, to gape,
to grin, to gulp, to drop (jaw), to laugh, to lift one’s eyes, to look up, to nod, to
shake one’s head, to shake with laughter, to smile, to sneeze, to sniff, to weep, to
wink, to hold up, to indicate, to say,
17 to raise one’s voice, to pause, to alter a voice, to grow valuable,
18 to jump up, to get in sb.´s way, to pluck at flowers, to sway on one’s feet, to stop
masticating a toothpick, to quiver with indignation, to slip one’s arm round sb.´s
shoulder, to smuggle up close to sb., to pose, to give sb. a tinkle, to consider sb.,
to turn, to delight, to hazard, to recall,
19 set sb. off, to try once more, to be straight from the nuptial bed, to choke with
amusement,
21 to hear,
22
23
24
27 to bubble away,
31 to write,
33
34
35 to be written,
36 to chalk, to print,
37 to mark,
38 to scribble,
41 to read,
42
49
51 to think,
52 to consider, to reflect, to ruminate, to wonder,
53 to come over, to remember, to remind,
54 to feel, to suspect,
56 to say to oneself, to tell oneself,
66 to amount to,
The same verb might appear in several different categories, this is due to different
meanings of the verbs, different situation in the context and sometimes also probably due to
different approach of each author to the categories.
This division is probably based on categories made by J. Peprník (1969) who carried
out a research on reporting phrases:

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“All the reporting verbs can be classified according to whether their meaning is
fundamentally:
I. a vocal utterance, II. a process of thought, III some external activity.
Groups I and II can be further subdivided according to whether a rational, emotive or
volitional element predominates in the meaning of the verb. Within group III two
sub-groups can be made according to whether the face (mimicry) or the body
(gesticulation and body movements) is the source of the movement.”
It is also important to put all Czech verbs into the same categories thus later in this
work we can observe shifts between categories from English original to Czech translations.
This is a list of all Czech verbs that appear as translations of English original in analysed
diploma theses:
Table No 3: Division of Czech verbs according to semantic categories
Number of Verbs which belong to this category

category
1 říci/říct, říkat, pravit, povídat, říkávat, povědět,
021 mluvit, promluvit, pronést, propuknout, vyslovit, hovořit, zahovořit,
022 ozvat se, klokotat,
031 vyjádřit se,
033 znít,
042 prohlásit, hlásit, vykládat, vypravovat, oznamovat, oznámit/oznamovat, vyprávět,
hlásat, poznamenat, pronést, ohlašovat, rozhlašovat, sdělovat si, vzkázat,
5 dodat, opakovat, pokračovat, spustit, započít, začít, připojit, přerušit, vmísit se, ujmout
se hovoru, rozhovořit se, rozpřádat, uzavřít (rozhovor), zasáhnout, vložit se, vpadnout
do řeči, doložit, skončit, předejít,
062 citovat, zpívat, prozpěvovat, hláskovat, číst,
063 modlit se,
071 oslovit, říkat si, obrátit se k, mluvit ke,
072 otázat se, ptát se, zeptat se, tázat se, optat se, vyptávat se,
073 odpovědět, odpovídat, odtušit, odvětit,
8 ozvat se, podotknout, poznamenat, prohodit, zmínit se, vypravovat,
091 okřiknout, křiknout, křičet, křičívat, rozkřiknout se, vykřiknout, zašeptat, zavolat,
zvolat, volat, vzkřiknout, zařvat, šeptat, pošeptat, zvýšit hlas, ztišit hlas, koktat,
vyklepávat,
092 šeptnout, vyvřísknout, ječet, zaječet, zabručet, povzdechnout, vzdychnout, vzdychat,
oddychovat, zavrčet, zamumlat, mumlat, za/výt, sténat, vzlykat, skuhrat, kňourat,
vřískat, krákorat, zahlaholit, pokřikovat, zakvílet, kvílet, špitat, skučet, rozkřiknout se,
zahulákat, zasípat, vyjeknout, vydechnout, vypísknout, bzučet si,
093 vyrazit, vydechnout, vybuchnout, odseknout, vypravit ze sebe, vychrlit, utrhnout se,
vysoukat ze sebe, vyjet si na, procedit mezi zuby, vytrysknout, vyšplíchnout nenávist
na rty, syknout, vybafnout, vyhrknout,
11 tvrdit, hádat,
12 říkat pravdu do očí, lhát,
13 domáhat se, namítnout, navrhnout, pozdravit, přisvědčit, přivítat, vysvětlovat, doznat,
domlouvat, doporučovat, nabídnout, napomenout, stěžovat si, postěžovat si, uznat,
21
vyzývat, odporovat, přitakat, souhlasit, prosit, přít se, představit, opravovat, naléhat,
varovat, nařídit, upokojovat, kárat, pokárat, vytýkat, omlouvat se, povzbuzovat,
pobízet, přemlouvat, dotírat, odbýt, žádat, žadonit, žebrat, slíbit, ubezpečit, klít, hádat
se, podpíchnout, ohradit se, poradit, potvrzovat, zavtipkovat, pokoušet, upozornit,
vyzvat, uklidňovat, svěřovat, vyčítat, pozvat, ujišťovat, hlásit se, opravit/se,
odmítnout, pochválit, připomenout, povelet, okřiknout, naznačovat, označovat, oblíbit
si výzvu, hubovat, posmívat se, varovat, pochvalovat si, protestovat, vyzvídat, mínit,
připouštět, svěřit se, vybízet, líčit, naříkat, odporovat, vybídnout, vytknout, zajásat,
zanaříkat,
14 divit se, podivit se, užasnout, mínit, umínit si, rozčilovat se, rozhodnout, rozhorlit se,
usoudit, soudit, zajímat se, zlobit se, pohoršovat se, povšimnout si, uleknout se,
vyvodit si,
15 uklidňovat někoho, ulevit si, napodobit, vysmát se, hájit, loučit se, opičit se, přihrát,
těšit, zarazit, vítat, bránit se, zažertovat, objednat, pokoušet, zkoušet, podezírat,
dorážet,
16 naklonit se přes někoho, povytáhnout obočí, zasmát se, usmát se, usmívat se,
pokývnout, spolknout, mrknout, zamračit se, plakat, rozplakat se, za/chichotat se,
uchichtnout se, šklebit se, zašklebit se, ušklíbnout se, kuckat se smíchy, střelit
pohledem, pokynout, chmuřit se, užasle otevřít ústa, polykat slzy, zdvihnout oči,
obrátit oči vzhůru, zavrtět hlavou, pohodit hlavou, zaštkat,
18 vyskočit, skočit do cesty, obejmout, otevřít(dveře), odstrkovat od sebe, přivinout se,
přestat se šťárat v zubech párátkem, pátravě si prohlédnout, naklonit se, poklepat na
stěnu, položit k nohám, přiběhnout,
19 mít za lubem, pokoušet se trpělivě, získávat si, zkoušet to s, být hotov s úsudkem,
vzněcovat zájem, pokoušet se o humor, vzpomenout si,
21 slyšet,
27 odbublávat,
31 napsat, psát,
33 poznamenat si,
35 stát (napsáno),
38 načmárat,
41 číst,
42 vidět,
51 pomyslet si, myslet si, myslit si, pomyslit si,
52 uvažovat, přemítat, rozvažovat,
53 napadnout, blesknout hlavou, prolétnout hlavou, uvědomit si, připomínat si,
rozpomenout se,
54 cítit, pocítit,
73 vyjít odkud,
The English verbs appear in 40 different categories in total, in case of Czech verbs
there are only 37 categories. The most numerous categories in English are the following:
5, 091, 092, 093, 11, 13, 15, 16, 18
The most numerous categories in Czech:
5, 091, 092, 093, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18

