Judit Pieldner: Translator, interpreter, and academic Jozefina Komporaly has engaged in the cultural transmission, via translation and cultural diplomacy, of contemporary Hungarian and Romanian literature. I have invited Jozefina to a discussion about the translation from Hungarian of Andrea Tompa’s Haza (Home). Thank you, Jozefina, for accepting this invitation! 1 The interview was carried out within the Domus Senior Scholarship Program of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The video recording, created with the technical assistance of the Regional Committee in Cluj of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences on 26 September 2025, is available at the following link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4aI698mgmo&t=3782s
Jozefina Komporaly: Thank you for having me.
JP: Winner of the PEN Translates Award and included in the longlist for the Dublin Literary Award, the English version of Andrea Tompa’s Haza (2020), translated from Hungarian by Jozefina Komporaly as Home (Istros Books, 2024), raises intriguing questions about the new life of the book calling for fresh interpretations and resonances, about the translator’s work and role as a cultural mediator. Inspired by her biography, Andrea Tompa’s novel delves into what it means to belong, to leave, and to return, exploring the emotional and psychological landscapes of home and identity. Jozefina, what attracted you, first and foremost, to translate Andrea Tompa’s Haza? How did you become involved with translating this book, what inspired your decision?
JK: Thank you so much for inviting me and for this intriguing first question that could essentially take up our entire conversation. I’d say, above all, that I’ve been following Andrea Tompa’s work for a very long time, even before she started writing fiction, as we share an interest in theatre and performance. I have become familiar with her fiction ever since she published her first novel, but indeed, Haza is the first book that I felt attracted to as a translator. The other books appealed to me very much as a reader, but I would not have thought of promoting them myself in this way. Haza was something that spoke to me on a personal, emotional level as someone who also lives between countries and languages, is preoccupied with questions of belonging in a broader, philosophical sense, but also in a practical sense as well as stylistically, and this is why I wanted to translate it. Home is not really a novel in a traditional sense; it is a very fragmented, almost essay-like construction, and perhaps the academic in me was quite excited to come across it. It’s also a piece of fiction that works really well when you pull out a particular section on its own. It sort of stands on its own feet and can circulate in that way. It’s quite a mosaic-like structure. Even though, of course, there are connections between the characters and by the end, one can see how all the threads come together that may not be quite so obvious from the beginning, and for me that was key. Also, the timing I guess was important, this all happened in 2020, when the book came out. It was the time of the pandemic. We were all enclosed in our own little bubbles. So, reading this book was really a way for me to connect, symbolically, with a lot of stuff in my current life, in my previous life, and an opportunity for talking about the literary landscape, too. I was also running a translation workshop for translators from Hungarian into English during that summer. As we were thinking of projects, this book just came to me almost instantly. It kind of burst to the surface. I think all these things together led me to want to promote the book and try and find a way to translate it.
JP: So, it was both personal and stylistic; a lot of factors contributed to your choice. How did you pitch your translation project to a publisher? What were its challenges and how do you regard the translator’s agency in this respect?
JK: Well, I didn’t immediately pitch it to a publisher. First, I had done a couple of samples. With this book it was slightly easier than in the case of other works that I translated to find self-standing sections that could be translated and shared publicly. The first one I translated was “Copper Flowers” [“Rézvirágok”] and I sent it to Apofenie, which is an online translation platform focusing predominantly on cultures from East Central Europe. They liked it and published it almost immediately. That inspired me and told me that maybe this can happen, this project has mileage, and then I translated another section, “Tongue in Mouth” [“Nyelv a szájban”]. I sent that to World Literature Today and, again, it was well received, they published it and commissioned, very importantly, a translator’s note in which they’d given me the space to talk about the translation process, the importance of the book. After that I thought, okay, now I’m going to look out for a publisher. I contacted several, which is often the case, it wasn’t a situation where the publisher had already known the book and just commissioned me. So, I contacted a number of publishers who work in the field of East Central European literature, often publishing houses that I’d had previous contact with. I sent them a sample, a synopsis and general information about the book and was waiting for responses. There were a few that went ‘yes, maybe, perhaps come back to us later’. A number of months went by until, finally, and this is what you probably want to hear, I was successful in attracting the attention of Istros Books, led by the amazing Susan Curtis, who at that time was looking to publish women writers. This was also the first Hungarian book they published, and it still is the only Hungarian book they published to date. Istros has recently celebrated fifteen years of publishing, so I can only hope that there will be scope for at least another Hungarian title in the forthcoming decade! At the time, they were considering a new avenue, and I think Susan simply liked the sample and was interested in Andrea’s profile and politics as a woman writer and an outspoken public figure, and that is how eventually we arrived at a contract and then publication a few years down the line.
