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On the uniformity of literary translations in postwar Hungary

Abstract

This chapter opens with a brief historical overview of the reasons behind the striking uniformity of literary translations from Spanish into Hungarian (scarcity of translators, asymmetrical cultural relations, strong prewar translation canon), and then offers a detailed picture of the ideology, theory, and practice of translating literature under communism. A great number of examples and statistics, taken mainly from modern Latin American fiction, suggests why translations played a key role in promoting this fiction, why uniformity was inevitable, and finally, why planned art is always old fashioned.

Abstract

This chapter opens with a brief historical overview of the reasons behind the striking uniformity of literary translations from Spanish into Hungarian (scarcity of translators, asymmetrical cultural relations, strong prewar translation canon), and then offers a detailed picture of the ideology, theory, and practice of translating literature under communism. A great number of examples and statistics, taken mainly from modern Latin American fiction, suggests why translations played a key role in promoting this fiction, why uniformity was inevitable, and finally, why planned art is always old fashioned.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Acknowledgments vii
  4. Notes on contributors ix
  5. Introduction 1
  6. Part I. Contexts
  7. Shifting contexts 19
  8. Nation and translation 33
  9. Vasilii Zhukovskii as translator and the protean Russian nation 55
  10. Romania as Europe’s translator 79
  11. Translating India, constructing self 97
  12. The water of life 117
  13. Translation trouble 137
  14. Part II. Subtexts
  15. Between the lines 149
  16. Translation theory and cold war politics 171
  17. The poetics and politics of Joseph Brodsky as a Russian poet-translator 187
  18. Squandered opportunities 205
  19. Meaningful absences 219
  20. Part III. Pretexts
  21. Translated by Goblin 235
  22. “No text is an island” 249
  23. Russian dystopia in exile 265
  24. Between cosmopolitanism and hermeticism 277
  25. The other polysystem 295
  26. Translation as condition and theme in Milan Kundera’s novels 317
  27. Index 323
Contexts, Subtexts and Pretexts
This chapter is in the book Contexts, Subtexts and Pretexts
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.89.16sch

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Acknowledgments vii
  4. Notes on contributors ix
  5. Introduction 1
  6. Part I. Contexts
  7. Shifting contexts 19
  8. Nation and translation 33
  9. Vasilii Zhukovskii as translator and the protean Russian nation 55
  10. Romania as Europe’s translator 79
  11. Translating India, constructing self 97
  12. The water of life 117
  13. Translation trouble 137
  14. Part II. Subtexts
  15. Between the lines 149
  16. Translation theory and cold war politics 171
  17. The poetics and politics of Joseph Brodsky as a Russian poet-translator 187
  18. Squandered opportunities 205
  19. Meaningful absences 219
  20. Part III. Pretexts
  21. Translated by Goblin 235
  22. “No text is an island” 249
  23. Russian dystopia in exile 265
  24. Between cosmopolitanism and hermeticism 277
  25. The other polysystem 295
  26. Translation as condition and theme in Milan Kundera’s novels 317
  27. Index 323
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