Suchergebnisse

László Krasznahorkai is now the best-known Hungarian writer in the English-speaking world (perhaps in the world, period). But what is the precise nature of the relationship between his Hungarian works and their English translations that have been, on the whole, so well received in Britain and especially the USA? This article takes a very close linguistic look at one his shorter works, ÁllatVanBent, in a version by Ottilie Mulzet, co-recipient with George Szirtes of the translators' share of the 2015 Man Booker International Prize, which recognized Krasznahorkai for his "achievement in fiction on the world stage." I argue that Ottilie Mulzet's translation is in a hybrid English that in some places evidences a misunderstanding of the Hungarian, and in others claims to be a foreignized, "Krasznahorkai-English" that is, however, insufficiently justified by the original. More broadly, the article thus takes issue with the increasingly widely held view that the translator is not merely a co-author but enjoys a kind of authorial autonomy that implies that the translation can be judged without close reference to the original. As Krasznahorkai's known views on translation suggest the acceptance of this notion, he is therefore, to a degree, complicit in the partial misrepresentation (and hence misconstrual) of his work.

Introduction: The three papers in this cluster are very diverse as regards genre, focus and approach, but what their authors share is a passionate devotion to the promotion of Hungarian literature in the English-speaking world.

Sándor, Klára. 2017. A székely írás reneszánsza ['The Renaissance of the Székely Script']. Budapest: Typotext. 311 pp.

Kiséry, András, Zsolt Komáromy and Zsuzsanna Varga, eds. 2016. Worlds of Hungarian Writing - National Literature as Intercultural Exchange. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press and Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. 272 pp.

Sándor, Klára. 2014. A székely írás nyomában ('On the Tracks of the Székely Script'). Budapest: Typotext. 353 pp. Reviewed by Peter Sherwood, László Birinyi, Sr., Distinguished Professor of Hungarian Language and Culture (Emeritus), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Reviewed by Peter Sherwood

Reviewed by Peter Sherwood

Peter Sherwood taught at the University of London for 35 years before being appointed the first László Birinyi, Sr., Distinguished Professor of Hungarian Language and Culture in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2008. His main research interests are in linguistics but he has also published widely in the field of Hungarian culture, including translations from the Hungarian: most recently, essays by Béla Hamvas (Trees, 2006), a novel by Miklós Vámos (The Book of Fathers, 2006, 2009), and a short story by Dezső Kosztolányi(http://asymptotejournal.com, 2011).