JP: This is an amazing success! It must have been a gradual process but finally it came out really successful. How did you cooperate with the author? What preliminary decisions did you make together?
JK: We kept in touch throughout and the irony is that we had actually never met before, which is hard to believe because we are more or less the same age and have lived in the same city, although not at the same time. Yes, I suppose our connection was virtual prior to this, and we didn’t really come up with any kind of preliminary agreements, but as and when I had questions, I contacted her. I don’t want to pre-empt some of my answers because I suspect that we’re going to talk about the title and so on, but there were a few things that we did discuss further down the line and where Andrea had a very strong vision that we took into account. I should also say that, in addition to keeping a close contact with the writer, it is very important in the case of publications into English, but probably other languages too, to keep in touch with the publisher and their expectations, their standards, their requirements, because otherwise you might find yourself in the position where you need to make alterations at a later point. So, there are a number of perspectives and philosophies that have to be in sync in order to produce a book.
JP: You were mentioning that there were a lot of things that appealed to you in terms of style, in terms of the character of this book. What were the major challenges when it comes to translating this text?
JK: Well, I guess the most obvious one, thinking of translation from Hungarian to English, is taking a decision with regard to the gender of the protagonist. This doesn’t happen all that often in other literatures, it is much more frequent in Hungarian, where it is indeed perfectly possible to write a book or a long text without pinning down the name, the gender, the precise identity of the protagonist or of any character. And this is, of course, the case of Haza, where this is happening for about 100 pages into the book. There isn’t a clear indication as to who this character is. In English that’s very unusual, to put it mildly. It’s borderline impossible to do something like that due to the nature of the language; you either use their name or a pronoun that indicates their gender, and this was not something that the Hungarian text naturally allowed or invited. So, this was one of the things we did indeed discuss with Andrea, and with Susie at Istros, and we agreed that we shouldn’t yield in and reveal too soon. We shouldn’t immediately name this protagonist just to make it more comfortable for an English-speaking reader, but also perhaps we shouldn’t create too much of a fuss about it either. So, we decided to try to be as casual about it as possible and allow this information to emerge organically and hope for an attentive reader that may pick up on the clues all along. I know this is a bit of a woolly answer, but that’s what happened.
Instead of saying “she” from the first sentence, I tried to refer to the protagonist in other ways. Sometimes just say “the protagonist”, or, depending on the situations in which this character was, called her the traveller or the speaker, etc., finding other ways of pinning down her identity. We also decided together with Andrea that we would not be using the more inclusive and more contemporary “they” for this protagonist, because this book doesn’t come from that spirit. Andrea was very adamant on this and I agreed with her. Had this been a novel written in a different vein, set elsewhere, perhaps this could have worked. I consulted my British-born children on this, as well, for whom “they” would have been the natural choice in other circumstances, but for the age of the protagonist, for the style of this novel, for the cultural references in it, we felt that using “they” and letting the readers decide whether this is fitting was not the right avenue. I’d have to check the exact page, but eventually the revelation comes that indeed we are dealing with a female protagonist. So, it is a waiting game, and hopefully this works for readers who are not familiar with the Hungarian. I haven’t seen this issue picked up in reviews or commentaries, which surprised me. I almost would have expected that to come up, but it did not seem to cause too much of a stir. But this was definitely a conversation that we had together and agreed on.
JP: This is very exciting also for the Hungarian reader, who cannot decide upon the gender of the protagonist either, for a while. And indeed, the “our protagonist,” as we can find in your translation, offers us a very opportune solution for this situation. I was wondering about the title. Given the subtle differences between the Hungarian “Haza” and the English “Home,” what choices did you weigh when translating the title of the novel?
JP: Indeed, that was the best choice possible. Another interesting thing that struck my attention while reading the book in English that there are some lexical items that carry semantic nuances that are important in the text and that work differently in the English language. This most probably made the text really very challenging to translate. Could you provide a few examples where you had to really think about how to keep some semantic nuances in translation?
