Dnes už klasická povídka Eduarda Basse z roku 1922 vychází nyní i v anglickém překladu. Autorkou dodnes aktuálního převodu, který se vyznačuje tvůrčím a hravým přístupem k Bassovu jazyku a zároveň věrností stylu originálu a době, v níž vznikl, je Ruby Hobling, předmluvu napsal Mark Corner. Jedno z nejslavnějších děl české prózy vypráví příběh otce Klapzuby, který ze svých jedenácti synů vychová fenomenální fotbalový tým. Můžeme jej číst jako oslavu ducha fair play, houževnatosti a sportovního nadšení i jako dobově aktuální hříčku, lehce ironizující opojení českou kopanou. Anglické vydání navazuje na českou verzi v grafickém provedení Zdeňka Zieglera a s poutavými barevnými ilustracemi Jiřího Gruse, která získala v roce 2008 na 18. Podzimním knižním veletrhu v Havlíčkově Brodě ocenění za Nejkrásnější knihu v oblasti beletrie.

Foreword
From the moment it was published, in 1922, Klapzubova jedenáctka (The Chattertooth Eleven) was a huge success, running through over thirty editions. It was made into a film directed by Ladislav Brom as early as 1938. Seventy years on it continues to be very popular. It is no surprise that Divadlo Minor, a famous theatre in Prague, as recently as 2005 decided to bring the book to the stage in a production directed by Petr Forman, son of the famous film director Miloš Forman. Divadlo Minor traditionally focused on children, but in the last few years it has sought to draw in adults as and produce plays for the whole family. What could be more appropriate than the story of Klapzuba (Chattertooth) and his eleven sons, sub-titled 'a tale of a Czech football team for boys young and old'? Indeed the book has always been a great favourite among young and older readers alike - which in modern parlance would mean it has that crossover potential, something publishers are always looking for.
The Chattertooth Eleven take on all comers and defeat them, first at home and then abroad. In order to do so they have to do much more than show footballing talent. With one side they have to come out onto the pitch looking like Michelin Men with huge leg-pads, because the strategy of their opponents (Barcelona, as it happens) is to commit enough fouls to disable them. In fact the Chattertooth Eleven scrupulously maintain fair play during their time at the top, breaking with tradition only when faced with cannibals as opposition ('Cheating is cheating and the world's a dirty place. But with God's help we shall escape the frying-pan'). Bar the need to escape the bubbling pot, the Chattertooth team believes in working hard, fair play, mucking in and being true to one another. If the Crown Prince of Brazil (the King of England becomes the Emperor of Brazil in the translation, perhaps for reasons of wartime delicacy) wants to play with them, then he has to sweat for it like anyone else (besides, 'the best King is the one who has the fewest servants'). The team must never become too mechanical, losing their flair. They should never forget that football is a game, not a life (a boy from a village team who refuses to play against them declares 'we play for honour. You play for money'). They are warned of the dangers of complacency. And as for girls, in the face of whose charms 'some kind of peculiar magic seemed to have enveloped the young people,' they should be careful not to fall for the ones who are only out to enjoy a vicarious fame.
The author, Eduard Bass, was born in Prague in 1888 and died in 1946, living through Nazi occupation and surviving it by just nine months. His versatile career included working as a journalist, editor and cabaret director as well as a writer. It is no surprise that his most famous work, apart from Klapzubova jedenátcka, was Cirkus Humberto (1941), about the life of a circus troupe. Bass was well-known for being good company, but humour travels through languages with more difficulty than anything else. Only if you know that in Czech restaurants people order not a 'small' or 'large' wine but 'one tenth' or 'two tenths' (jedno deci/dvě deci) of a litre, does it make sense that Bass asked for a large wine (two tenths) because 'one might feel lonely and abandoned'.
This translation by Ruby Hobling is very much a product of its period (it was published in 1943, with drawings by Joseph Čapek), but that is one of its delights. It is perfectly readable - indeed like all the best translations it doesn't read like one. Its vocabulary might be uncommon (boys do not now fall out 'on account of a petticoat') but it is certainly not unrecognisable. In the first few pages we read that when the boys have to think brains are racked rather than loaves used, while they 'raise Cain' when they complain. The lankiest is a 'maypole of a lad', their trainer looks 'as if he didn't know how many beans make two' and their first opponents have 'a high-falutin name'. When they get over-excited there is a 'general scrimmage' (very St. Trinian's). All these expressions are used in contemporary English, but taken together they convey an atmosphere and reveal a style of mid-twentieth century comic writing. One can imagine P.G.Wodehouse's Gussy Finknottle having problems knowing how many beans make two, while Bertie would be highly wary of anyone with a high-falutin name in the Drones club. On the other hand he would love a spot of fresh country air around Nether Buckwheat, the beautifully chosen name of the village from which the Chattertooth Eleven come ('Lower' Buckwheat would have been quite wrong as a translation of 'Dolni': think Nether as in 'Netherlands'). Readers will enjoy the wonderful line when the boys are hauled before the inhabitants of Cannibal Island and find themselves facing 'a circle of pedestalled gods with mouths agape,' not to mention the monosyllabic conversation on board ship that cements a lifelong friendship between Old Chattertooth and an Anglo-Indian colonel.
It is difficult to discover very much about the life of Ruby Hobling, but we know that she graduated from Somerville College, Oxford and then went on to teach English at a school in London. She turns up again teaching in Poland and she may well have spoken Polish, Czech and German, moving between the various parts of Central Europe in a way that was possible in the 1920s and early 1930s and only again in the 1990s after both fascism and communism had finally been cleared away.
We also know that she translated at least one other book, whose authors were also part of a complicated Central European mix. In 1947 Nicholson and Watson published a book called Warrior of God on the great mediaeval Czech reformer Jan (John) Hus, who was burnt at the stake in 1415. In the authors' note Paul Roubiczek (who later went on to be a very well-known philosopher of existentialism) and Joseph Kalmer explain that they left Czechoslovakia just before the outbreak of war and that all their notes were lost in transit. Kalmer had left Austria for Czechoslovakia in 1938 after the 'Anschluss' with Austria. Now the occupation of Bohemia was forcing him to leave again. The two of them went to London, but all they could take with them was the manuscript. They therefore apologise for the absence of a bibliography while they thank Ruby Hobling 'for her invaluable help and inexhaustible patience in the translation of this book'. It is history written with fervour - 'Hus had looked death in the face; the flames could not frighten him even though they were already consuming his books.' Doubtless there was something in the story of the martyr that could have strengthened the resolve of a Chattertooth, and that in turn may be part of the reason why this book was chosen to be published in wartime London by 'The Czechoslovak', based in Fursecroft in London's George Street. The name still remains but as a block of flats; during the war it was used for several ministries including the Czechoslovak Research Institute and was one of the places used by the Czech government-in-exile.
Old Chattertooth laments the fact that nations don't produce football teams instead of armies, 'I wish to God as it were so, and then Bohemia would be a great power'. When this book was translated into English Bohemia was busy simply surviving, but the rules of life (and, if you ignore the offside rule, the rules of football) have remained much the same in the sixty-five years since. No one will find it hard to enjoy this in the twenty-first century as a tale for all time, even though Planička of Slavia has now become Čech of Chelsea.

Mark Corner