The Architectures of Translation: A magic carpet-ride through space and time (or, the awkward story of how we dis/placed Krisztina Tóth’s short fiction from Hungarian to English)

• Main Authors: Ursula Hurley, Szilvia Naray-Davey
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Taylor & Francis Group 2018-01-01
• Series: Cogent Arts & Humanities
• Subjects: feminist translation; hungarian literature; literary architectures; ellen eve frank; barbara godard; rosi braidotti; krisztina tóth; minority languages
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23311983.2018.1426183

This interdisciplinary paper unfolds an account of a collaborative translation project, which draws on Ellen Eve Frank’s concept of “literary architecture” to propose a process of “architectural translation”. Our proposal is illustrated by a detailed account of our experiences translating the short fiction of contemporary Hungarian writer, Krisztina Tóth (b. 1967) into English. Staged as a journey through space, time and text, our enquiry frames the process in Barbara Godard’s terms as one of dis/placement, finding resonances with Rosi Braidotti’s nomadic subject and practices of feminist mimesis. Situating Tóth’s fiction in a European feminist literary heritage, we deploy a range of concepts drawn from translation, architecture, literary criticism and feminist philosophy to synthesise a translation strategy which engages the spatial, not only as a metaphor but a methodology for our project. In this account, we propose an architectural methodology as a tool for radical translators, and offer the process of translation as a way of thinking about internal and external spaces in postcolonial contexts.