JK: Sure. I think this is one of the most exciting things in translation. Funnily enough, these are the ones that you sometimes forget and when you’re asked to talk about them a few years down the line, you really have to conjure up what happened and how you’ve actually dealt with them at the time. I should say more generally, not just about this particular translation, that this is the space where different translators would choose entirely different solutions. And, I think, that’s the beauty of it. This is probably why some books are translated multiple times, often in a short span of time, because another translator may feel that they can approach that particular situation more creatively or just simply more in tune with their approach to language. So, with me and this particular challenge, there were quite a few, and some I discussed with Andrea in advance and others perhaps not, and they were accepted by her later. One thing I did discuss with her is the title of one of the chapters, “PM. Az utolsó arcváltás.” I was really thinking hard about this and tried to be as imaginative about it as possible and came up with a number of versions. When I asked her what it was that she actually meant here, she said that she was thinking about mirroring “levélváltás”/‘exchange of letters’ and “arcváltás.” It was this explanation that led me to my choice which perhaps sounds less radical on the page than I initially wanted, but mirrors indeed her intention. So, I put “PM. The Last Time They Exchanged Looks” as opposed to “they exchanged letters.” That’s what we stuck with, because this refers to the last meeting between these two characters. So, here I went definitely with the suggestion of the author.
Another situation I agonized over is in the chapter “Szerelmes apám” that I translated as “My Beloved Father,” where they are talking about the surveillance material, secret police material on this protagonist. In the Hungarian, this reads as “milyen irányú anyag, mi az előjele,” and this phrase involves terms which, outside the complex cultural context of the socialist regime of surveillance and control, are quite tricky to convey. In the end, I decided to use gist for “irány,” which of course is not a literal translation of that term (that would be ‘direction’), but I felt that it hinted at substance and the need for acknowledging contextual references. It kind of summed up how these indications around that material would be indirectly present in that term. And then, when a few paragraphs later in that same chapter the term “előjel” comes up, I put “indicative signs”, because we are talking about how somebody reading that material at a quick glance could get a sense of what they might be about. So, this definitely was a challenge, and in so many ways further contextual material or further explanation would probably be necessary, but smuggling in additional information into works of fiction that are already quite complex and wordy is not an easily available route, and besides, some of these references are not explicit in the original, either. Most publishers are also quite reluctant to include footnotes or glossaries, because they feel that this slows down the reader, pulls them out of that flow, that immersion into the reading. In this day and age of online information being available so easily, if somebody is very interested, they can find out for themselves. I don’t agree a hundred per cent with this, because people may not make the extra effort, but I totally think that readers should not be patronized and, indeed, if they want to find out more, that is certainly possible for them.
I don’t know if you have time for more examples. An interesting one could be in the chapter “Nem vagyok emigráns”/“I’m Not an Émigré”, where the term “cigánykerék” comes up, translated as “cartwheel,” which is the English equivalent of that physical exercise that both protagonists, the mother and the son, carry out. But, of course, in the Hungarian “cigány” means ‘gypsy’ and there is a riffing on that particular connotation in the text, which could not be included in the English term “cartwheel.” So I opened it up and put in an additional explanation: they both do cartwheels, talk about how the mother can still do cartwheels and has taught the son, “‘Why are cartwheels called ‘gypsy wheels’ in their mother tongue?’ he asks somewhat surprised, frowning as if this was a dirty word. He’s ten. […] Gypsies didn’t have wheels, she explains. ‘They didn’t have all four wheels,’ the Son snaps, without missing a beat.” In Hungarian this reads: “Cigánykerekezni még tud és szeret is, a Fiút is megtanította. Miért cigány?, kérdezi megütközve a Fiú, homlokát ráncolva, mintha valami csúnya szót hallott volna. Tízéves. […] A cigányoknak nem volt kereke, magyarázza neki. Nem volt ki a négy kereke, vágja rá a Fiú röhögve, gondolkodás nélkül.” So yes, there is a slight loss, but hopefully, the bridge/connection is still there, nonetheless.
I had to be inventive in the chapter called “Csaba, Sweden,” for example, with the term “birokrácia” in Hungarian, which is a kind of misreading, misinterpretation of the correct term “bürokrácia”. He is talking about Sweden and the complexities in day-to-day bureaucratic life. This particular protagonist appears to be less educated and sophisticated than many of the other figures in the book. So, he uses a mispronunciation, a misspelling of the correct word, which signposts a social gap that I found difficult to convey in English using a more literal translation, such as “bureaucracy” paired with a slight modification of the term. So I opted for, “this country is a jungle of red tape. In his pronunciation this sounds like red tap, as if he had to tap on something.” This is perhaps a departure of sorts from the Hungarian, but I believe it’s in the realm of the original in terms of cultural and social references.
