Barna Imre - Pont fordítva

The ambassador was a nice but modest francophone lady, I gave her Hungarian lessons as a student in the 1970s, I had a hard time with her, and once in a while she finally got some kind of understanding, she would say, oh, I understand, it's the exact opposite in French too . And then he added: as in German. And of course, he didn't say it like that, but in French, so I just quoted him in translation, of course. And then - if I do this in an introduction written for a literary translation series, and I give the series the title Just Translated - I could immediately explain why I translated the ambassador's words in this way and not in another way, and why it's okay if it's Germanism (or what) is that point; furthermore, for the sake of the weaker ones, I could also explain the metaphor inherent in the relationship between (art) translation and in- (out-, in-) translation, and the relationship between the Hungarian term and the trans-latio-type, "translating" equivalents used in Indo-European languages, even .
Either way, but not now. Now let me just say this: I would be talking about serious subjects - works and translations, smart and stupid authors and translators, workshop experiences, the relationship between translation and interpretation, translation and public life - so serious, but not "that way". On the contrary, the author wrote in the introduction to his portfolio series published in Magyar Narancs since 2013. Our volume consisted of these and other writings.

Imre Barna

He was born in 1951 in Budapest. In 1975, at the ELTE Faculty of Arts, he obtained a teaching degree in Italian and German. Since the end of 1976 - from 1987 as editor-in-chief, from 2006 to 2013 as director - he has been an employee of Europa Könyvkiadó. Between 1995 and 1998, he was the director of the Hungarian Academy in Rome. In 2003, he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic. In 2006, he received the Attila József award for his work as a translator.