This year’s book festival, which closed on Sunday 24 April at Millennáris, featured a hugely successful and varied programme from the Hungarian Literary Translators’ Association MEGY (http://www NULL.muforditok NULL.hu/) .
For the first time two auditorium talks were presented. Ádám Nádasdy, drawing a crowd as always, gave a presentation on translating the new Hungarian edition of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Mónika Mesterházi hosted the second panel discussion with translators of Hungarian texts into other languages. Éva A. Dobos, Ágnes Járfás and Ottilie Mulzet discussing their translations of Szilárd Borbély’s Hungarian novel Nincstelenek into Norwegian, French and English, respectively. Péter Rácz of the Hungarian Translators’ House supported the association by inviting non-Hungarian colleagues to the festival.
Another new feature this year was a session in which aspiring literary translators could try their hand at an excerpt from a Chandler novel. Their submitted work was evaluated by Adrienn Gulyás and Mónika Mesterházi.
Great public interest was sparked by the work of translators Péter Ádám and Kornélia Kiss, who retranslated L’Étranger (The Stranger) by Albert Camus. The bilingual Japanese-Hungarian haiku album Rejtőzködő tó (A Hidden Pond) also generated great discussion. Some of the Hungarian haiku were translated from their Japanese originals by Judit Vihar; others were translated from English translation by Ferenc Bakos.
The four-day festivities attracted a wide range of visitors. This year’s festival program was focused on Slovakian literature, with translators Tünde Mészáros and Tímea Pénzes presenting Hungarian readers with a total of six new Slovakian novels. Other successful book launches included works by translators Bernard Adams, Zoltán Galamb, Andrea Imrei, Júlia Lázár, Laura Lukács, Benjamin Makovecz, and András Soproni.