JP: Yes, the book is full of such instances where it’s a really challenging task for the translator, and these are really ingenious solutions. Another, probably very challenging, aspect of the book is its intertextuality. It’s very dense with a lot of references, from the Bible, through The Odyssey, to the Russian émigrés. How did you work with the overt and even covert forms of intertextuality? How did you handle these text places where there were references to other works?
JK: Wherever possible, wherever I could, I tried to source existing English translations of these and include them, because I feel that in this way we are intertextual with a tradition of translation, too, that I feel very strongly about. Perhaps this wasn’t happening in every single instance, but that goal certainly was part of my intention, and I generally try to do this in most of my translations. Sometimes it’s difficult to obtain the exact material. Sometimes there could be disagreements whether using that particular existing translation is appropriate or they may not fit within the context of the overall English version. But that wasn’t so much the case here. So yes, I would say I tried to find an English translation whenever I could, but whether that’s fully visible is an interesting question because they are not necessarily overt in the Hungarian, either. And this is something that, again, depends on the approach of the publishers. If this was an academic book, I certainly would have been a lot more careful and signposted such situations. In this case, although it was not the main preoccupation, there was an attempt to bring in already existing English translations of excerpts and not to create mine wherever I could find a suitable existing version.
JP: Another interesting aspect of this novel is that it contains a lot of foreign inclusions, English, Russian, French and Spanish text parts. When it comes to translation, what is the strategy to be chosen here?
JK: Well, again, different translators and different publishers would have different opinions here. So, what I’ve done, I’ve kept all the American used in the original and put in a note at the beginning, because I know this book is going to circulate outside the United Kingdom and there will be readers who are more familiar with American English. I wanted to signal that wherever there was an American spelling in the translation, that wasn’t because I didn’t pay attention, that’s how it was in the book, and we tried to keep that in italics, so there is the British English overall translation versus the American elements retained from the Hungarian original. Regarding the other insertions of foreign languages, I initially wanted to keep them, but because there was a numerically large amount, the publisher felt that it was perhaps more than what your average English reader might expect or, indeed, tolerate. Thus, the suggestion was to translate some of those into English. This was a bit of a sacrifice but I do understand that these books are for a readership in English, not necessarily native speakers but people who are reading in English, and I felt that this concession is fair in order to allow this book to circulate. At the end of the day, that is what, as a translator, I’m thinking of: to bring this book out and allow readers who don’t read Hungarian – but may not understand these other languages, either – read it. So, yes, the answer is that the intention to keep the multilingual aspect was certainly very much there, but it got somewhat reduced in the process for ease of access.
JP: Very interesting! You come from Transylvania, like Andrea Tompa herself, and so you are familiar with some regional variations of the Hungarian language which pop up from time to time in the book. Did you face any challenges in translating some dialectal forms of the Hungarian language, some regional references, and how important do you consider to convey this regional aspect to the global readership?
JK: Thank you. Well, again, as a general philosophy, I think it is very important. However, I felt that in this book, this issue is a lot less prominent than in many of Andrea’s other books where this is definitely at the centre and the voices of the different protagonists really are constructed through these varieties. In this one, perhaps, this was less of an overall concern. Clearly, the nuances of class differences were just as important, and I guess I hinted at that above. I must stress that in the case of this particular translation project, these were not as central to my agenda as they would have been if I had translated Omerta, for example, where without departing from this premise you can’t even begin to translate. In this one, because it was already so multilingual and there were all these intertextual references – again, this involved a discussion with the publisher – we felt that we need to keep it manageable for the reader. So, I didn’t go wild on this, perhaps somebody else would have. Or, if I were to re-translate the book myself one day, I’d decide to be bolder, but in the circumstances it just felt that this wasn’t the most important aspect to insist on. So, I didn’t spend as much time creating widely significant differences between the register of the different protagonists despite being aware of their origins and sometimes recognizing situations from my own personal experiences. The latter was sometimes additionally intriguing because I could sense who/what might be an inspiration behind some characters.
JP: I am from Transylvania too and I also feel these subtle nuances but, indeed, this is maybe not of primary importance to convey for the global readership. The English translation plays a significant role in making Andrea Tompa’s work accessible on a global level, even facilitating its translation into other languages. What has been the most rewarding aspect of translating this book and how do you hope this translation contributes to the reception of the author’s work internationally?
