Translating Russian Modal Predicatives. The Case of možno in Czech and Polish Literary Texts

Abstract

This article examines the translation of the Russian modal predicative možno into Polish and Czech on the basis of a trilingual corpus of contemporary literary texts. The corpus comprises 2,627 sentences containing modal predicatives, 371 of which include možno. The study compares dictionary equivalents with actual translation practices and analyses the grammatical strategies used to express non-agentive modality. The findings show that, alongside core equivalents such as można, je možné, and dát se, translators employ personal modal verbs, reflexive constructions, paraphrastic reformulations, and, in some cases, omission of the modal component. Polish tends to preserve impersonal constructions, whereas Czech exhibits greater structural variability and more frequent context-sensitive reinterpretation. The study demonstrates that dictionary equivalents provide only a partial account of translation practice and highlights the value of corpus-based analysis for refining lexicographic descriptions of modal expressions.