[T]he book is nearly unknown in America. Mike Joyce and Zenny Sadlon think that's because none of the book's virtues, beyond its satire, are evident in the only English translation currently available. That translation was done by Cecil Parrott, a British ambassador to Czechoslovakia in the 1960s. "Have you ever seen a diplomat, British or American, who actually spoke the language?" asks Joyce. Sadlon, a professional translator and interpreter whose native language is Czech, suspects that Parrott had a secretary or someone with a passing knowledge of both languages translate the original into English before he polished it up. "There were just too many mistakes," he says disgustedly, "and too many liberties taken."

Joyce and Sadlon became friends while working at the Voice of America bureau on South Dearborn. Joyce, who was born and raised in Cicero, had owned and tended a tavern for years before becoming a reporter. Sadlon who'd come to Chicago in the early 70s, became a journalist when he joined the navy. Later he worked a series of odd jobs and studied at the University of Illinois at Chicago before becoming a Czech correspondent for VOA.

Sadlon had known since he was a student in Czechoslovakia that The Good Soldier Švejk was a classic, but he reread it in English and doubted his memory of it. He thought Parrott's translation was a different book and wanted a second opinion. He knew Joyce was a voracious reader. "It took me three years until I gave Mike the book," he says. "I was afraid to give it to him because-see, my wife is an insomniac, and when I started reading Švejk to her several different times, guaranteed, within 20 minutes she'd be dead to the world. This is a testimony to how bad the book is. Finally I said, 'Mike, just go through it and let me know what you think.'"

"I got through the dreck and saw there were some sparks in there," says Joyce. "Parrott read like a hackneyed 19th-century British army novel."

Sadlon showed Joyce some specific places where the translation was way off. Finally Joyce told him, "Well, I don't want to run your life, but you've got to retranslate this thing."
ESSAY:CAN THIS BOOK BE SAVED? (Zak Mucha, Chicago Reader)

This new translation and rendition of The Good Soldier Švejk is our attempt to make this Central European masterwork accessible to the modern reader of English. There have been two other attempts and both are, in our opinion, failures in both practice and spirit. The only attempt at a complete English translation has often been criticized, by those who have read the novel in another language, as a clumsy rendition that left The Good Soldier Švejk reading like a hackneyed novel about the British army in the 19th century. We consider this both an injustice to Jaroslav Hašek and a tragedy for those denied the insight and enjoyment of a hilarious and rollicking modern classic.

The book’s central character is a quintessential, working-class citizen-soldier, often abused by the fates and the forces of the Austrian empire. In both civilian and military life, Švejk lives by his wits. His chief ploy is to appear witless to those in authority. In fact, he is fond of pointing out that he has been certified to be an imbecile by an official military medical commission. Consequently, he reasons, he cannot be held responsible for his sometimes questionable actions because he’s a certified nitwit!

Yet, Švejk is not a coward, nor is he indolent. He is drafted back into the army as cannon fodder to die for an Emperor he despises. His method of subverting the Austrian Empire is to carry out his orders to an absurd conclusion. His is an inspired resistance. He holds the foreign authorities, and their Czech fellow travelers, accountable for their ridiculous platitudes and pseudo-patriotic blather.
    -INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW ENGLISH EDITION

švejkovat impf

to protest against an absurd command or obligation by means of even more absurdly punctilious and zealous performance; act or play like Švejk [from 1st half of 20th c.]
-švejkovat (Wiktionary)