22
The Czech translations thus reflect similar division of verbs into categories as they appear in
English original. Only the category 11 (with many occurrences in English) is not common for
both of the languages.
3.1.5 Punctuation
Punctuation, further researched only in one of the diploma theses was, however, not
quantified and presented in tables. The following symbols for punctuation marks were used
on excerption cards:
1 a full stop
2 a comma
3 a semicolon
4 a question mark
5 an exclamation mark
6 a colon
7 a dash
8 three full stops
9 brackets
0 without any punctuation marks
Punctuation symbols were put either into round brackets or square brackets, signalising
the position of punctuation marks. Unfortunately they do not appear on any of the scanned
sample exception cards. Square brackets and the numbers in them have different purpose.
3.2 Tabulated Results
The main, and the most extensive, part of the theses shows tables where all above listed
categories are compared – concerning the English original, Czech and Slovak translations,
23
and we could clearly see how the English original differs from one or two Czech and Slovak
translations and, of course, how the two Czech and/or Slovak translations are different from
each other.
The number of tables as well as their content vary in each of the diploma theses I have
had at disposal, because not all the categories were researched by all the students. The
detailed description of categories researched by each author of the analysed diploma thesis is
provided in the following chapter.
The first category presented in tables is the category of paragraphs. There we can learn
about different kinds of paragraphs, the position of excerpted reporting sentences in
paragraphs, and shifts between different types of paragraphs. The tables provide not only total
numbers, but also percentage, both in English and in Czech and Slovak translations, paying
special attention to changes between the original text and a translated one.
The tables with distribution criterion show distribution of a reporting sentence and a
direct speech, and express shifts between different kind of distribution of a reporting sentence
and a direct speech.
The tables concerning media present media in which the utterances take place, show
shifts between different media; they work at the same principle – i.e. how many cases there
are in the English original, in one or two Czech or Slovak translations, and calculated together
with percentage. There is also one table which presents the types of utterance where the
presence of the speaker is suppressed.
The most interesting feature for further research with a computer is without any doubt
the category Reporting Elements, sometimes also called semantic categories or just
categories, listing all the verbs used in English original with numbers of excerption cards
(there is a unique number on each card, showing order of the reporting sentence in the novel),
24
and their Czech equivalents. There we can clearly see how the English word is treated by the
translator/s, and trace all the used verbs without reading the whole book.
The part dealing with semantic categories introduces basic classification, and is further
developed in tables at the end of each of the diploma theses: Evaluation of Shifts of the
Meaning of the Reporting Elements (from English to Czech), and List of the Reporting
Elements (both English and Czech). The aim thus was not to compare the differences in
translations for each individual verb, but to compare the verbs and their translations within
each category presented in the previous part.
3.3 Individual Diploma Theses
This chapter briefly describes each of the analysed diploma theses – the name of the
thesis, number of excerption cards, categories used in the research, a short summary of main
findings and conclusions. If the same conclusion is mentioned in more theses, I will present it
only once, not to repeat the same issue over and over again. Because I am presenting
conclusions from other diploma theses, I often quote from other students´ works to keep the
idea exactly the same as expressed by each of the author of analysed diploma theses.
3.3.1.1 Eva Vodičková
Eva Vodičková analysed the book A Passage to India by E.M. Forster, two Czech
translations, and one Slovak translation. The first chapter of her thesis is devoted to E. M.
Forster and his novels. In the second part she introduces the two tasks of her work – to define
main features of E.M. Forster´s style, and to compare the original with two Czech and one
Slovak translations on the basis of reporting sentences. She shortly introduces the two Czech
translations, but does not mention names of any of the translators. She only introduces Czech
titles of the novels and the fact that they were published in Prague. In my opinion, this is not a
very good approach, because for a translation analysis the name of the translator is essential.
25
The total number of her excerptions was 526. She classified the reporting sentences
according to the way they were joined into paragraphs, according to different media, and
reporting verbs/phrases (this category is usually called semantic categories or only
categories).
All excerptions can be found directly in her work, not only on the cards. I think it was
a very good decision, because all the work she had spent on excerpting the sentences is not
lost (which it is in case of those who only wrote the reporting sentences on excerption cards).
The excerption cards were put aside, found after many years, not connected with analysed
diploma theses, and used for different purposes.
She introduces 14 different tables with data obtained from excerption cards. The tables
show her findings concerning paragraphs, list of media, list of reporting sentences, changes in
translations expressed in numbers, shifts between groups, lists of reporting verbs with
numbers of excerptions, and finally a list of unreported direct speeches.
In her conclusion she describes and evaluates Forster´s style based on the reporting
sentences. The second part of the conclusion is devoted to differences between translations
regarding the English original. The first finding in this field is that translators divide the text
into shorter sections (paragraphs) than Forster. Another interesting feature is about
punctuation. Czech translators use a colon more often that it is common in English - commas
are more usual there. Instead of a semi-colon, which is a very frequent punctuation mark in
English, Czech translators use a full stop.
Another interesting finding is that Czech and Slovak translations try to explain the text
and tell the reader more that it is intended by the author of the novel.
The most differences could be found in the category of reporting verbs. The old Czech
translation does not differ from the original much, the more recent and the Slovak translations
26
show a lot of changes, there are several shifts between categories, and more verbs indicating
some additional information.
E. Vodičková says that the Slovak translation is not very successful, the old Czech
translation shows some basic errors – translating word for word according to the English
original, smoothing the text, some words translated literally. The more recent Czech
translation uses more reporting verbs than there are in original, but there is not anything
particularly wrong with it. It uses modern language and generally keeps the original meaning.
3.3.1.2 Milena Pospíšilová
M. Pospíšilová worked with the book The Moon and Sixpence by W. S. Maugham,
and its one Czech translation. In Part I she explains her reason for choosing this topic, and
describes life and work of William Somerset Maugham.
In Part II she describes material and methods used. She obtained 449 excerptions –
this was not the sample from the beginning of the book, but these were all the reporting
sentences that occurred in the book. The reporting sentences were classified according to five
different criteria: paragraph, medium, semantic category (reporting element), distribution, and
punctuation.
She only presents specimens of excerptions – 30 examples of éxcerption cards´ taken
from different parts of the text (e.g. excerption No 13, followed by No 46,…)
Part III is devoted to tables. There are 27 tables altogether. First six tables show the
situation in paragraphs, tables 7 – 13 present different data concerning media, tables 14 – 19
describe categories (another name for reporting elements/verbs/expressions). Distribution is
further developed in tables 22 – 27.
Part IV – Conclusions – analyses Maugham’s style and if this style was retained in the
Czech translation. This part is divided into Paragraphs, Media, Categories, Distribution, and a
summary of the above mentioned findings. As for the translation analysis, M. Pospíšilová
27
says that the translator basically succeeded in preserving the style of original, being aware of
the difference between the English and Czech languages; she sometimes uses more dramatic
or epic device than it is in original (this concerns mainly the category of paragraphs and
categories/reporting element – shifts between categories, higher number of reporting
elements, etc.). These features can be observed in analyses of all diploma theses.
3.3.1.3 Věra Slaná
Věra Slaná researched the book The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen. In first
chapter she talks about Elizabeth Bowen, about her life and books.
Chapter II describes treatment of material and also the aim of the thesis – to evaluate
the quality of the Czech translation using the same methods and approach as it is described
above. This is another work where the name of the translator is missing, and she only states
the Czech title of the books with the year and place of publishing.
She excerpted 502 reporting sentences. Three main criteria were used in her research
– paragraphs, medium and semantic categories (reporting verbs/elements/expressions). This
part also includes a thorough description of symbols used on excerption cards with some
definitions of features appearing in the novel (e.g. multiple reporting, denotative reporting,
etc.).
Part III is an analytical part with tables which are divided into seven groups: division
into paragraphs; division of media; evaluation of shifts of the meaning of the reporting
elements (from English to Czech); list of reporting elements (English); list of reporting
elements (Czech); shifts of the meaning of the reporting elements (from English into Czech);
shifts of the meaning of the free direct and indirect speech (from English into Czech).
The next part (Part IV) presents a sample of excerpted material, there are 43 excerpted
reporting sentences/expressions, again they are taken from different places in the book. It is
28
difficult to say if they were chosen randomly or with certain purpose, e.g. to show various
possible reporting expressions.
The conclusions are divided into three parts – separate conclusions on paragraphs,
media and semantic categories are provided, and after those partial conclusions one general
conclusion is drawn: there were many shifts in translation, most of them trying to smooth the
text, but not always the shifts were sensible and sensitive. However, on the whole the
translation is considered to be a good one.
3.3.1.4 Bohumila Kučerová
Bohumila Kučerová examined the book Brighton Rock by Graham Greene. In
Introduction she reveals the purpose of the thesis – to examine the style of this novel on the
basis of reporting sentences and compare the results with Czech and Slovak translations. She
used three translations – two Czech and one Slovak translation. 500 reporting sentences were
excerpted. The excerpted reporting sentences were classified according to three main criteria:
paragraphs, medium, semantic category (reporting element).
Chapter one is devoted to the author – Graham Greene, his life and his work, a literary
description, and a description of a style of the novel Brighton Rock.
Chapter two presents explanation of basic terms, description of categories and data
collection.
Chapter three displays 12 tables, some of them further divided into: table 2a, 2b; table
12a, 12b, 12c, and 12d. Tables show numbers of occurrences concerning the three categories
examined, changes, shifts between categories, and lists of reporting elements – English,
Czech and Slovak translations.
In Chapter four, Conclusions, she analyses the findings from two points of view – the
style of the English novel, and the style of translations. This part is also divided according to
the three criteria she worked with: paragraphs, media, and categories.
29
The three translations analysed show different approaches in translation. The old
Czech translation is an example of verbal translation, and the changes are the smallest out of
the three translations, but the translation is not very successful. The Slovak translation is
rather free and creative, the changes made are mainly due to the misunderstanding of the text.
This work is not a true interpretation of original. The new Czech translation is considered to
be the best one, connecting the true and creative interpretation. However, changes in semantic
categories show that the translation still interferes with some important stylistic features of the
original.
3.3.1.5 Ondrej Mikolášik
Ondrej Mikolášik worked with the book Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, and one
Czech translation. His objective was to analyse the English original and also its Czech
translation. Part I introduces the life of Virginia Woolf, shows a critical review of the style
and method in this book, and introduces excerption of reporting sentences and their
classification into two categories – medium and reporting element; this category is called by
the others semantic categories.
The next part – Part II – shows specimens of excerptions – there are 10 various
examples of excerption cards.
Part III follows with tables about both media and also reporting elements. First three
tables show the data concerning media, the rest of the tables is devoted to reporting
elements/semantic categories.
The last part – conclusions – shows conclusions based on several different
phenomena. First part of this chapter compares the style of Virginia Woolf with James Joyce
from the viewpoint of reporting sentences. The results about James Joyce are taken from
another diploma thesis written by Jana Mikulášková, but this part is not relevant for my
research. The following two parts analyse the data given in tables. There are plenty of
30
examples to illustrate some questionable cases. As far as the media are concerned, there are
too many shifts in categories. The situation in shifts between categories in reporting elements
is acceptable. The final verdict suggests that the translator was not fully aware of some
devices used by the author in the English original.
3.3.1.6 Miloslava Kovandová
Miloslava Kovandová analysed the book The Stars Look Down by Archibald Joseph
Cronin. The first chapter describes his life and works, especially the book The Stars Look
Down.
The second chapter describes treatment of material. M. Kovandová excerpted 587
reporting sentences, and worked with two Czech translations. She divided the excerpted
material into four categories: paragraphs, distribution, medium, and semantic
categories/reporting elements. The main aim of the thesis was to compare the English original
with the two Czech translations. There is also a short description of expanded reporting (more
than one reporting element) with examples from the novel.
Chapter three shows specimens of excerptions, six cases from different places in the
text, showing different types of reporting sentences and their treatment in Czech translations.
Chapter four displays 16 tables – first four tables deal with paragraphs, the next four
with distribution of reporting sentences. Tables 9 – 11 show media, and the rest of the tables,
numbers 12 to 16 deal with categories/reporting elements.
The last part of the thesis – chapter five, conclusions, brings an analysis, both the
English original and also Czech translation. Only one Czech translation (the new one) is taken
into consideration, because there are a lot of cases of excerptions (22%) missing in the old
Czech translation. Nevertheless, I decided to use this old translation in my research as well,
because when the total numbers are transferred into percentage, there is no problem with
31
missing excerptions, and one can clearly see results comparable with other translations that do
not lack any cases of reporting sentences.
Analysing the data from the tables, M. Kovandová states, that none of the Czech
translations is adequate. The old one due to the omitting parts of the text, the new one for
soothing and improving Cronin’s style, and thus making the result translation even more
unbalanced.
32
4 Treatment of Material
I went through the six analysed diploma theses, and excerpted all reporting verbs from
the List of Reporting Elements provided in each of the diploma theses. There was one extra
list of English reporting elements and also one or more lists of Czech and Slovak reporting
elements. Although I understand Slovak very well, I do not feel competent to work with this
language in my diploma thesis, so I only excerpted reporting elements from English original
and all Czech translations.
Altogether I worked with 6 English originals and 9 Czech translations. The translations
have been divided into two groups, according to their age: into older translations and more
recent translations. More recent translations are those published after the year 1960, older
translations before this year. This division is only based on the years of translations of
analysed novels so that in case of two translations one of them is marked as older and one of
them as more recent. The year 1960 has no particular importance in this case. The authors of
analysed diploma theses call these two different translations old and new, and I am going to
do the same for better orientation and easier description in the tables and in conclusion.
The lists of elements look the same in all the theses, i.e. there is always a verb (or
another reporting element) followed by numbers of excerption cards e.g.:
to say: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 9, 10…
to tell: 122, 257A
to add: 7, 53, 68, 170…
This means that say was a reporting verb on the excerption card number one, two, three,
five,… The same pattern can be seen in the lists of reporting elements concerning Czech
translations:
říci/říct: 1, 6, 15, 25 …
odpovědět: 2, 42, 87…

