Tag Archives: Jozefina Komporaly
In the Translator’s Workshop: Judit Pieldner Interviews Jozefina Komporaly about Translating Andrea Tompa’s “Home” (Haza)
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.
An Endangered World as Allegory and Spectacle in Ádám Bodor’s “The Birds of Verhovina,” translated from Hungarian by Peter Sherwood
Bodor’s prose, in Sherwood’s translation, retains its casual and conversational tone, almost inviting readers to have the text read out loud to enjoy its aural pleasures. That said, the translation also successfully negotiates the nuances of a complex text, and excels at conveying its dark and subversive humour. Most importantly, the translation resists explicitating the original’s ambivalence, in an attempt to refrain from patronizing readers and intrusively helping them navigate Bodor’s frequently disorienting prose.
Against Camouflage: Jozefina Komporaly on Translating from Hungarian Melinda Mátyus’ “MyLifeandMyLife”
Melinda Mátyus’ novel in verse “MyLifeandMyLife” is one of the most original pieces of experimental fiction published in Hungarian in recent years. We are grateful to Ugly Duckling Presse for allowing us to publish here Jozefina Komporaly’s translator’s note in which she discusses Mátyus’ unique sense of grammar and syntax, and her own approach to translating it.
Divine Experience or Divine Faith? Veronika Haacker-Lukacs Interviews Translator Jozefina Komporaly
Földényi’s The Glance of the Medusa is an astounding encyclopaedia of ancient and early Christian thought. It invites the reader on a historical, mystical and mythical journey encompassing ancient Greek and Egyptian religions as well as the early Christian Mystics and Gnostics to examine experiences bringing human beings and (the) God(s) into such extreme proximity with each other that one might well merge into the other.
Released into Captivity: Matéi Visniec’s “Mr K Released,” Translated from Romanian by Jozefina Komporaly
Part parable of human fallibility, part allegorical critique of political systems at which we fail and which fail us, Mr. K Released draws on the chaotic transition from totalitarianism to democracy that Romania, Matei Visniec’s homeland, and other former Eastern Bloc countries, experienced after the collapse of communism in the late 1980s.
In Pursuit of Happiness in Nándor Gion’s “Soldier with Flower,” Translated from Hungarian by Zsuzsa Koltay
by Jozefina Komporaly Translation projects come about for various reasons, and these can include affinities with certain authors, artistic agendas or historical periods to name but a few. Wanting to raise the profile of a particular literary tradition is also a major motivator, and when this is coupled with the translator’s genuine passion for a […]