A Scots Quair into Skócia lánya: Politics, Publishing and Dialects in the Hungarian Translation of Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s Fiction

• In Event: Left Perspectives on Aesthetics II: Translation, Modernists, and Communist World Literature

Abstract

My proposed paper offers an investigation of the fortune of Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s trilogy A Scots Quair [Scots for ‘A Scottish Book,’ 1934] in its Hungarian translation (Skócia lánya [A daughter of Scotland, 1960). An outstanding work of Scottish literary modernism, the trilogy focuses on the life of a Scottish woman in agrarian North East Scotland, using synthetic, non-regionally bound, Scots language invented by Grassic Gibbon. The novel’s first translation was its Hungarian translation in 1960, soon followed by another two editions brought out by the state funded publishing industry. This presentation offers an exploration of the political context of British novels’ translation and publication in post-1956 Hungary, exploring, with the help of reviews, reflections and the context of publishing output, the limits of cultural political freedom and subversion. The creation of a new, solely literary, dialect by Grassic Gibbon presents significant challenges to any translator. The examination of the Hungarian translation will offer insights into the solutions offered by the translation Klára Szöllőssy. Straddling these two subdisciplinary areas, the paper offers reflection on political conditions and the limits of artistic freedom.

Author

• Zsuzsanna Varga, U of Glasgow (UK)