Winnie-the-Pooh is the most popular children's book in the world. This translation of Winnie-the-Pooh was first published in 1958 in Prague in what was then Czechoslovakia.
This translation of this book into Czech́ is by Hana Skoumalová. She was the translator of more than twenty books from English into Czech including books by Geoffrey Chaucer, Walter Scott, Virginia Wolff, Gertrude Stein and Lewis Carroll. She was born Hana Skoumalová, roz. Duxová, on July 23, 1903 in Český Brod in the Czech Republic. She died on October 18, 1999 in Prague. The illustrator of the Czech edition of this book was Jaromír Zápal. He was the writer and illustrator of several children's books. He was born on March 18, 1923 in the small town of Brandýs nad Orlicí in the Republic of Czechoslovakia. He died on December 5, 1984 in Prague. This translation of Winnie-the-Pooh follows the original book closely, but does add the translator's own minor variations. Czech́ is a language read and spoken by eleven million people. It is a West Slavic language of the Czech-Slovak group. It serves as the official language of the Czech Republic. Czech is closely related to Slovak. Czech is a member of the West Slavic sub-branch of the Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family. This branch includes Polish, Kashubian, Upper and Lower Sorbian and Slovak.
The purpose of this book is to help Czech́ speakers learn English and to help English speakers learn Czech́. To have a translation as close as possible to the original is the most useful. The name for Winnie-the-Pooh in Czech́ is Medvídek Pú or Pú for short. The Rabbit is Králíček. Christopher Robin is Krystůfek Robin. Ishi Press has reprinted translations of Winnie-the-Pooh into 35 languages thus far. We have published it in Afrikaans, Albanian, Armenian, Bengali, Bulgarian, Cebuano, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Esperanto, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Persian, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Yiddish, Hindi, Urdu, Khowar, Kalasha and Latin. We have six more languages lined up. This translation into Czech́ is part of project to translate Winnie-the-Pooh into other languages. The idea is children need to learn to read at an early age and the best way to teach them to read is to provide reading materials that they find interesting. Children around the world laugh when they see Winnie-the-Pooh saying and doing silly things. Since Winnie-the-Pooh is the most popular children's book world-wide, translating this book into the different languages of the world will be conducive to teaching children to read in those languages.
