How Many Hungarian Voices Does Alice Munro Have?" In: Canada Consumed The Impact of Canadian Writing in Central Europe 1990-2017

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The Impact of Canadian Writing in Central Europe (1990—2017)
Canada Consumed:
The Impact of Canadian Writing
Canada Consumed:
in Central Europe (1990–2017)
Le Canada a la carte :
,
influence des ecrits canadiens
en Europe centrale (1990–2017)
Edited by / Edité par
influence des ecrits canadiens en Europe centrale (1990—2017)
Don Sparling + Katalin Kürtösi
consumed_2019cover.indd 1 10.9.2019 16:03:32

Canada Consumed:
,

Don sparling + Katalin Kürtösi
Central European Association for Canadian Studies

Association d’Etudes Canadiennes en Europe Centrale
Masaryk university / université Masaryk

Brno 2019
CDN_Consumed_2019_text.indd 1 11.9.2019 9:51:39

Canada Consumed: The Impact of Canadian Writing in Central Europe (1990–2017)
Le Canada à la carte : influence des écrits canadiens en Europe centrale (1990–2017)
Editors / Editeurs : D
on Sparling (Masaryk University, Brno)
Katalin Kürtösi (University of Szeged)
Readers/Lecteurs : Ramona Pál-Kovács and/et Jason Blake
Technical Editor/Rédacteur technique : Pavel Křepela (Czech Republic/République tchèque)
Cover&typo/Maquette de la couverture et mise en page : Pavel Křepela (Czech Republic/République

tchèque)
Contact/Contact : w
ww.cecanstud.cz
cecanstud@gmail.com
1st edition, 2019. Circulation 100 copies / 1ère édition, 2019. Tirage 100 exemplaires
Published by/Publié par Masaryk University Press, Brno 2019
Printed by/Imprimé par Ctrl P s.r.o., Bezručova 17a, 602 00 Brno
Copyright © 2019 Central European Association for Canadian Studies

Copyright © 2019 Masaryk University Press
ISBN 978–80–210–9368–3 (paperback)

ISBN 978–80–210–9369–0 (online : pdf)

content — table des matières
Introduction / Introduction
Don Sparling and/et Katalin Kürtösi ............................................................................................6
I. OVERVIEWS / TOURS D’HORIZON
Reading Canada: The Reception of Canadian Writing in Bulgaria post-1990

Andrei Andreev and/et Eliza Yankova ....................................................................................... 17
The Reception of Canadian Writing in Croatia

Petra Sapun Kurtin and/et Mirna Sindičić Sabljo .................................................................... 27
Canada’s Post-Communist Literary Footprint in the Czech Lands

Don Sparling ................................................................................................................................ 51
Hungarian Responses to Canadian Literary Works and to Leonard Cohen’s Death

Katalin Kürtösi ............................................................................................................................ 69
English-Canadian Literature in Post-Communist Romania

Ana-Magdalena Petraru .............................................................................................................. 85
Réception dans la presse roumaine des romans québécois en traduction

roumaine (1990–2017)
Ileana Neli Eiben ......................................................................................................................... 99
Present and Absent Canada: The Reception of Canadian Literature

after 1990 in Slovakia
Lucia Grauzľová ......................................................................................................................... 115
The Impact of Canadian Literature in Slovenia since 1990

Tomaž Onič, Tjaša Mohar and/et Michelle Gadpaille ............................................................. 131
II. M
unro and Cohen in Central Europe / Munro et Cohen
en Europe centrale
Leonard Cohen and Alice Munro in Croatia

Mirna Sindičić Sabljo and/et Petra Sapun Kurtin ................................................................... 147
Alice Munro and Leonard Cohen: Becoming Czech

Don Sparling .............................................................................................................................. 161

How Many Hungarian Voices Does Alice Munro Have?
Fruzsina Kovács ........................................................................................................................ 175
Two Canadian Celebrities: Alice Munro and Leonard Cohen in Romania

Monica Bottez and/et Adela Catană ........................................................................................ 191
Canadian Giants: The Reception of Alice Munro and Leonard Cohen in Serbia
Vesna Lopičić and/et Sanja Ignjatović ...................................................................................... 205
Between Sound and Silence: Alice Munro’s Critical Acclaim in Slovakia

Jana Javorčíková ....................................................................................................................... 215
Alice Munro and Leonard Cohen: Ambassadors of Canadian Culture in Slovenia

Tjaša Mohar and/et Michelle Gadpaille ................................................................................... 223
III. B
ook Fair – Stagings – Migrant writers / Salon du livre –
Mises-en-scEne – Ecrivains migrants
Phases in the Staging of Canadian Plays in Hungarian Translation

Katalin Kürtösi .......................................................................................................................... 243
La réception de l’écriture migrante canadienne en Serbie :

Négovan Rajic et Pan Bouyoucas
Jelena Novaković ....................................................................................................................... 255
Canada at the Belgrade Book Fair: Then and Now

Vesna Lopičić and/et Vladislava Gordić-Petković .................................................................... 273

