Hiisi szarvasától a csodaszarvasig, a Kalevala magyar fordításai - Varga, P. Ildikó (Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület, 2010)
The Finnish epic Kalevala has been translated into Hungarian five times in the time span of over a century, as follows (in chronological order, mentioning the names of the authors): Ferdinánd Barna 1871, Béla Vikár 1909, Nagy Kálmán 1972, István Rácz 1976, and Imre Szente 1987. Fragments of the epic were translated by Antal Reguly, Pál Hunfalvy and István Fábián in the 19th century, as well as by Géza Képes and Domokos Varga in the 20th century. In my book I am going to deal only with the complete translations.
The choice of my topic was mainly motivated by the absence in Hungarian Kalevala research and literature of studies focusing on the comparative study and analysis of the translations of the epic employing a translation studies framework.The aim of this book is to locate these Hungarian texts in the Hungarian literary polysystem through a comparative study of the five complete Hungarian translations, investigating these translations both linguistically and in their cultural historical context.The present analysis uses Itamar Even-Zohar’s polysystemic theory, further developed by Gideon Toury's Descriptive Translation Studies, and by José Lambert and André Lefevere's works as well.The two literary systems I am dealing with, the Hungarian and the Finnish, occupy a peripheric position in the (Western)European macrosystem, the main reason being the "isolation" of the two languages in (Western)Europe.
Both are Finno-Ugric languages, and this fact leads further than the simple scheme of "two kindred languages"; in different ages it is the attitude towards each other based on the affinity of languages that determines the mode of the approach to translations.The analysis is based on the relations that may have influence on the reception of the translations: the context in which the source text and the target texts were born (the strategies followed by Lönnrot, the compiler/author and by the Hungarian translators in the creation of the texts) and the critics. This is followed by the comparative analysis of the source and target texts, examining the translators’ solutions regarding the form of the epic: rhythm, metre, schemes (alliteration, parallelism) and the translators’ interpretation of the text as regards the Kalevala as original myth, as well as the emphasis laid on the transmission of tradition from one generation to the other and on popular motives and features.
I introduced the notion of a "Finno-Ugric network" as a main means of constructing an individual character.The network itself implies the existence of text systems (all texts written in a Finno-Ugric language) and of a conceptual grid (a tool of identification, it concentrates on similarities that may be necessary for its creation, as well on differences emphasizing those "alterities" that differentiate the Finno-Ugric network from the concepts determined by the Western network).The study revealed that the existence of the Finno-Ugric network was crucial in the reception of the first two Hungarian translations. The intentions of Ferdinánd Barna were to fill in the gap generated by the absence of a national epic from the Hungarian literary system, under the flag of Finno-Ugric affinity. He tried to show how a major Hungarian national epic could be created using poetic means borrowed from the Finnish epic. This attempt failed for several reasons.
First, the cultural centre in Hungary at the end of the 19th century did not consider the epic poem to be an adequate genre for a major national epic work. Second, the translator was inconsequential by sustaining the conceptual grid only in the Notes-part of the edition and also having the idea to reconstruct a Finno-Ugric mythology. The second translator, Béla Vikár, saw the Kalevala as a genre pattern and as a starting point for tracking down a Finno-Ugric mythology that could serve as a basis for a conceptual grid, but without the idea of reconstructing this mythology.The success of Vikár’s translation in the 1930s and the following years was due to the joint effect of several factors. Vikár combined in his text archaistic language with a dialectical one and used a domesticating strategy regarding the formal solutions, translating or transcribing Finnish names into Hungarian and adapting the Kalevala-metre and rhythm to Hungarian accentual verse of 4/4 rhythm with end rhyme.