33
This means that the verb říci/říct was used in a translated text in the first, sixth, fifteenth…
reporting sentence as a reporting verb, and is written on the excerption cards with the same
number. In some cases there is also a letter of the alphabet or some other marks together with
the number of an excerption card (e.g. 257A). The number with a letter represents free direct
and indirect speeches.
There are only six diploma theses which I have worked with, so the sample seems to
be quite small and not at all representative. However, the research started to work with the
number of 3,325 excerpted verbs in English original (plus another 553 cases from The Jungle
Book), and more than twice more excerpted verbs from the translations. In my opinion, this
number is high enough to bring some reasonable results. Besides, it is not my aim to give a
thorough analysis of this field, but to show certain trends and tendencies in translating
reporting sentences, verbs, and expressions.
To be able to work with the material further I had to think about a certain
computerised form to simplify the demanding method which was previously used; a computer
and appropriate software are in this case a perfect solution. I have made a lot of auxiliary
tables where I copied all reporting verbs from analysed diploma theses. Each English verb has
its own table – I started with the most frequent verb to say.
All the auxiliary tables were created in Microsoft Excel. I was trying to find the easiest
and the most transparent way to arrange the data into grids. The best way for doing the table
was writing down numbers of excerption cards on which the verb to say appears. Such a
number has its equivalents in the list of Czech reporting verbs. Then I found the same
number of excerption card in one or two Czech translations, and put the data into the grid. If
the verb to say was translated as říci/říct I also only wrote the number of excerption card –
this was much faster than to copy the words říci/říct. Another reason for this was that in
Microsoft Excel it is much easier to work with numbers than with words. If the translated verb
34
was different, I wrote the different verb into the next column in words. Each author of the
analysed diploma thesis is given one separate worksheet with further division into OLD and
NEW translations where applicable. The table then looks like this:
Table No 4: Sample of auxiliary table say
say říct/říciOLD ostatní slovesa říci/říctNEW ostatní slovesa

3 odpovědět odpovědět
8 8 opakovat
9 9 odseknout
13 ? oslovit
14 ? opakovat
16 16 podotknout
17 17 odpovědět
20 20 prohlásit
21 pravit 21
22 22 odseknout
28 28 oslovit
29 pravit procedit mezi zuby
30 30 ?
36 36 prohlásit
37 37 optat se
38 38 říkat pravdu do očí
46 46 pronést
49 ? ?
52 52 zeptat se
53 zeptat se zajímat se
54 54 podotknout
55 říkat naznačovat
56 otázat se zeptat se
The first column shows number of excerption cards where the verb to say is used in
the original, the second and third column show the results from the older Czech translation –
the second column with numbers represents the cases of excerpted reporting sentences where
the verb to say was translated as říci/říct, the third column lists all other verbs that were used
as a translation for the English verb to say.
The same procedure is used in case of more recent translation. Question marks in the
grid show the cases where the Czech translation was not found – e.g. number of excerption in
English original 13, no number 13 was found in the list of verbs concerning the older Czech
translation.
35
The same tables were created for the most frequent verbs in English original texts used
in the six analysed diploma theses. These are all the tabulated verbs listed in an alphabetical
order: add, agree, announce, answer, ask, begin, call, continue, cry, declare, exclaim, explain,
feel, go on, implore, inquire, laugh, murmur, mutter, protest, remark, repeat, reply, retort,
say, shout, smile, speak, tell, think, whisper, wonder, write.
The work was no longer so difficult as with the verb to say, because the occurrence of
the rest of the verbs is significantly lower than that of to say. The tables have only two
columns for each of the translation, the first column showing the number of excerption in
English original, the second and/or the third column presents Czech translations:
Table No 5: Sample of auxiliary table reply
reply OLD NEW

4 odtušit opakovat
76 odpovědět otázat se
131 odtušit říci
178 odtušit odpovědět
214 odvětit říci
219 říci odvětit
253 říci odpovědět
344 odvětit odpovědět
Complete auxiliary tables are at disposal on a CD-ROM which is an integral part of
this diploma thesis, the information in the tables is not necessary for the purpose of this thesis,
but may very well serve for some further research in this area.
After completing all the tables, I decided to make a list of most frequent verbs both in
English and in Czech and use them further in a summary table – a table which summarises all
36
verbs used in translations together. It would be very difficult to use all the English verbs listed
in all diploma theses, and all their Czech translations, the grid would be very difficult to work
with and to understand. The list of most frequent verbs was thus necessary. Besides, I wanted
to avoid cases of verbs which occur only a few times in the original and/or in translations,
because such verbs could not be taken as a representative sample.
The summary table provides only the verbs which have certain frequency, both in
English original and in one or more Czech translations. This table could be used for making
several different comparisons, for example with the use of Microsoft Excel tool – PivotTable
Report (in Czech kontingenční tabulka).
The summary table is too excessive and altogether cannot be given in a printed
version. It has 32 columns and 375 rows, and in a printed version this would cover more than
40 pages. However, the whole table can be viewed on an electronic appendix, a CD-ROM
which is an integral part of this diploma thesis. I am providing only some results based on this
summary table, and everyone who is interested can find many more results when working
with the CD.
The structure of the grid:
The rows in the first column show identification of each of the nine translations
presented in one of the six diploma theses, and two translations researched by me. For easier
identification I used names of the authors of each work e.g. - Kovandová, sometimes also
defined by the word OLD or NEW – they show data from older and more recent translations,
and as already mentioned above, the names OLD and NEW were already used in the analysed
theses, and I decided to retain them for easier orientation. Kovandová OLD thus means that
the verbs used in the table were excerpted by M. Kovandová, and are relevant for the older
Czech translation.
37
The grid is multidimensional; the second column shows the year in which the
translations were published. In one case (the older translation of The Jungle Book), the year is
unknown, but as it is mentioned above, the translation cannot be newer than from the year
1937 (the year when the translator died).
The third column shows translated Czech verbs. There are 32 most frequent Czech
verbs in the grid. Of course, in many translations more than 32 reporting verbs were used,
those less frequent ones are summarised under one category – other verbs. These verbs did
not occur so frequently to have them listed separately.
The next row – other cases shows the number of occurrences where the original
English verb was translated in a different way –i.e. not as a verb, but as a noun, using ellipsis
of the verb, or in another special way. These special cases are described in analysed diploma
theses, and include the following types:
• both the reporting sentence and the direct speech are left out
• only the reporting sentence is left out
• the reporting sentence is translated as non-reporting
• direct speech or free indirect speech is translated by other means
• the reporting sentence and the direct speech are translated as several reporting
sentences and direct speeches
• explanation or misunderstanding of the original text
• the direct speech is reported by an originally non-reporting sentence, the original
reporting sentence is left out or translated as non-reporting
The grid consists of 32 columns.
Table No 6: Description of the summary table
Column Column description

grid identification of rows
Czech translation the most frequent verbs found in Czech translations
say the most frequent verbs found in English original texts
38
Column Column description

