Translating the spirit of the text: Nádas's Fire and Knowledge and Örkény's in Memoriam Dr KHG

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
Péter Nádas in his short story entitled Fire and Knowledge relates that according to Hungarian media the four corners of the country have been ignited and the fire is spreading fast towards the capital. People „translate” the news as something is afoot, but certainly not as what they are told is the truth, and
as a result they do nothing. This phenomenon could be termed, modeled on Kundera's diagnosis of the Kafkan, as suspension of belief. If disbelief can cause communication breakdown between speakers of the same language it can cause even more problems in translations from one language to another. This talk
will present some translations that reflect the problem of staying too close or straying too far from the letter of the source text, due to a misunderstanding or due to the above willing suspension of belief in the spirit of the text. In everyday life such mistranslations are eventually clarified, as in Kertész’s recent interviews on his 80th birthday, but in literature consensual interpretation is hard to reach. Two English language translations of István Örkény’s In Memoriam Dr KHG will be analyzed and compared to illustrate how, once the spirit of the text is captured, stylistic differences can create delightful and in no way unacceptable versions.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
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