03/02/2025
Zenny K. Sadlon was born and raised behind the Iron Curtain, in Czechoslovakia. He escaped in 1972 after passing his matriculation examination at SPŠE in Prague Na příkopě. He was not accepted to study at ČVUT (Czech Tech), since he had a record in his personnel file stating that he "does not have a positive attitude towards socialism". However, he was determined to leave, regardless of whether the nomenclature communists allowed him to study at the university or not.
He spent seven months as a refugee in Beirut, Lebanon. In May 1973, he was finally dispatched with the appropriate visa to the U.S.A., where he was accepted as a refugee with the right to permanent residence and work. Thanks to the theoretical training in the field of electrical engineering, he was able to learn the trade of an electrician while working.
While studying political science, philosophy and business management, he worked as a dishwasher, waiter, insurance agent, typesetter and translator of agency reports.
Having married, becoming a naturalized citizen, and leaving the electrician's trade, he had worked as Voice of America's Czechoslovak Service's International Radio Broadcaster for 15 years. He had been a State Department Language Services contractor translating and interpreting contractor for 15 years, serving top US Government officials (The U.S. President, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. Attorney General, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Commander in Chief, NORAD, etc.), private and public corporations, NGOs, and private citizens.
He served in the United States Navy Reserve with two units attached to the Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-69) nuclear aircraft carrier from 1989-1996 as Journalist Petty Officer Second Class and was honorably discharged.
He worked for USEPA initially as a Community Involvement Coordinator in the Region 5 Public Affairs Office in Chicago, and then as a Program Analyst in Information Services Office of the Resources Division. There he focused his efforts especially in the field of empowering responsible local officials and ordinary citizens using geospatial web-based systems in the decision-making process with regard to the resulting impact on environment and human health.
Currently, he's readying the remaining two volumes of The Centennial Edition of his translation of Švejk for publication.
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Could you be interested in the untold story of the curiously invisible newest English translation of The Good Soldier Švejk, the only Czech title on the New York Public Library's list of 100 Most Important Books of the 21st Century? (Did anybody ever tell you about Švejk's Holocaust Connection?)
Readers familiar with Hašek’s satirical Czech novel of war and survival only from earlier English translations will likely be jolted by Sadlon’s version…
… Hašek’s masterpiece is revealed, in Sadlon’s handling, as a book of greater bite, heft, and complexity.
The result is challenging and provocative, a century on.
Takeaway: Illuminating translation of the human complexity of a Czech classic.
(BookLife is Publishers Weekly's site dedicated to the world of Self-Publishing. BookLife provides professional reviews by a Publishers Weekly reviewer, who will remain anonymous.)
Despite the often mentioned literary influences, The Good Soldier Švejk is a novel that is far more inspired by Jaroslav Hašek's real life than any Cervantes or Rabelais. His detailed narratives of events ranging from mealtime preparations and drinking binges to religious rituals, the Catechism, and confinement in a lunatic asylum are mostly based on his personal experiences. Švejk's route to the war front largely corresponds to the author's journey to the battlefield in Galicia during the early days of July 1915. Hašek 's diverse background and immense knowledge is obvious throughout the novel, bringing such a strong flavor of validity to a work o fiction that it can, to some degree, be read as a historical document.
The reading public (mostly in Europe) is cyclically being served run-of-the-mill basic presentations of Švejk, replete with Lada's colorful pictures, using excerpts from the first unabridged 1973 English translation by Sir Cecil Parrot. It always appears that the writer and editor were unaware of the now 27 year old saga of The Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier Švejk During the World War the newest English translation of Jaroslav Hašek's Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka za světové války, the so-called "Chicago version":
Jomar Hønsi, President of the World Society of Jaroslav Hašek: "I have been through five translations in various languages. This new translation by Zenny Sadlon is no doubt the best there is in English."
The first reaction to the manuscript of the first volume, i.e. Book One, was provided by a Chicago VA hospital black American microbiologist Ruth Cooper, who would sit around a table at lunch with her coworkers while reading, and pass the pages along. And here is her 4:38 audio report from 1997.
The Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier Švejk During the World War, published in three volumes, both as paperbacks and digital Kindle versions, have been available for many years both to retail customers via AuthorHouse and Amazon platforms, and to booksellers, libraries and academia via the Ingram Distribution Catalog. But Book One appeared first as an electronic EVY format file on the Internet in 1998:
Here are some of the comments by readers and critics of the latest, quarter of a century old first edition of the "Chicago version" of Švejk:
"...it is a relief to get to page 752 in the clunky 1970's translation by Sir Cecil Parrott, once the British ambassador to Czechoslovakia but no literary stylist. ... [it] has such stilted language that reading it is a slog ... A more recent translation of the first volume, by Zenny K. Sadlon and Mike Joyce, is far more fluent." - Caryn James, Critic at Large, The New York Times
"Far better than the Parrot. I can read the original Czech so much obliged to your translation! ... When I have used your translation, I have done so in league with Parrot's and made my own notes as to the translation choices. It's a tough book to translate, clearly." - Malynne Sternstein, Associate Professor of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Chicago, Director of the Masters Program in the Humanities
"... which translation you read will give you a different experience with the titular character, and the story in general. In short, the Sadlon translation gives the reader a novel with extraordinarily more depth and layers than the Parrot translation. ... Parrot’s vernacular obscures the subtleties and nuances that make a huge difference in what Hašek was communicating to the reader. I can’t state this enough, the Sadlon edition is a much different book that unmasks a significantly more intricate picture ..." - Corto, on GoodReads
"Just wanted to drop you a line and tell you how much I enjoyed your translation of Book One. I see where the English might have a problem with the odd colloquialism here or there, but boy, does it read a lot faster than the Parrott translation!" - Karl J. Paloucek, Senior Writer, Tribune Media Services
"We are trying to get the best translations of the books we choose and were very happy with what a nice job you did on Svejk, getting across the intelligence and subtlety and avoiding making it farce." - Gwen Willems, Board of Directors, Czech and Slovak Cultural Center of Minnesota
The Chicago Tribune ran an article about our efforts on the cover of its Tempo section on August 9, 2000 August 9, 2000.
Portland Oregonian followed on December 24, 2000.
As professor Charles Sabatos noted twenty years later, “…despite the translator’s active attempt to replace Parrott as the authoritative translation, this version reached only a limited readership.” It is still true in 2024, a quarter of a century since it was published.
The paperback copy of The Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier Švejk During the World War, Book One (The Centennial Edition) was exhibited at the oldest and biggest book fair in the world, the 2024 Frankfurt International Book Fair in Germany, October 16-20.
To learn more about the book visit htttps://SvejkCentral.com.
First get "svejked" [shvaked]. Then visit the Svejk Central.
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