Hungarian Studies in London
The next text to be discussed in the ongoing translation series is an excerpt from Péter Esterházy’s 1995 novel Egy nő, translated into English by Judith Sollosy. The parallel text is here.
We meet at 6pm on Thursdays at the bar commonly referred to as the Roman Bar, on the first floor of the Imperial Hotel on Russell [...]
We discussed the interwar népi-urbánus vita, with a view to understanding its context, semantics and contemporary articulation. Commonly referred to in English as the dispute between (agrarian) populists and urbanists (or ‘metropolitans’), and undoubtedly a major component of public political discourse since 1989, we began by reaching consensus on what it was not: a clash [...]
Madga Szabó’s 1960 novel Disznótor is a remarkable exercise in minimal reference tracking. Reference tracking – who is being referred to – can cause problems for many students (and translators) of Hungarian. Because Hungarian lacks gender-specific personal pronouns and grammatical gender, the student might, for years, encounter trouble deciphering whether the person being spoken about [...]
- Megvan a kés!
- Hol?
- A hátamban.
Jenő Rejtő, Piszkos Fred, a kapitány
We discussed ways in which a literary language might grow through translation, with reference to translations of works of hard-boiled fiction by Dashiell Hammett, Ross Macdonald, Chuck Palahniuk and others, together with one work of ‘high’ literature. Unsentimental narratives of violence and sleuthing can [...]