think
ask
cry
answer
exclaim
go on
reply
remark
add
repeat
murmur
tell
call
continue
mutter
inquire
whisper
begin
feel
implore
agree
declare
retort
explain
protest
shout
wonder
other verbs other less frequent verbs and other cases of expressing a reporting element
The data are saved on a CD-ROM in the following formats:
• Microsoft Excel 2003 as summary table
• summary table.xml
• summary table - CSV – Comma delimited
Altogether, I worked with 33 most frequent English verbs (for the summary table only 28
most frequent verbs were used, because the frequency in occurrence of the rest of them was
already too low), and 33 most frequent Czech verbs, and listed them according to their
frequency beginning with the most frequent ones providing the total number of occurrences
for each verb. It could be observed that only the verb to say and říci/říct are on the same place
39
in case of both languages. I have tried to match some more pairs with using different colours.
In some cases this was not possible as there were more possibilities of translation due to
different meanings of the verb (e.g. the verb cry means plakat, but also křičet, and cry is not
the only verb that could mean křičet in Czech; there is for example exclaim which has similar
meaning). The same colour means the same meaning in both languages. This enables us to see
some changes in translation, and in use of verbs. The colours should only illustrate the
situation.
Table No 7: Lists of the most frequent verbs in English and Czech with numbers of occurrences
total No of total No of
occurences occurences
say 1913 říci/říct 1935
think 249 zeptat se 137
ask 166 odpovědět/vídat 135
cry 93 pravit 131
answer 51 myslet/myslit 126
exclaim 42 pomyslet/pomyslit si 125
go on 35 zvolat 95
reply 33 otázat se 68
remark 31 říkat/si 57
add 30 opakovat/si 52
repeat 29 pokračovat 51
murmur 26 dodat 45
tell 25 vykřiknout/kovat 42
call 25 prohlásit 41
continue 21 volat 41
mutter 16 křičet 35
inquire 15 poznamenat 30
whisper 14 podotknout 27
begin 13 za/šeptat 26
feel 13 odvětit 23
implore 12 prohodit 23
agree 11 pronést 23
declare 11 namítnout/tat 20
retort 11 odseknout 20
explain 10 za/mumlat 20
protest 10 začít 18
shout 10 ozvat se 17
wonder 10 zavolat 15
write 9 tázat se 11
announce 8 uvažovat 11
speak 8 povídat 11
laugh 8 za/mručet 10
smile 7 mluvit 9
40
In both cases the most frequent verb is to say in English, and říci/říct in Czech. The
second most frequent English verb think does not correspond with the second most frequent
Czech verb which is in this case odpovědět/odpovídat. The English equivalent answer is only
on the fifth position. On the contrary, the verb ask is on the third position in the English list,
whilst Czech zeptat se is on the second place. With two different basic meanings in Czech
(zeptat se, požádat), only the meaning similar or the same as zeptat se is expressed in all the
translations. Not all of the English verbs can have just one Czech equivalent (and vice versa),
so it is very difficult to compare the two lists of verbs from the viewpoint of their
appropriateness.
When collecting the data there was a problem with two forms of Czech verbs,
perfective and imperfective verbs. Each author of the analysed diploma theses probably
decided personally which perfective and imperfective verbs would be listed separately, and
which would go under one “verb”. That is why the verbs namítnout and namítat are put
together, as well as for example mumlat and zamumlat, whilst volat and zavolat or říci and
říkat are dealt with as two separate verbs. I tried to follow the pattern given in most of the
diploma theses in order to gain similar results as those given. The Czech verbs that were not
present in any of the analysed diploma theses, and only appeared in The Jungle Book, were
listed individually in all cases – I could not know what would have happened if they had been
present in one of the analysed diploma theses – would they have been dealt with as two
different verbs or would they have been put together as one verb?
I have made a table for each of the listed English verbs, showing the number of
occurrences in each of the diploma theses, and all the Czech translations, with further division
into old and more recent translations where applicable. This action could already reveal a few
interesting features – e.g. that the total number of verbs in Czech is higher in case of more
41
recent translations, the verbs are “stronger” than their English equivalents – these findings
will be dealt with in a separate chapter as a part of conclusion.
The number of all English verbs shown in the tables is higher than the number of all
Czech verbs (see the example of the “table say”), some of the Czech excerptions of translated
verbs were not found – these cases are marked by a question mark. This is caused by
inaccurate translations, where parts of the original text were left out, or it could be also caused
by “human factor” when processing these tables and lists of reporting elements. It is very easy
to make a mistake when copying hundreds of numbers into several different lists. This
computerised form could help to reduce these mistakes.
As I deal only with verbs, there is a certain loss in the meaning that is not going to be
expressed in my diploma thesis, because there is certain percentage of cases where in English
original other cases of reporting elements are used – see page 34 for more details, all other
mentioned cases are described there. These cases are rare, they represent not more than a few
per cent of all the verbs.

42
5 Comparable Corpus Research

My contribution to the existing research was corpus work with The Jungle Book, and
research on reporting verbs in this book. The Jungle Book was written by Rudyard Kipling. It
is a set of stories about and with animals from Indian jungle. The stories were first published
in magazines in 1893-4.
Although it is a bit older than the rest of the analysed books, the examined features do not
differ from those in the rest of the books. The most important years are those of translations.
The Jungle Book is a public domain and is available on the Internet. It has been copied
into Kačenka corpus, together with its two Czech translations, the first (and older one) by
Miloš Maixner, the second by Hana and Aloys Skoumalovi. The year when M. Maixner´s
translation was first published is not given, but the translator died in 1937, so the book must
have been translated prior to this year.
The translation used in the corpus Kačenka by Hana and Aloys Skoumalovi was
published in 1991, but it was in 1976 when their translation was published for the first time.
5.1 Kačenka
Kačenka is a parallel corpus of English and Czech texts. The name is an acronym and
stands for Korpus anglicko-český – elektronický nástroj Katedry anglistiky.
This corpus was created by the Department of English and American Studies, Faculty of
Arts, Masaryk University during the year 1997 to support research and teaching in the field of
translation. It was financed by the FR VS. The originators of the corpus were PhDr. Jana
Chamonikolasová,Ph.D. and Ing. et Mgr. Jiří Rambousek:
“The idea was to create a small parallel corpus which would enable to work with
entire texts in translation analysis rather then short extracts. At the same time it
aimed at acquiring experience that could be used in creating a larger parallel corpus
43
of English and Czech in the future. It consists of some literary works (novels) as well
as some non-literary texts (economic reports etc.)“
5.2 Methods Used in Kačenka
The Kačenka corpus and the texts in this corpus are an excellent resource for a research
carried out with a computer. With the tool Find and replace of Microsoft Office I was able to
find all necessary data within hours, not days or weeks as it was usual in case of excerpting all
reporting sentences manually. This computer-based method is fast and reliable.
After reading the book I decided to search the text for the same most frequent verbs as
already used in the analysed theses. I could put the obtained data into the summary table, and
draw some conclusions from the data enriched by reporting verbs from The Jungle Book.
I searched the English original and the two Czech translations which were at disposal in
a certain table next to each other – in the form of three columns with the English original on
the left, older Czech translation in the middle, and more recent Czech translation on the right.
One of my tasks was to find numbers of occurences of relevant verbs listed in the table
of most frequent verbs above. I searched for five different verb forms which could occur in
the text as verbs in reporting sentences: infinitive (begin), 3rd person singular (begins), past
tense (began), past participle (begun), and present participle (beginning). In a well-arranged
text it was very easy to find both Czech translations at the same time as English original. All
excerpted verbs and their Czech translations have been put into one file, each verb on a
separate worksheet. Then the table of excerpted English verbs and their Czech translations
looks like this:
Table No 8: Example of excerptions from The Jungle Book
rozzlobit utrhnout
begin se se
begin počít spustit
begin počít spustit
begin ptát se spustit
44
The first column shows the English original in an infinitive, second column represents
the first (older) translation by Miloš Maixner, and the third column is a translation of Hana
and Aloys Skoumalovi. All the Czech translations were also put into infinitive no matter what
form they were in before. In this form it is easy to use them further.
For the purpose of this thesis it is not necessary to show the whole file with all the
verbs from The Jungle Book here, but the whole file is saved on a CD-ROM where it could be
further worked with and used for more analyses.
I have excerpted 553 reporting verbs in total, out of which there are the following
numbers of occurences for each excerpted verb:
Table No 9: List of excerpted English reporting verbs from The Jungle Book
Listed alphabetically Listed according to the

number of occurence
verb number of verb number of
occurences occurences
add 1 say 437
answer 8 tell 25
ask 4 shout 24
begin 4 cry 18
call 7 go on 9
cry 18 answer 8
go on 9 call 7
mutter 2 think 7
repeat 2 ask 4
reply 1 begin 4
say 437 whisper 4
shout 24 mutter 2
tell 25 repeat 2
think 7 add 1
whisper 4 reply 1
The verbs exclaim, remark, murmur, continue, inquire, feel, implore, agree, declare,
retort, explain, protest, and wonder do not occur in the whole text of The Jungle Book as
reporting verbs at all.

45
The following table is the list of 32 most frequent Czech verbs that were used as a
translation of one of the above listed verbs, divided into three parts: Váňová OLD contains the
list of verbs from the older translation of The Jungle Book together with the total number of
occurrences, Váňová NEW shows the list of verbs from the most recent translation of The
Jungle Book with total number of their occurrence in the whole text, the last two columns
show summarised data from the six analysed diploma theses. Other cases show those
excerptions where the English verb was translated into Czech by other means, e.g. as a noun.
Table No 10: List of excerpted Czech reporting verbs from The Jungle Book
Váňová OLD Sum Váňová NEW Sum summary of Czech Total No of

verbs from analysed occurences
dipl. theses
říci/říct/si 268 říci 221 říci/říct 1935

ptát se 39 other cases 36 zeptat se 137
pravit si 33 ozvat se 27 odpovědět/vídat 135
volat 33 křiknout 16 pravit 131
odpovědět/vídat 25 zeptat se 13 myslet/myslit 126
říkat 15 říkat 11 pomysletpomyslit si 125
zvolat 11 odpovídat 8 zvolat 95
other cases 11 spustit 8 otázat se 68
povídat 8 hlesnout 5 říkat/si 57
pokračovat 7 houknout 5 opakovat/si 52
vzkřiknout 6 utrhnout se 5 pokračovat 51
myslet si 5 zašeptat 5 dodat 45
namítat 4 dodat 4 vykřiknout/kovat 42
sdělovat/sdělit 4 okřiknout 4 prohlásit 41
zlobit se 4 vysvětlovat/tlit 4 volat 41
za/šeptat 4 domlouvat 3 křičet 35
křičet 3 křičet 3 poznamenat 30
mumlat si 3 odbýt 3 podotknout 27
odvětit 3 pomyslit si 3 za/šeptat 26
ozvat se 3 povzdechnout si 3 odvětit 23
vysvětlovat 3 prohodit 3 prohodit 23
za/hulákat 3 tvrdit 3 pronést 23
napomínat 2 ulevit si 3 namítnout/tat 20
počít 2 vykřikovat/knout 3 odseknout 20
tvrdit 2 zahulákat 3 za/mumlat 20
ušklíbnout se 2 zachechtat se 3 začít 18
bručet 1 zařvat 3 ozvat se 17
divit se 1 zlobit se 3 zavolat 15
dodat 1 bránit se 2 tázat se 11
dodávat 1 hovořit 2 uvažovat 11
dozpívat 1 chlácholit 2 povídat 11
horlit 1 namítnout 2 za/mručet 10
46
The last two columns were added to compare the most frequent Czech verbs from The
Jungle Book with the most frequent Czech verbs summarised from the six analysed diploma
theses. As it could be observed, the verbs are similar, and many of them occur in all three
lists. This shows that even though not all the reporting sentences from The Jungle Book were
collected, the most frequent verbs appear to be the same as those in analysed novels where all
reporting sentences were excerpted.
The results have been added into the summary table for further comparisons. This book,
being about animals has some special features - some reporting verbs that are used mainly to
describe animals´ noises and actions: olíznout se, syčet, zafrkat in Czech translations, but they
are not very frequent, and the fact that the book is about animals has no impact on reporting
verbs. We could say that the structure of various different reporting verbs is very similar to
those from analysed diploma theses, there are basically no differences between these fables
and other reseached novels.

