Literatura

The Role of Memetics in Cultural Translation

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When a children’s book becomes known around the world, its translation plays a key role, not only in making the book accessible to the target language reader, but also in bridging the gap between the target language culture and the global literary phenomenon. The translation can thus contribute to further interpretations, adaptations, and allusions of the work, which shape the literary tradition in different genres and cultures. The aim of this paper is to approach cultural translation from a new, memetic perspective. Although translation decisions are not consciously made for the purpose of meme transfer, successful meme transfer can mean successful translation. This paper explores how local memes become global, the challenges of meme transfer, and the outcomes of successful intercultural translation. Through examples from children’s literature, I illustrate the extent to which Hungarian readers are able to relate to the cultural context of the original works and to the global cultural impression.

“A est(erházy) A.”

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The issue of navigating between languages and cultures is a recurring motif in the oeuvre of Péter Esterházy, most notably reflected in his frequent use of the phrase “untranslatable wordplay”, which highlights the challenges inherent in translating specific textual instances, puns, or cultural allusions. In his only translation endeavor—the Hungarian version of the German children’s story Esterházy — eine Hasengeschichte by Irene Dische and Hans Magnus Enzensberger — Esterházy constructs a performative textual space in which various modes of engaging with the process of translation become observable. Through the translator’s playful asides embedded within the Hungarian version, a dynamic simultaneity is created between the translated text and the act of translation itself. Not only does the translated work become visible, but so, too, do the dilemmas of its creation and the translator’s thought process. This study, employing the translation studies concepts of transfiction and transcreation, examines the translation strategy underpinning Esterházy’s choices as a translator. Based on the analysis, it can be concluded that a transfictional reading of the Hungarian version foregrounds the interdependence of cultural translation and interlingual translation — so-called “proper translation”— while emphasizing the transformative and transcreative dimensions of the translation process, along with the creative agency and visibility of the translator. Esterházy’s translation practice can be situated within the shifting position of the translator in postcolonial cultural studies, where translator intervention is no longer viewed negatively. In acknowledging cultural distance and asymmetry, the translator assumes a creative role in the literary work and may even consciously assert their own visibility within the translated text.

Some Comments on the Universe of Names in the Literary Works of Veza Canetti

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In the introduction to the present thesis, I present an overview of the fundamental concepts of literary onomastics relevant to my study is provided. This is followed by a detailed analysis of the names of characters and locations in Veza Canetti's short stories and novel, with a particular emphasis on their characterising, text-forming and constellation-creating functions. The analysis will also highlight the associative and interpretative domains of aptronyms (characterizing names) and their constitutive systems. The text will also illustrate the characteristics of the concept of naming in the works of Canetti Veza through some examples, and outline the dilemmas that arise in the translation of names into Hungarian.The hypothesis that the coherent concept of naming (or rather of namelessness) is the essential basis for the creation of the textual world in Veza Canetti's works is also put forward.

The Translatability of Implied Knowledge

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The most elementary part of the translation process is the transcoding of the cognitive data embedded in the source text, i.e. the linguistic message. In the case of literary texts, this is complemented by additional tasks such as the operation of genre codes and poetic function, and the assertion of historical and sociological indices. Moreover, a literary text always relies to some extent on the (primary) cultural context surrounding its writing and publication, which necessarily differs from the (secondary) context of readings that take place in another time, space and language. A significant part of the information contained in the primary context, depending on the distance, is always missing from the secondary context. It is not only the conventions of literary translation that limit the possibilities for the literary translator to explicitly replace this information, but also the well-established fear that such implementations may undermine the autonomous structure of the literary work. This paper reviews the occurrences of and possible solutions to this challenge, relying primarily on the examples of James Joyce’s Ulysses.

Early Text Versions of György Faludy’s Villon Ballades

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Although George Faludy is known in the public consciousness as the “Hungarian translator of Villon”, in recent decades research has reached a consensus that Faludy’s Villon ballads are not all translations, paraphrases (re-writings) or adaptations of Villon poems, but are often independent works using motifs from the original Villon poems. Several poems are based on Paul Zech’s adaptation of Villon, and in one case, on a Bertolt Brecht poem written in the Villon style. Before the first Officina book edition in 1937, Faludy published a significant part of Villon’s ballads in newspapers and magazines between 1933 and 1937: thirteen of the sixteen poems in the first edition had been published earlier. In the absence of an original manuscript, these press editions represent the text version closest to the time of their original creation, and it is therefore worth comparing the press and book editions. No one has made such a comparison before. On the one hand, the comparison reflects the efforts of censorship: the omission of lines and words in magazines. The small changes may also result from fluctuations in spelling: in the journal we can still find Faludy’s spelling, but not in the volume. Finally, the changes, which show significant content and stylistic differences, may have served several purposes: the book versions are typically more lyrical and symbolic compared to the often more powerful, concrete first text versions.

Multilingualism as the Legibility of Transculturality

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In the last decade, research on literary multilingualism has mainly analysed the distinction between latent and explicit representations, and in the case of explicit representations, the mode, function and poetic implications of code switching and code mixing representations have often been at the forefront. This paper focuses on explicit forms of literary multilingualism, not on language mixing or language shifting in the speech of characters, but on the textual functions of code mixing in narrative texts, which both create and mediate transcultural situations. The chosen text is Thomas Perle’s short story cycle wir gingen weil alle gingen, which brings aspects of multilingualism in relation to Romanian, Hungarian and German to the fore at the level of the narrower (family) and the wider (regional) community. The chosen German text shows differences in the representation and use of multilingualism compared to many contemporary texts, since the words and expressions of the foreign language, the other language, are integrated into the text much more organically – often due to the techniques or lack of translation – than in the case of novel or short story texts, where foreign language elements are dissolved at every occurrence. The paper will attempt to examine this phenomenon in detail.

The florilegium of decay

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An interpretation of digital literary studies

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The end of a chapter

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