JK: I guess any translation into English helps, because, whether we like it or not, it is a language spoken and read by an incredible amount of people globally, and it can lead to work being discovered in other languages. So just getting it published is incredibly rewarding in itself. Yes, I tend to translate work I promote, I very rarely get to be asked to just translate something random. That can happen at times, but, on the whole, I’m the kind of translator who is an unacknowledged literary agent and, indeed, as you said, a cultural ambassador, who is contacting people and trying to persuade publishers to take books on, so having succeeded at that is obviously good news. But the circulation of the book is the next stage and that’s where we as translators are a lot less in control, and that’s where I wish more could be done with the help of cultural organizations and agencies. In terms of successes, it is the publication itself, then, the book being invited in 2024 to the European Writers’ Festival at the British Library in London. This festival is a series of very prestigious events, where a handful of European authors with their recently translated books into English are invited. They are put on panels and in conversation with major figures on the UK literary landscape, and Andrea had conversations with journalists and other writers, for example. I felt that the Festival was a very fitting opportunity to showcase the book and bring it to a specialist audience but also to a broader readership, because these events are open the general public. So, in addition to an invited group of journalists and literary people, there was a general audience and there was the opportunity to purchase the book, and Andrea could sign it and chat to readers. Witnessing that was very rewarding for sure.
The Dublin Longlist was also a nice recognition. We did not win, but I think the fact that the book was included and had the opportunity to be showcased through the Dublin Literary Award platform, helped with the circulation. Our involvement with English PEN, who subsidized the translation – and I should say thank you to them on this occasion as well – was another opportunity, because only a selection of projects can get this award and it is based on merit and a thorough application process. It certainly helped with the book entering a circuit of visibility, at least within the UK literary landscape. Obviously, publications in journals subsequent to the book coming out helped, as well. I mentioned already that a few samples were published before, that was the first step, and after the book was commissioned and when it came out, we got requests for further excerpts, so I published excerpts in the Los Angeles Review and in Wasafiri, which is a publication based at Queen Mary University of London, a magazine focusing on postcolonial and decolonial work primarily, and they really loved the piece. Hungarian Literature Online, which is a forum for recent work appearing in English, requested a sample and they published it in parallel with announcing the publication.
Other than that, hopefully the journey of the book continues and it will be read by more readers, hopefully it will be reviewed further and, in that way, continue to circulate. I think it is very important to promote the books we translate, and it’s a process that continues over time. So, there’s a lot of preparation prior to the book being commissioned and translated, but it’s equally important to deal with it afterwards, too, because, let’s face it, there is plenty of competition. There are lots of publications coming out in English every day and unless somebody champions the book, writes about it, promotes it, takes it to events, takes it to festivals, it is less likely to circulate. So, I haven’t given up just yet. I’ve written about my translation process a number of times, such as the WLT piece I mentioned. I wrote an article for the Feminist Translation Network on this project, together with some other translations of mine, showcasing this book as well and the collaboration between three women, Andrea, myself and Susan Curtis as publisher, and how important it is to bring women’s voices together, I spoke about the book at the London Book Fair in 2025, where I was invited to be on a panel. So I’m actively looking for opportunities to champion this book and indeed Hungarian and Romanian literature more generally.
JP: This is amazing, congratulations! You translate contemporary Hungarian and Romanian literature into English. How do you regard the translator’s role in bringing the voices of smaller cultures to a global audience?
JK: Well, I kind of hinted at that already a little bit earlier. I think they are more central probably in the case of these languages than in the case of languages with a wider circulation, although it’s hard to tell. I’m in various translation networks in the UK, in Hungary, in Romania, internationally, and we compare notes quite a bit, and it does seem to me that if you translate from, let’s say, French or Spanish, you are more likely to be offered books to translate into English. So, if you don’t want to necessarily go out and find your own authors, you probably have enough work and can just translate whatever publishers want or need. That’s not the case in our languages, at least not for me. Maybe there are other translators who can do that, although I doubt it to be the case, with the exception of one or two individuals. So, it is really necessary to be proactive, not just because you may want to. Because I’m an academic and I’m keen on promoting certain authors or types of writing and connecting them to my own research, I would often opt for this advocacy as a matter of choice. I spend a lot of time thinking about these choices and on reaching out to the most relevant editor or publisher, and I think that this is definitely at least as important a part of my practice as the actual translation praxis. I sometimes wish that the ratio was a little bit different, that I could spend more time on the craft of translation, but, realistically, that’s not the case. It’s a long process of choosing potential candidates and then liaising with all the stakeholders in the publishing world to do a book.