47
6 Results
The accessible tools in various computer programmes represent a perfect device for a
research based on searching and counting the same or similar words and their forms. What
took several days, weeks or even months can now be processed within minutes thanks to the
computer. Such an output, as the summary table is, can provide numerous different results,
depending on the interest of the researcher. I present several basic categories which can be
derived from the summary table, but I am sure, there are much more other possibilities and
interesting information to be found.
6.1 Summary Table

I started working with 3,877 English verbs. Not all of them were found in translations
in the analysed diploma theses. The first reason was the fact that parts of the English texts
were left out during the translation. Some mistakes also occurred during the treatment of
excerptions and other material used, the number of them is too extensive not to make a single
mistake, and without a computer the mistake is very difficult to trace. That is why the total
number of excerptions and translated verbs is different. The difference is not very significant,
and should not cause any problems.
The structure of the summary table was already described in chapter 4. Below is an
example of the summary table. Some rows and columns were taken randomly from various
parts of the table to get the idea of the entire grid.
The first column describes the name of the translation, for this purpose the name of the
author of each thesis was used, sometimes with the adjective OLD or NEW, suggesting
whether it is and older translation or more recent one. These names were already used in
analysed diploma theses.

48
The second column shows the year when the translation was published. In one case the
year is questionable (Váňová OLD), but as it is suggested above, the translation cannot be
newer than from 1937.
The third column shows Czech verbs which were used to translate English verbs listed
in the first row. The numbers in the grid say how many times each of the English verbs was
translated into Czech with this particular verb. For example: In older translation from E.
Vodičková´s thesis the verb say was translated 194 times as říci/říct, twice as zeptat se, once
as odpovědět, nine times as pravit, etc.
The colours in the summary table are used to distinguish between different semantic
categories that are described in chapter 3.1.4. The list of English verbs can be viewed on
pages 18 and 19, the list of Czech verbs on pages 20 and 21. This division makes it easy to
see shifts between categories from English original to Czech translations.
Table No 11: Sample of the summary table
other
grid year Czech translation say think ask answer exclaim verbs...
Vodičková OLD 1926 říci/říct 194 1
Vodičková OLD 1926 zeptat se 2 15
Vodičková OLD 1926 odpovědět/odpovídat 1 5 15
Vodičková OLD 1926 pravit 9
Vodičková OLD 1926 myslet/myslit 11
etc... 1
Vodičková NEW 1974 za/mručet
Vodičková NEW 1974 other verbs 15 4 2
Vodičková NEW 1974 other cases 2 3
etc...
Pospíšilová 1947 říci/říct 49 2 3
Pospíšilová 1947 zeptat se 2
Pospíšilová 1947 odpovědět/odpovídat 10 1 11
Pospíšilová 1947 zavolat 1
Pospíšilová 1947 tázat se 2 10
Pospíšilová 1947 uvažovat
Pospíšilová 1947 povídat 2 4
Pospíšilová 1947 za/mručet
Pospíšilová 1947 other verbs 22 4 3 1
Pospíšilová 1947 other cases 1
etc...
Slaná 1966 říci/říct 324 1 2
Slaná 1966 zeptat se 48 1 6
Slaná 1966 odpovědět/odpovídat 23
49
The total number of all translated reporting elements that occur in the summary table
is 5,214. There are 247 cases of other cases in translations – the reporting elements other than
verbs, so the total number of the translated verbs is 4,967.
The first table shows the total number of all English verbs found in the six analysed
theses and in The Jungle Book with the help of Kačenka. The number of English verbs is not
ultimate, only verbs which occurred more than ten times in the lists of reporting elements are
listed in this table. The rest of the verbs were put into one category other verbs; this category
is only excerpted for the verb říci/říct, so the item other verbs with 3 occurrences says that the
verb říci/říct was a translation of three different English verbs other than those given in the
summary table. The verbs in this table are ordered alphabetically and also according to their
occurrence beginning with the most frequent one.
Table No 12: Total number of English verbs in the summary table
Total number of individual English verbs
Ordered alphabetically Ordered according to occurence

Verb Sum Verb Sum
add 41 say 3391
agree 17 think 298
answer 77 ask 224
ask 224 cry 157
begin 28 answer 77
call 58 tell 74
continue 35 shout 66
cry 157 exclaim 64
declare 19 go on 63
exclaim 64 call 58
explain 12 reply 55
feel 7 repeat 52
go on 63 remark 47
implore 17 add 41
inquire 29 murmur 39
murmur 39 continue 35
mutter 22 whisper 30
other verbs 3 inquire 29
protest 19 begin 28
remark 47 mutter 22
50
repeat 52 declare 19
reply 55 protest 19
retort 15 implore 17
say 3391 agree 17
shout 66 retort 15
tell 74 explain 12
think 298 wonder 8
whisper 30 feel 7
wonder 8 other verbs 3
TOTAL 4967 TOTAL 4967
There are only four English verbs that occur more than 100 times in all texts, the least
frequent verb in this table occurs only 7 times (the verb feel).
The second table shows the total number of Czech verbs in translations, also ordered
alphabetically and according to their occurrence in a descending line. As it was mentioned
above, these verbs do not represent the absolute number of verbs used, there are only the most
frequent ones. The least frequent verbs are also included in one group – other verbs – these
are the verbs with occurrence lower than ten times in all the translations analysed. The
number of other verbs looks high, but we must bear in mind that this item represents more
than one hundred various verbs in total. For this reason the item other verbs is on the last
position in the table.
Table No 12: Total number of Czech verbs in the summary table
Total number of individual Czech verbs
Ordered alphabetically Ordered according to occurence

Czech translation Sum Czech translation Sum
dodat 52 říci/říct 2432
křičet 42 zeptat se 230
myslet/myslit 134 odpovědět/odpovídat 174
namítnout/tat 26 pravit 162
odpovědět/odpovídat 174 myslet/myslit 134
odseknout 24 pomyslet/myslit si 115
odvětit 25 zvolat 109
opakovat/si 55 říkat/si 84
otázat se 69 pokračovat 82
other verbs 695 volat 77
ozvat se 46 otázat se 69
podotknout 27 opakovat/si 55
51
pokračovat 82 dodat 52
pomyslet/myslit si 115 ozvat se 46
povídat 19 vykřiknout/kovat 46
poznamenat 31 křičet 42
pravit 162 prohlásit 36
prohlásit 36 za/šeptat 36
prohodit 28 poznamenat 31
pronést 26 prohodit 28
říci/říct 2432 podotknout 27
říkat/si 84 namítnout/tat 26
tázat se 13 pronést 26
uvažovat 3 odvětit 25
volat 77 odseknout 24
vykřiknout/kovat 46 za/mumlat 23
za/mručet 10 povídat 19
za/mumlat 23 začít 18
za/šeptat 36 zavolat 18
začít 18 tázat se 13
zavolat 18 za/mručet 10
zeptat se 230 uvažovat 3
zvolat 109 other verbs 695
TOTAL 4967 TOTAL 4967
There are six verbs that appear more than 100 times in the translations, the least
frequent verb in this table is uvažovat with 3 occurrences. As I have mentioned above, only
verbs that occurred more than ten times in all of the analysed diploma theses were used in the
summary table. However, the verb uvažovat has only 3 occurrences in the summary table, it is
due to the fact, that this verb was used as a translation of English verbs that do not occur in
the summary table as individual items.
It is obvious from the first two tables that the verbs to say in English and říci/říct in
Czech are without any doubt the two most frequent verbs that appear in all texts. The
following verbs have far smaller occurrence than to say in English original or říci/říct in
Czech translations. The verbs most frequently used in each of the researched books from
analysed diploma theses are very similar, the following table shows the list of five most
frequent verbs used in translations. Groups other verbs and other cases were taken into
consideration only in case of one translation (Kučerová OLD), because no other items were
found in this list.

52
Table No 13: First five most frequent verbs used in translations
Vodičková OLD Vodičková NEW Pospíšilová Slaná

Czech translation say Czech translation say Czech translation say Czech translation say
říci/říct 194 říci/říct 165 pravit 105 říci/říct 324
pravit 9 pravit 7 říci/říct 49 zeptat se 48
říkat/si 6 říkat/si 6 odpovědět/odpovídat 10 odpovědět/odpovídat 23
zeptat se 2 zeptat se 3 prohodit 9 podotknout 7
prohlásit 2 zvolat 3 otázat se 7 ozvat se 7
Kučerová OLD Kučerová NEW Mikolášik Kovandová OLD

Czech translation say Czech translation say Czech translation say Czech translation say
říci/říct 400 říci/říct 305 říci/říct 258 říci/říct 131
other cases 5 zeptat se 11 říkat/si 22 pravit 6
zeptat se 1 odpovědět/odpovídat 3 zeptat se 14 zeptat se 4
other verbs 1 opakovat/si 2 dodat 5 odpovědět/odpovídat 4
dodat 2 odpovědět/odpovídat 3 otázat se 2
Kovandová NEW Váňová OLD Váňová NEW

Czech translation say Czech translation say Czech translation say
říci/říct 28 říci/říct 250 říci/říct 218
pronést 15 pravit 33 ozvat se 23
odpovědět/odpovídat 11 odpovědět/odpovídat 20 zeptat se 12
podotknout 9 říkat/si 13 říkat/si 10
prohlásit 8 zvolat 7 prohodit 3
Apart from říci/říct, none of the verbs occurs in all of the translations in the list of five
most frequent verbs. The verb zeptat se occurs on this list 8 times, the verb
odpovědět/odpovídat 7 times, verbs pravit and říkat/si 5 times. The occurrence of other verbs
given in this list is even lower – prohlásit, zvolat, prohodit, otázat se, podotknout, ozvat se,
and dodat occur twice, the rest of the verbs: opakovat, pronést, and prohlásit only once.
As it could be observed from the above shown tables, the number of occurrences of
říci/říct is significantly lower than the number of the verb say in English originals. The
following chart shows the percentage of occurrences of the two verbs in the summary table.
The data are further divided into older and more recent translations where another interesting
tendency can be observed.

