In this presentation Dr. Ingrid Mayer talks about the challenges and difficulties of literary translation, particularly the translation of realias, between Hungarian and Japanese.

Even a seemingly easy text, like a children’s book, could raise difficulties for the translator. We will see how adapting Veronika Marék’s book not only required renaming (adapting) the characters, but also redrawing some illustrations. 

Through Satoshi Kako’s work, we could see how homonyms will make a translators scratch their heads, especially when the translator’s hand are tied by the illustrations accompanying the text. The tengu and the daruma in Kako’s work leads us to the main topic of this talk: the realias.

Realias, in translation, are culture-specific elements or their names, which are initially unknown in the target culture of the translation. For example the name of foods, drinks, dances, clothes and so on. 

Translating them is easy when in one way or other they were introduced to the target culture, like sushi, samurai, geisha, ninja or manga from Japanese – you can use the word as it is.

When the object or concept is lesser known, or unknown in the target langue, the task is more daring.

Through an excerpt from Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, we would also see how different translators could solve the same problem with different approaches, by choosing one (or more) methods of translation of realias (direct transfer, word-by-word translation, hyponymy and hypernymy, analogy, omission, note, or in-text explanation, etc.). 

We could also see how the status of a realia could change through time, and will understand why Donald Keen choose to translate a white sock as a white glove.

Finally, with an example from the Hungarian translation of the most recent Haruki Murakami novel, we could get a glimpse in the process of finding the Hungarian equivalent of nihonga.

 

 

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