Text effects – PR and literature
How can you tell if a literary translation is good?
If the text is alive, it affects you, it captivates you. If it creates a world, like Árpád Göncz's The Lord of the Rings. If you want to read it again, underline it, note down one of its masterfully striking sentences, like Zoltán Pék's translation of Moon Palace (Paul Auster), for example. Or if it is so brilliant that it surpasses even the original, like Mici Mackó by Karinthy.
And when is it not good? When you are looking forward to a book, you are interested in it, the original is praised, yet it disappoints you. Or if it is too simple, clunky, or perhaps forced. If you unintentionally see through it, while reading you wonder how it might have sounded in the original, because it seems strange in Hungarian. This happens too.
The good news is that there are more good books and more good translations than we will ever have time to read, so if you are not impressed or do not enjoy what you are reading, just look for another one.
It is also important to us professionally to always have a demanding selection, to have something to choose from, so this year, in collaboration with Noguchi and Ferling, we are supporting the Élet és Irodalom (Life and Literature) initiative, in which we draw attention to the work of literary translators, who are undeservedly pushed into the background.
The next installment of the Könyvtolmácsok (Book Translators) discussion series, which takes place at the Writers' Shop and is published in ÉS, is expected in September. Previous installments can be read at the links below:
- Lídia Nádori, president and founding member of the Hungarian Literary Translators' Association, translator of Ingo Schulze and Terézia Mora.
- Endre Greskovits, translator of Salman Rushdie and Cormac McCarthy, among others.
In the meantime, follow FleishmanHillard Café's summer book recommendations on our social media pages: Facebook, Linkedin