53
Chart No 1: Percentage of say and říci/říct in all novels
100,00
90,00
80,00
70,00
OLDříci
60,00
OLDsay
50,00
NEWříci
40,00
NEWsay
30,00
20,00
10,00
0,00
OLDříci OLDsay NEWříci NEWsay
Type Percentage Type Percentage

OLDříci/říct 49.09 OLDsay 66.36
NEWříci/říct 42.30 NEWsay 68.32
The number of occurrences of the verb to say in English original is different for older
and more recent translations. The number should be the same in both cases, the difference is
caused by inaccurate translations and the fact that parts of the text in one of the old
translations were left out. But as it could be seen, the error in this case is only small.
All the translated verbs used in the summary table were taken into consideration. Out
of 100% of all English verbs, the verb say is used in 66.36% or 68.32% of cases respectively.
The trend in the Czech translations is different – the percentage of the verb říci/říct out of all
the examined verbs and other cases listed in the summary table is significantly lower. The
verb říci/říct was used in 49.09% cases in older translations, and in 42.30% cases in more
recent translations.
The percentage of Czech verb říci/říct is significantly lower than the percentage of
English verb to say, in old translations the difference is 17.27%, in new translations the
number is even higher – 26.02%.

54
The next chart shows the percentage of the verbs say (yellow column) and říct/říci
(blue column) in all translations. In all but one translation we can see that the percentage of to
say out of all excerpted reporting verbs is higher than that of říct/říci. Sometimes the
difference is small, sometimes enormous, mainly in case of more recent translations, where
the total number of all verbs is always significantly higher, and thus the number of říci/říct
does not amount to the level of to say in English original. The chart is followed by exact
numbers in a table.
Chart No 2: Percentage of říci/říct and to say in all translations
100,00
90,00
80,00
70,00
60,00
50,00
40,00
30,00
20,00
10,00
0,00
LD
W
LD
LD
W
W
LD
vá
W
á
šik
an
NE
Vá NE
NE
O
NE
i lo
O
O
O
lá
Sl
á
íš
iko
vá
vá
á
á
vá
vá
ov
á
sp
ov
ov
ov
ňo
ro
ňo
nd
ro
Po
čk
nd
čk
če
če
Vá
va
di
va
Ku
di
Ku
Vo
Ko
Vo
Ko
Percentage of říct/říci Percentage of say
Table No 14: Percentage of říci/říct and to say in all translations expressed by exact numbers
Percentage of Percentage of
translation říci say
Kovandová NEW 9,07 52,12
Kovandová OLD 48,07 56,49
Kučerová NEW 65,74 82,87
Kučerová OLD 86,04 83,57
Mikolášik 38,31 53,10
Pospíšilová 14,29 60,00
Slaná 57,24 89,48
Váňová NEW 40,87 79,02
Váňová OLD 48,82 79,02
Vodičková NEW 42,58 53,35
Vodičková OLD 48,23 52,72
55
In case there is only one translation nothing can be proved about trends in translating
reporting verbs. Diploma theses that worked with two translations show obvious results. The
total number of the verb říci/říct used in translations is always higher in case of older
translation. The chart below shows the percentage of the verb říci/říct in older translations
(yellow column) and more recent translations (blue column). In all cases of older translations
the occurrence of říci/říct is significantly higher, the most striking difference can be seen in
two translations from M. Kovandová´s thesis. The exact numbers are provided under the
chart.
Chart No 3: Percentage of říci/říct in older and more recent translations
100,00
90,00
80,00
70,00
60,00
OLD
50,00
NEW
40,00
30,00
20,00
10,00
0,00
Kovandová Kučerová Váňová Vodičková
Table No 15: Percentage of říci/říct in older and more recent translations expressed by exact numbers
percentage
Translation OLD NEW
Kovandová 48,07 9,07
Kučerová 86,04 65,74
Váňová 48,82 40,87
Vodičková 48,23 42,58
Not only the higher percentage of other verbs than říci/říct is used in more recent
translations, but also higher number of all verbs. No conclusions can be drawn from the cases
where there is only one translation at disposal, we cannot guess what the translation would
56
have been like if there had been one. In cases where there are two translations, the trend is
obvious. There is always a significantly higher number of verbs used – the most striking
example can be seen in two translations in M. Kovandová´s work (the number of verbs –
translations of to say in old translation is 13, in the new translation there are 64 different
verbs), in B. Kučerová´s work (only 2 other verbs in old translation and 27 in the new
translation), and also in my findings concerning The Jungle Book and its two translations (45
verbs in the old translation against 97 verbs in the new one).
The tables show the Czech verbs – translations of the verb say ordered alphabetically.
The first column shows order number of each verb, the second and third columns show verbs
from older and more recent translations. Those theses with only one translation have also been
marked either OLD or NEW, according to their age for more clear illustration, and have been
put into a three-column grid to the place either for older translations (second column) or for
more recent translations (third column). That is why some columns are left empty, because
only one translation (either old or new) is provided.
The data can be also seen under the lists of verbs in a well-arranged chart, each one
translation shown separately.
Table No 16: Lists of all Czech translations of to say in analysed novels.
Vodičková Pospíšilová
OLD Vodičková NEW OLD
1 dodat namítnout 1 dodat
2 odpovědět obrátit se 2 domlouvat
3 odvětit odvětit 3 doporučovat
4 ozvat se opravit se 4 dorážet
5 pravit ozvat se 5 křičet
6 prohlásit podotknout 6 křiknout
7 ptát se pokračovat 7 namítnout
8 rozloučit se poznamenat 8 obrátit se
9 říkat pravit 9 odpovědět
10 zeptat se prohlásit 10 odseknout
11 zvolat prohodit 11 odvětit
12 pronést 12 otázat se
13 přisolovat si 13 pobízet
14 ptát se 14 pokračovat
15 rozloučit se 15 povídat
57
16 říkat 16 poznamenat
17 šveholit 17 pravit
18 ujistit 18 procedit
19 vypočítávat 19 prohodit
20 vyslovit 20 pronést
21 začít 21 psát
22 zaštkat 22 říkat
23 zeptat se 23 smát se
24 zvolat 24 tázat se
25 odpovědět 25 uklidňovat
26 otázat se 26 vybízet
27 povídat 27 vybuchnout
28 ohradit se 28 vyhrknout
29 vypovídat 29 vypravit
30 začít
31 zavolat
32 zvolat
Slaná NEW Mikolášik NEW

1 dodat 1 dodat
2 doznat 2 křičet
3 nabídnout 3 namítat
4 namítnout 4 odpovědět
5 napomenout 5 opakovat
6 navrhnout 6 ozvat se
7 neodpustit si otázku 7 podotknout
8 odpovědět 8 poradit
9 okřiknout 9 povídat
10 oslovit 10 pozdravit
11 otázat se 11 pravit
12 ozvat se 12 pronést
13 podivit se 13 přiběhnout
14 podotknout 14 říkat
15 pokračovat 15 slyšet
16 pomyslet si 16 souhlasit
17 povytáhnout obočí 17 svěřit se
18 prohlásit 18 syknout
19 přisvědčit 19 tvrdit
20 ptát se 20 ujišťovat
21 říkat 21 vybafnout
22 šeptnout 22 vyslovit
23 uklidňovat 23 vzpomenout si
24 uznat 24 zahlaholit
25 užasnout 25 zahovořit
26 vyjít 26 zeptat se
27 vyzývat
28 zabručet
29 zasmát se
30 zeptat se
31 opakovat
32 přivítat
58
33 ulevit si
34 pozdravit
Kovandová
Kučerová OLD Kučerová NEW OLD Kovandová NEW
1 oznamovat dodat 1 namítnout být hotov s úsudkem
2 zeptat se hlásit 2 obrátit se dodat
3 napomínat 3 odpovědět loučit se
4 navrhovat 4 opakovat mínit
5 objednat 5 otázat se mluvit
6 obrátit se 6 pravit naléhat
7 odpovědět 7 prohodit namítnout
8 odseknout 8 říkat napomenout
9 opakovat 9 vykládat naznačovat
10 opravit se 10 vypravovat obrátit se
11 ozvat se 11 vzdychnout odbýt
12 podivit se 12 zeptat se odmítnout
13 pochvalovat si 13 zvolat odpovědět
14 pokračovat 14 odseknout
15 poznamenat 15 okřiknout
16 prohodit 16 opakovat
17 ptát se 17 opětovat pozdrav
18 šeptat 18 optat se
19 uvažovat 19 oslovit
20 uvědomit si 20 oznámit
21 vykřiknout 21 ozvat se
22 vysvětlovat 22 podivit se
23 vyšplíchnout nenávist na rty 23 podotknout
24 vyzvídat 24 povědět
25 zabručet 25 povelet
26 zasmát se 26 povídat
27 zeptat se 27 povzbuzovat
28 povzdechnout si
29 pozdravit
30 poznamenat
31 procedit
32 prohlásit
33 prohlédnout si
34 prohodit
35 promluvit
36 pronést
37 připomenout
38 přisvědčovat
39 rozhodnout
40 rozhorlit se
41 říkat
42 říkávat
43 slyšet
44 spustit
45 těšit
59
46 uchichtnout se
47 ujišťovat se
48 usmát se
49 ušklíbnout se
50 utrhnout se
51 uzavřít
52 volat
53 vybuchnout
54 vyčítat
55 vyjet
56 vyklopit
57 vykřiknout
58 vyprávět
59 vzdychnout
60 začít
61 zajímat se
62 zasáhnout
63 zavtipkovat
64 zeptat se
Váňová OLD Váňová NEW

