Standardizace zdola vs. shora: Jak se z Charlese III. stal Karel III.
Bottom-Up vs Top-Down Standardization: How Charles III Became Karel III in Czech

Summary/Abstract: The paper deals with the standardization process of the regnal name of the new King Charles III in Czech. It documents the fact that leading Czech internet media at first referred to the new king in the original form, Charles III, but very soon began to call him Karel III, using the Czech form of the English name Charles. The paper places this process into the broader context of translating foreign personal names into Czech and investigates whether European Monarchs are usually referred to by their original names or a translated form of their names in contemporary written Czech (as evidenced by the SYN corpus series). The central focus of the paper lies in the hour-byhour detailed reconstruction of how it happened that the Czech internet media ceased quite suddenly to call the new king Charles III, beginning to call him Karel III. The paper proceeds to discuss this process in the context of language standardization theories, showing that although authorities (linguists, predominantly from the Czech Language Institute) explicitly refused to recommend (“from above”) either the original, or a translated variant of the name, internet media representatives interpreted their statements in favour of the translated version and started to call the new king Karel III in Czech.

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