Let’s not forget a very important element, which is the financial one: even though, often enough, I would find an interested publisher, unless the funds can be secured for the book to be brought out, they will not proceed. A lot of Hungarian and Romanian literature is published by independent publishers who do not have massive budgets. So, they really need subsidies, they really need to apply for funding. Translators play an important role in urging this to happen, in filling out forms and providing the necessary information on the books they champion. The PEN Translates Award came to us that way. I should also acknowledge here the award from the Petőfi Literary Fund – for this book and some of my other translations. I’ve done a lot of actual translation work at the Hungarian Translators’ House at Balatonfüred, this most amazing creative space where I can focus like nowhere else in the world and produce outcomes in a relatively short amount of time that is much more coherent than when I work from my messy desk at home in London, where I have lots of other commitments. So, all these things are very important and, yes, I cannot quite imagine a situation where a translator from my source languages would not have to be proactive.
JP: Thank you! One last question: what projects are you currently working on and what are your longer-term plans, what directions do you hope your future translation work will take?
JK: If only I knew the answer to all of these! I have some thoughts, for sure. I just got a piece accepted in a US-based translation journal, an excerpt from a novel by Gábor T. Szántó, that’s really exciting! This is a new author for me and a new project that hopefully will grow in time. I often translate samples from authors and then hope that they get published and/or there is an interest from publishers and then I can be more public about them. I can mention my longer-term project of working on Melinda Mátyus’s work. I published a book by her with Ugly Duckling Presse based in New York, a really exciting indie publisher, and they brought out MyLifeandMyLife, and we actually had the opportunity to promote that in New York last year. So that was very successful and I’m hoping to translate more of her fiction and I’m in discussion with publishers around that. Let’s see what happens. I have a few projects from Romanian, for example, I am working on Alina Nelega’s book, Ca și cum nu s-ar fi întâmplat nimic, which has been published in Hungarian and French to date. And then I have an ongoing theatre translation project, because I’m a theatre academic and have a number of Romanian plays by women in the pipeline. My most recent drama translation is Alaska by Elisa Wilk, a fragment of which we performed with my students. I’ve got the whole play translated now and have a few other texts ready, by Alexandra Badea among others. I would love to find an interested publisher to bring out a collection of Romanian women’s drama and equally, I’m actively looking for interested participants to fund showcases and events that would bring this work to life on stage. I’m in various conversations, let’s see if any of this will happen because these are difficult times. I don’t want to lower the tone at the end, but I do have to say that in the course of the last ten years when I’ve been dealing with translations, interest has gone up, but the possibility of making things happen have perhaps gone the other way, and right now there is a lot of delay, there is a lot of “Let me think, I’ll get back to you” kind of response. So you need even more enthusiasm, and even more stamina to get things done.
JP: Thank you very much and I wish you every success in your future translation projects and all these literary endeavours.
JK: Thank you so much to you, Judit, for inviting me and for your provocative and super exciting questions. It was a pleasure talking to you and sharing some of my experiences.
Judit Pieldner is researcher of literature and film, literary critic, and Associate Professor at the Department of Human Sciences, Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania, Miercurea Ciuc, Romania. She obtained her PhD from Babeș–Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, in 2013. Her publications include: Beszédterek, képterek. Tanulmányok, kritikák (2007); Az értelmezés ideje. Tanulmányok, kritikák (2013); Szöveg, kép, mozgókép kapcsolatai Bódy Gábor és Jeles András filmművészetében (2015); Adaptation, Remediation and Intermediality: Forms of In-Betweenness in Cinema (2020). She is executive editor of the scientific journal Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica.
Jozefina Komporaly is Reader in Performance & Dramaturgy at the University of the Arts London and a literary translator from Hungarian and Romanian. She is editor and co-translator of the drama collections How to Explain the History of Communism to Mental Patients and Other Plays (Seagull, 2015), András Visky’s Barrack Dramaturgy (Intellect, 2017) and Plays from Romania: Dramaturgies of Subversion (Bloomsbury, 2021), and author of numerous publications on translation, adaptation and theatre, including the monographs Staging Motherhood: British Women Playwrights, 1956 to the Present (Palgrave, 2007) and Radical Revival as Adaptation: Theatre, Politics, Society (Palgrave, 2017). Her translations were produced by Foreign Affairs, Trap Door, Theatre Y, Trafika Europe Radio, Menagerie Theatre, and were among the finalists for the EBRD Literature Prize, longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award and recipients of the PEN Translates Grant. She is a member of the UK Translators Association.