1 bručet bránit se
2 divit se divit se
3 dodat dobírat si
4 dozpívat dodat
5 horlit domlouvat
6 koktat frknout
7 libovat si hlásit se
8 mumlat si hlesnout
9 nadhodit chlácholit
10 namítat koktat
11 napomínat křiknout
12 odpírat mluvit
13 odpovědět namítnout
14 odseknout napomenout
15 odvětit odbýt
16 okřiknout oddechnout si
17 ozvat se odkašlat si
18 pochvalovat si odporovat
19 povídat odpovídat
20 pravit si odseknout
21 prohlásit okřiknout
22 prohodit olíznout se
23 prosit opravit
24 přemítat oslovit
25 přiznávat si ovívat se
26 ptát se ozvat se
27 rozumovat pobídnout
28 rýpat podivit se
60
29 říkat pochvalovat si
30 sdělovat pokárat
31 svědčit pokývat
32 syčet polekat se
33 tvrdit pomyslit si
34 udělat poskočit
35 ušklíbnout se pošeptat
36 varovat povelet
37 vmísit se povídat
38 volat povzdechnout si
39 vykládat poznamenat
40 vysvětlovat procedit
41 vzkřiknout prohlásit
42 zakašlat prohodit
43 zdravit pronést
44 zlobit se přikázat
45 zvolat reptat
46 rozhlaholit
47 rozhodnout se
48 rozhorlit se
49 rozhořčit se
50 rozumovat
51 říkat
52 smát se
53 sprásknout ruce
54 spustit
55 starat se
56 syčet
57 syknout
58 tvrdit
59 udrobit
60 uchechtnout se
61 ujmout se
62 ulevit si
63 usadit
64 usmívat se
65 ušklíbnout se
66 utrhnout se
67 utrousit
68 uvažovat
69 vpadnout do řeči
70 vycenit zuby
71 vyhrknout
72 vyhubovat
73 vyjeknout
74 vysvětlovat
75 zabručet
76 zadumat se
77 zafrkat
78 zahučet
79 zachechtat se
61
80 zachrčet
81 zachvět se
82 zakřiknout
83 zamluvit
84 zamžourat
85 zaprosit
86 zasípat
87 zasmát se
88 zasmušit se
89 zasyknout
90 zašeptat
91 zdvihnout ruku
92 zeptat se
93 zjihnout
94 zlobit se
95 zvolat
96 žadonit
97 žasnout
Chart No 4: Amounts of all Czech verbs used as a translation of English to say
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
LD
LD
LD
W
W
LD
vá
W
šik
an
NE
NE
NE
O
NE
i lo
O
O
O
lá
Sl
á
íš
iko
vá
á
Vo ová
vá
á
ov
á
sp
ov
v
ov
ňo
ro
M
ňo
nd
ro
Po
čk
nd
čk
če
Vá
če
Vá
va
di
va
Ku
di
Ku
Vo
Ko
Ko
These tables also show that there are more shifts between categories in more recent
translations, and the verbs used in those Czech translations change from neutral to more
expressive ones much more often than in case of older translations. The most interesting
examples of such translations could be seen in more recent translation of The Jungle Book
e.g. frknout, koktat, odkašlat si, pokývat, sprásknout ruce.

62
It seems to me that the translators of more recent texts tried to avoid mistakes in
translation described in J. Levý and his Umění překladu (1983). There he talks about
mistakes when “the translators tend to generalise the meaning when using more general
term –e.g. strom instead of olše” etc. Another mistake described in Levý (1983) is that “in
Czech translations the use of synonyms is not sufficient, and then the translation is
lexically poorer than the original.”
6.2 Comparisons with Český národní korpus
I have decided to use some data from Český národní korpus (CNC) to support my
findings and conclusions from the six analysed diploma theses and from The Jungle Book.
The subject of this thesis was to analyse reporting verbs in literary texts – novels. The
corpus will be searched for the same category –i.e. texts of fiction. The question arising is
whether the verbs given in the List of most common verbs in Czech translations are also
common verbs in Czech. It is not important to compare the exact numbers, but to see the
prevailing tendency in using each of the verbs in Czech.
“The Czech National Corpus is a non-commercial, academic project focused

on building up a large computer-based corpus, containing mainly written Czech. The
Institute of the Czech National Corpus (Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Prague)
was founded in 1994 to hold the CNC project - to enlarge and administrate the
corpus and to provide several supplementary activities, such as research and teaching
of the corpus linguistics. CNC presents a very large, modern and valuable language
and informational base.“
There are several different corpora at disposal, I decided to work with Korpus
SYN2000. It contains 100 million words. The texts used in this corpus are mainly from the
years 1990 – 1999, but also some older texts from significant authors of Czech literature can
be found there1. The corpus is lemmatised, it means that if an infinitive of the verb is entered,
1
for example Karel Čapek, Arnošt Lustig or Josef Škvorecký
63
the corpus will show occurrences of all forms of this word – if a verb myslet is entered, the
corpus will reveal also myslela, nemysli, myšleno etc.
The problem with this search is that some of the listed verbs are very often used in other
cases than in reporting sentences, and due to this fact the result is partially distorted. These are
above all the verbs říkat, pokračovat, prohlásit, začít, zavolat, uvažovat, and povídat. These
verbs are marked with asterisk for easier orientation.
It could be seen from the results given by the corpus that the rest of the verbs are used
mainly in reporting sentences, they are very often surrounded by inverted commas signalising
the direct speech. From the small sample of 50 entries in CNC (lemmatised říct) 35 of them
are used in reporting sentences of direct or indirect speech. Similar situation can be observed
in case of the verb odpovědět where even 40 entries out of 50 were the verbs used in reporting
sentences, the rest of the verbs show similar results (there are some exceptions of the verbs
that are used in other than reporting sentences, and they are marked with asterisk).
When searching for the verbs in CNC I wanted to prove that all of the listed verbs are
more or less frequently represented in Czech language, and thus the translators of the above
analysed books used appropriate expressions for translating the English original. This is not
true for all the cases, as it is also suggested above (said translated as sprásknout ruce is one of
the examples where the Czech translation is not appropriate).
I have made a table with Czech verbs that occur in analysed novels and total number of
their occurrences in CNC, but it is given only for illustration. The verbs are listed in a
descending line from the most frequent to the least frequent ones, all the obtained data that are
in the table were copied from CNC. The table on the right shows verbs and numbers of
occurrences in more recent translations given in the summary table.

64
Table No 17: Occurrences of analysed verbs in CNC compared to those in summary table
No of No of
Czech verb occurences Czech translation occurences
říci 156 302 říci/říct 1347
začít* 75 149 zeptat se 181
říkat si* 68 352 myslet/myslit 106
dodat 27 610 pomyslet/myslit si 92
pokračovat* 24 383 odpovědět/odpovídat 87
prohlásit* 24 080 říkat/si 57
zeptat se 14 978 pokračovat 44
odpovědět 14 965 ozvat se 43
myslet 13 976 dodat 40
uvažovat 11 629 zvolat 36
opakovat* 8 658 vykřiknout/kovat 35
poznamenat 8 127 opakovat/si 33
pravit 7 543 podotknout 27
volat 7 257 volat 26
povídat* 5 865 prohlásit 24
ozvat se 5 701 pronést 24
zavolat* 5 588 křičet 23
podotknout 3 819 za/šeptat 21
křičet 3 767 namítnout/tat 17
pomyslet 2 967 prohodit 15
za/šeptat 2 711 za/mumlat 13
vykřiknout/kovat 2 413 zavolat 13
namítnout/tat 2 410 poznamenat 12
zvolat 2 375 odseknout 11
pronést 2 251 povídat 9
odvětit 1 082 pravit 9
tázat se 890 začít 9
prohodit 817 otázat se 5
otázat se 810 za/mručet 4
za/mumlat 761 odvětit 2
odseknout 462 uvažovat 2
za/mručet 169 tázat se 0
The results from CNC should only be compared with more recent translations, because
the input data for CNC are also recent. When we compare these numbers with numbers
obtained in the summary table, the order of the verbs is very similar, as well as their incidence
in both compared “databases”. Still, some minor differences can be observed in case of the
verb dodat which is more frequently used in CNC that in the summary table, and also in
number of occurrences of říci in the CNC, which is also more frequent than říci in the
summary table. The translators try to avoid the verb říci to comply with lexical and stylistic
65
“requirements” of the Czech language, and thus the translation becomes more unnatural than
in situation when the translators sticks more to the English original.
In case of older translations some comparisons can also be made. In Jelínek et al. (1961)
which shows distribution of Czech verbs in written language we can find numbers of
occurrences in some chosen works of literature. Most of the texts used for this research were
written in 1930s – 40s. All the texts used for research were divided into eight groups
according to the type of each text. I use only group A – “beletrie” (fiction). The sample in this
group is not very big (only 487 200 words), but this is probably the only possibility to
compare verbs in older Czech translations with usual incidence of verbs in Czech fiction of
the same period.
The table below shows numbers of occurrences of each verb in Jelínek et al. (1961) on
the left. They are compared with the verbs from older Czech translations in the summary table
(the right part of the table), in a similar way as the more recent translations are compared with
findings from CNC. Each of the verbs is listed separately, i.e. perfective and imperfective
verbs are listed as two separate verbs. The same is true for the entries in CNC. This research
was obviously not focused on reporting elements, and that is why some of the verbs are also
frequently used in other cases, these would probably be similar to those verbs found in CNC
(see the verbs with asterisk in the previous table).
Table No 18: Occurrences of analysed verbs in Jelínek et al. (1961) compared to those in summary
table
No of No of
Czech verb occurences Czech translation occurences
říci 1287 říci/říct 1085
myslet 698 pravit 153
říkat si 593 odpovědět/odpovídat 87
začít 316 zvolat 73
povídat 213 otázat se 64
křičet 196 volat 51
odpovědět 184 zeptat se 49
pravit 176 pokračovat 38
volat 126 myslet/myslit 28
66
za/šeptat 116 říkat/si 27

ozvat se 109 odvětit 23
opakovat 106 pomyslet/myslit si 23
zeptat se 86 opakovat/si 22
zavolat 78 křičet 19
pokračovat 70 poznamenat 19
dodat 70 za/šeptat 15
vykřiknout/kovat 66 odseknout 13
pomyslet 60 prohodit 13
provést 41 tázat se 13
tázat se 38 dodat 12
prohlásit 34 prohlásit 12
uvažovat 29 vykřiknout/kovat 11
namítnout/tat 27 povídat 10
prohodit 25 za/mumlat 10
odseknout 24 namítnout/tat 9
za/mumlat 24 začít 9
zvolat 22 za/mručet 6
poznamenat 22 zavolat 5
odvětit 22 ozvat se 3
otázat se 18 pronést 2
podotknout 5 uvažovat 1
za/mručet 5 podotknout 0
The most striking difference in this table is probably the verb ozvat se which is much
more frequently used in original Czech fiction. Another example is the verb otázat se more
frequent in Czech translations than in original Czech fiction. The verbs that are considered
old-fashioned today are used in similar proportion, both in original Czech fiction and also in
Czech translations of similar age (e.g. the verb pravit).

