Workshop Leaders

Workshop Leader German-Czech

Radovan Charvát

After his studies at Technical University in Prague (1972) where he was active as a mathematician at the data processing center in Prague (until 1984), he became a freelance translator and journalist. In 1987 he spent one year in Africa. From 1989 to 1990 he studied German, English and American Studies at the J.W. Goethe University in Frankfurt (literary theory, German literature of  the 19^th century, slang in American English). Since 1989 he is a freelance translator from German and English into Czech. He is divorced and has one child named Jan (*1985)

He translates screenplays into German, conducts simultaneous translations of films on TV and movies, and newspaper articles (Literární noviny, Lidové noviny).

Cooperation with: Austrian Cultural Forum Prague, ARD Studio Prague, Goethe Institute Prague (readings), Suhrkamp Publishers Frankfurt, Hanser Publications Munich, Aufbau Publishers Berlin and Volvox Globator, Prostor, Paseka, Opus and Argo (all in Prag).

Workshop Leader Czech-German

Kristina Kallert
Foto © 2013. All rights reserved worldwide for FDDO.

Born in 1962 in Weissenburg, after she studied Eastern Slavic Studies and German Studies in Regensburg and St. Petersburg she went to the Masaryk University in Brno as a DAAD lector. There she successfully completed her state examination in 1998 in the field of Czech language and literature.

At the beginning of her translation activities are her translation of Ivan Cankar’s Nina (1906/1999) a translation from Slovenian and already from Czech Bartoloměj Daniel’s Geschichte der Roma in Böhmen, Mähren und der Slowakei [The History of Roma in Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia] (1994/1998), the life work of the first Roma author of the Czech Republic. Kristina Kallert concentrates on works of fiction but increasingly devotes herself to translating humanities publications – in both areas older as well as contemporary authors are represented. The latest published translations are J.M. Langer: Die neun Tore [The Nine Goals] (1937/2012), M. Ryšavý: Dimitrij der Heiler [Dmitry, the Healer] (2010/2012),  K. Čapková, M.Frankl: Unsichere Zuflucht. Die Tschechoslowakei und ihre Flüchtlinge aus NS-Deutschland und Österreich 1933-1938 [Uncertain Asylum: The Czech Republic and its Refugees from Nazi Germany and Austria from 1939 to 1938] (2010/2012).

Kristina Kallert has collaborated on the Czech library (B. Němcová, J. Zeyer, J. Karásek ze Lvovic, J. Jungmann, V. Kramář), she translates for the Dresden Poetry Prize and will contribute to the Vladimir Holan edition provided by U. Heftrich.

In Leipzig, Tübingen and Znojmo she has lead translator workshops numerous times. In 2004 she received the Leipzig Fähre Prize for literary translation, she was an awardee of a stipend at the Literary Colloquium in Berlin (2004) and the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) in Vienna (Paul Celan Fellowship, 2007); in winter of 2010 she was a translator in residence in Tübingen. She is a part-time lector for Czech at the Institute for Slavic Studies of the University of Regensburg since 2005.