ntiate its role before and after the forming of a language standard — in the first case dialect functions as a literary language, in the second it is but a specific means of expression. From that point of view the Croatian literary situation is rather complicated. The present Croatian language standard was formed during the 18th and 19th centuries, while in the previous periods three types of dialects were used. After the stabilization of the language standard in the 20th century, a rich dialect literature, Kajkavian and Čakavian, developed and is istill developing, whereas the standard language literature, because of stylistic purposes, uses dialect interpolations and couleur locale perhaps more frequently than any other European literature. Bearing in mind the specific situation of the Croatian literary expression, where dialects have played and still are playing such a prominent and important role, since they are present also in topwriters’ creations, it is quite clear that we cannot ignore them even in translations. The purpose of this paper is to bring out some specific problems and to show some possibilities of their solution in translating: a) literary texts written in dialect before the formation of a uniform standard language; b) literary texts written in dialect after the formation of the standard.