67
7 Conclusions
The main concern was to see if there is any difference in older and more recent
translations, if the number of the Czech translation of say as říci/říct differs in case of older
and more recent translations, and if the ratio that occurs here could be valid for any other text
of fiction. This was to be proved in The Jungle Book and its two Czech translations that are at
disposal in Kačenka. The conclusions made here are only my hypothesis, because no serious
conclusions can be drawn from such a narrow range of input data.
The thesis starts with a short introduction of chosen topic and basic materials that were
necessary for the research. The next part deals with some theoretical issues concerning
reporting, reporting sentences and verbs, both in English and Czech languages.
Part three deals with six analysed diploma theses, methods used in these theses, and
descriptions of individual phenomena analysed, including a short description of each
individual thesis.
The next part thoroughly describes methods of data collection that I used for obtaining
data from analysed diploma theses. Part of this chapter is devoted to description of auxiliary
tables that are not shown in this thesis, but are saved on a CD-ROM – an electronic appendix,
and could be used for further analysis.
Part 5 briefly talks about The Jungle Book (the book analysed by me) and Kačenka
which is a corpus of mainly literary texts where The Jungle Book is presented. The method
used in my diploma thesis for examining The Jungle Book is further developed here together
with some partial results from this text.
Chapter 6 presents some results obtained both from analysed diploma theses and from
The Jungle Book. All the obtained data were put into the summary table, which is also not
presented in this thesis, but it is saved as an electronic appendix on a CD-ROM together with
68
auxiliary tables from chapter four. The summary table is too excessive, that is why only an
example is given in a printed version of this diploma thesis.
The results are mainly in the form of tables and charts for clearer illustration, and they
are provided with descriptions and short interpretation of results. These results are supported
by findings from Český národní korpus and the book Frekvence slov, slovních druhů a tvarů v
českém jazyce (1961).
The results might seem incomplete and superficial. This is due to the fact that not all
English and Czech verbs that appear in analysed diploma theses were used in the summary
table, but all of them can be found on a CD-ROM, so it is very easy to trace the exact results
on the CD, and make some further research on other phenomena than those given in this
thesis. The aim of this thesis was only to show certain trends and tendencies in translating
reporting verbs, and for the purpose of this aim, the data given in this thesis are in a sufficient
amount.
The main research was made with the data collected in the summary table. The total
number of all reporting elements researched was 5,214, out of which there were 247 other
cases (cases when the English verb was translated into Czech by other means – e.g. as a
noun), so the total number of all reporting verbs used in the research was 4,967.
For better orientation all the translations in the summary table are referred to as OLD
and NEW, this depends on the age of the translation, OLD translations are those made before
1960, NEW translations are those after 1960. I also call them older translations and more
recent translations, but in the tables the words OLD and NEW are used.
In case there is only one translation not much can be proved, and no trends or
tendencies could be traced. The situation is different in cases where two or more translations
are provided, and there the trend is obvious.

69
One of the main concerns when writing this thesis was to research how the English say
is translated into Czech. In all but one translation the percentage of říci is significantly lower
than that of say – the difference is 17.27% in older translations, and 26.02% in more recent
translations.
Older translations usually use lower number of all reporting elements in general, and
try to stick to the original as much as possible. More recent translations, on the other hand,
show much wider range of verbs and other reporting elements used – sometime many times
more verbs are used than in case of older translations.
More recent translations also show more shifts between semantic categories of verbs.
The division into different semantic categories was done by using different colours in the
summary table – each colour for one category.
The neutral verb say is translated by emotionally or dramatically much stronger verbs,
for example rozhořčit se, žadonit, žasnout.
J. Peprník (1969) describes the situation of reporting sentences in English novel of the
20th century:
“number of reporting verbs in the novels of the 20th century was lowered to ten to
fifteen reporting verbs. The verb say is very frequent. The high frequency of “say” in
case of some authors is an outcome of their tendency not to comment on the attitude
of the character uttering a direct speech, to say nothing in advance about the quality
of emotion they are experiencing, that is to say, they try to reduce the author’s
interference to a minimum.”
Looking at translations, the trend seems to be the other way round – to explain, to
expand the number of verbs, to add some more details to that information of the author as if
the translators would not expect the Czech readers to grasp the original idea.
The question is if this trend can be seen generally, or if it is only a matter of a few
books and translations. That is why I decided to work with Český národní korpus (Czech
National Corpus – CNC) to do some further research. This research was compared with the
70
data from more recent translations considering the age both the translations and texts in CNC.
The verb říci is apparently more frequently used in original Czech text than in Czech
translations. The translators were probably afraid of using the literal translation of the verb to
say more frequently, because it is not stylistically correct to use it very often in Czech. In
other respects the range of verbs used in Czech translations and their incidence in the texts
correspond with the usual situation in Czech original texts.
The same comparison was done for older translations using data from Frekvence
slov… This revealed some minor differences; the verb “otázat se” is not so frequently used in
Czech fiction as it is in older Czech translations. On the other hand, the expressions that are
considered to be old-fashioned today occur in similar ratio in both researched areas.
More phenomena can be observed in the summary table, that is why it is at disposal on
a CD-ROM as an electronic appendix, and anyone using this CD can find some more
information they are interested in.
This thesis only analyses data taken from the reporting sentences and does not concern
any other features of English original texts and their Czech translations.
71
8 Works Cited and Used
Parrott, Martin: Grammar for English Language Teachers, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge 2000
Thompson, Geoff: Cobuild English Guides – vol 5 Reporting, HarperCollins Publishers,
London 1994; citation by John Sinclair p. iv.
Thompson, Geoff: Cobuild English Guides – vol 5 Reporting, HarperCollins Publishers,
London 1994; p. v Introduction
Bečka, Josef Václav: Česká stylistika, Academia, Praha 1992, pp 275-76
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noviny, Praha 2002
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v českém jazyce, Státní pedagogické nakladatelství, Praha 1961
Peprník, Jaroslav: Reporting Phrases in English Prose, Brno Studies in English, VIII, 145-51,
Brno 1969
Kovandová, Miloslava: Methods of Speech Presentation in A. J. Cronin´s The Stars Look
Down and Its Czech Translations, unpublished diploma thesis, Brno 1984
Vodičková, Eva: Reporting Sentences in E.M.Forster´s Á Passage to India´ and Their
Treatment in Czech Translations, unpublished diploma thesis, Brno 1976
Slaná, Věra: Methods of Speech Presentation in Elizabeth Bowen´s “The Death of the Heart”
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72
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Masaryk University

Reporting Verbs in Translation

Supervisor: Ing. Mgr. Jiří Rambousek

Introductory or reporting sentences and expressions play a very important role in a

chapter concerning reporting verbs and their treatment during translation.

is an integral part of this diploma thesis.

2.1 Reporting Sentences

2.1.1 Reporting Sentences in English

Thompson (1994) describes the situation of reporting sentences in English:

piece of speech is being reported.

2.1.2 Reporting Sentences in Czech

2.2 Reporting Verbs

most of the reporting sentences.

2.2.1 Reporting Verbs in English

2.2.2 Reporting Verbs in Czech

2a. říci + the way of speech: breptat, mumlat, koktat, slabikovat

3 Analysed Diploma Theses

the end of each thesis:

Table No 1: Basic information about analysed diploma theses

Name of the English original Old Czech New Czech

Eva Vodičková Forster, E.M., 1926 Cesta do Indie,

Ondrej Mikolášik Woolf, Virginia, Paní Dallowayová,

Milena Pospíšilová Maugham, W.S., The Poslední půlšilink,

Bohumila Greene, Graham, Černý chlapec, Brightonský špalek,

arising from each of the diploma theses.

different methods was identical.

novel, they could possibly share some similar features.

3.1 Methods Used in Analysed Diploma Theses

“Methods of Speech-presentation in Virginia Woolf´s ´Mrs. Dalloway´ and Its Czech

Each case of a reporting sentence or expression is given separately on one excerption

excerption cards below.

translation from the year 1976 was considered to be new.

written on excerption cards are described below in chapters 3.1.1. – 3.1.5.

speech, but somebody´s thoughts that were never to be said aloud.

the excerpted material: paragraphs, distribution, media, semantic categories, and

abbreviations appear in all diploma theses:

FDS – free direct speech

IDS – indirect speech

FIDS – free indirect speech

UDS – unreported direct speech.

1 paragraph includes reporting sentence and direct speech only

2 reporting sentence plus two direct speeches of one speaker

3 reporting sentence plus two direct speeches of different speakers

4 reporting sentence plus direct speech plus author’s speech

E. M. Forster´s ´A Passage to India´ and Their Czech Translations”:

speech of the same speaker

speech of one of them

speech of the same speaker

unreported direct speech of the same speaker

unreported direct speech of one of them

speech of other speaker

speech of other speaker

speech of other speaker

unreported direct speech of other speaker

unreported direct speech of other speaker

brackets after the symbol (e.g. 6 /3/).

There were also secondary symbols completing the primary ones:

a.) before the primary symbol

0 – two or more reporting phrases in one sentence

7 – only RS in the paragraph, DS in the next paragraph

9 – RS appears after the beginning of at least the second sentence in DS

b.) after the primary symbols in the same paragraph

2 – UDS of the same speaker