This prompted me to check, and the first translation in French was in fact the translation of a translation of a translation [1]. No wonder it strayed from the

This prompted me to check, and the first translation in French was in fact the translation of a translation of a translation [1]. No wonder it strayed from the original! The English translation went through similar ordeals [2]. The more recent ones are presumably more faithful: > The first translation by Paul Selver was heavily abridged, reducing the novel to about two thirds of its original length. Selver's translation also bowdlerized the original text, omitting paragraphs and occasionally pages that may have seemed offensive; despite this he has been praised for preserving some of the tension in the work between Literary and Common Czech. [1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Aventures_du_brave_soldat_%C5%A0vejk#%C3%89ditions_fran%C3%A7aises https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Aventures_du_brave_soldat_... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Soldier_%C5%A0vejk#Translations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Soldier_%C5%A0vejk#Tr...