Cultural Studies paper by Sári, László B.
Variations of Jewish Identities in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated and its Hungarian Translation (Accepted)
Type of Abstract (select):Abstract (max. 250 words):
The Hungarian translation of Jonathan Safran Foer’s debut novel of 2002, Everything Is Illuminated misses the original text at two crucial points. First, the title in Dezsényi Katalin’s Hungarian version is translated by introducing a neologism “vilángol”, evoking concepts of radiance and worldliness as an active verb, in sharp contrast to Foer’s insistence on the passive in the original. The other, to my mind, even graver mistake in the translation is how it reverses the very meaning of the concept of illumination in the grandfather’s tormented soliloquy. These two pertinent mistakes are all the more significant in reading the Hungarian translation. The grandfather’s inarticulate rant is the only attempt to render events of the Holocaust, whose crucial absence (in his own narrative as well as in his grandson’s self-definition) not only defines the plot but also divides time in Everything Is Illuminated into two radically different planes. This historically significant historical absence, in turn, reinforces and displaces the central role the Holocaust plays in defining third-generation Jewish identity in its variations in the United States and Central-Eastern Europe, represented by the fictional author figure hiding behind his historical manuscript and his Eastern-European guide in the text, respectively. Thus, my comparative analysis of the two texts, the original and the Hungarian translation will focus on conceptual differences between Jewish identities as featured in Foer’s text and its misconceived Hungarian translation, possibly rooted in historically different experience and perceptions of the Holocaust.
Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
László B. Sári László Sári B. is an associate professor at the Department of Literatures and Cultures in English, University of Pécs, where he teaches contemporary American fiction, British flim history and literary and cultural studies. His two books to date address post-war Hungarian literature and politics, and contemporary American minimalist fiction respectively. He also works as a freelance reviewer and translator of contemporary American fiction.