How Many Hungarian Voices

Does Alice Munro Have?
Fruzsina Kovács
Abstract
This article analyzes the effect of translation on the Hungarian literary field after the change of re-
gime. It does so by considering the reception of Alice Munro’s published volumes between 1989-2014,
emphasizing the changed position of agents in the translation trajectory, the observed effect of the
international symbolic capital involved in the translation flow, and the agency as seen in paratexts of
the literary translations. The study builds on the theoretical framework of translation sociology, on the
work of Pascale Casanova, Andrew Chesterman, Johan Heilbron and Gisèle Sapiro, and employs the
literary field concept of Pierre Bourdieu. Within the framework of this study, 40 articles published by
both literary critics and journalists and 170 blog posts from www.moly.hu, the largest Hungarian web
2.0 online book reader community, have been examined. Translational phenomena of the time period
have been investigated on the basis of the CEACS Translation Research Project database.
Résumé
J’étudie ici l’effet de la traduction dans le champ littéraire hongrois après le changement de régime
par la réception des volumes publiés par Alice Munro entre 1989 et 2014. J’accorde une attention par-
ticulière au changement de position des agents dans le processus de la traduction, à leur apparition
dans les paratextes du traductions littéraires, et à l’effet observé du capital symbolique international
impliqué dans le flux de traduction. L’étude s’appuie sur le cadre théorique de la sociologie de la traduc-
tion, sur les travaux de Pascale Casanova, Andrew Chesterman, Johan Heilbron et Gisèle Sapiro, et sur
le concept de champ littéraire de Pierre Bourdieu. Le corpus étudié est constitué de 40 articles publiés
par des critiques littéraires et des journalistes ainsi que de 170 articles de blog disponibles sur le plus
grand portail communautaire de lecture en ligne du Web 2.0 hongrois, www.moly.hu. Les phénomènes
transitionnels de la période ont été étudiés à partir de la base de données du Projet de recherche du
traduction de l’AECEC.
Part of this study appeared in Hungarian in the January 2018 issue of Tiszatáj literary magazine.
Le Canada à la carte : influence des écrits canadiens en Europe centrale (1990-2017) | 175

Fruzsina Kovács
1. Theoretical and methodological approach
Andrew Chesterman differentiates between four perspectives for research within

translation studies. The linguistic perspective operates on a textual level and aims
to uncover “relations between translations, their source texts, parallel non-trans-
lated texts in the target language, and other translations” (Chesterman 2007, 173).
The second perspective is the cultural approach of the 1980s, where “the focus is
on ideas […], on the transfer of cultural elements between different repertoires or
polysystems. Central issues are questions of ideology, cultural identity and percep-
tion, values, relations between centre and periphery, power, and ethics” (ibid., 173).
In the 1990s, translation research turned to questions about the decision-making
process, the cognitive aspects of translation and interpreting, and not necessarily
the final product. The fourth perspective that Chesterman points out is the socio-
logical point of view, which allows the researcher to ask questions about the status
of translators, the role of translations in society, and the agents of the translation
process (ibid., 173).
Researching the social aspects of translation, however, is not a recent phenome-
non. Chesterman points out that several translation scholars (Gideon Toury, André
Lefevere, Theo Hermans, Michaela Wolf) have urged for the study of the context of
translations, more precisely, the study of the ‘translation event’ – to use Toury’s term
– in the framework of descriptive translation studies since the 1980s. In this paper,
a multi-level field approach – a macro, a meso and a micro level analysis – will be ap-
plied to examine the social contexts of translation, which methodology is rooted in
cultural sociology (Bourdieu 1990, Heilbron and Sapiro 2007, Sapiro 2008). Macro
level studies examine translation flows within the world system of languages (De
Swaan 1993) in a core-periphery relation model between cultures. According to Heil-
bron, translations move unevenly from languages that fill a central position in the
international translation system towards languages that are on the periphery (Heil-
bron 1999). Today, the English language has come to fill a hyper-central position, and
is involved mostly in the export of literature. Hungarian, on the other hand, is spo-
ken by approximately 13 million people around the world, and in the core-periphery
model, the Hungarian language takes a peripheral position. Pierre Bourdieu, in his
field theory, places the struggles of a literary field for autonomy in the larger con-
text of economy and the field of power (Bourdieu 2016). The agents of the cultural
production may take various positions in the field, accumulate symbolic capital, and
interact with each other according to the norms of society, their interests and their
habitus. The agents in the translation flow thus include the author, the literary agent,
chief editor, editor, translator, reviser, proofreader, commissioner (such as institu-
tions, publishers, subsidizers, organizers of events, politicians, etc.), critics, journal-
176 | Canada Consumed: The Impact of Canadian Writing in Central Europe (1990–2017)

Fruzsina Kovács
ists, readers, etc. My study examines the specific circumstances of the arrival of Alice
Munro’s work in Hungary, which is part of a larger translation flow between Canada
and Central Europe, and the reception of published collections of short stories by
various agents in the target culture.
2. The author and her work
Alice Munro published her first short story as a university student in 1950 in Folio,
a literary journal of the University of Western Ontario (Stein 2012). She made her
debut to the general Canadian readership in 1968, when Ryerson Press in Toronto
published her first collection of short stories, Dance of the Happy Shades, for which she
received Canada’s highest recognition, the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fic-
tion in English. In subsequent years her stories began to be published internationally,
in particular by The New Yorker. Her critics and her biographers both agree that her
succinct and concise use of language, her precise sentence structures and her crystal-
clear portrayal of characters have earned her recognition as one of the great masters
of storytelling.
Alice Munro has been endowed with rich cultural capital since the beginning of her
literary career: she has received many highly prestigious awards and prizes for her
work. She has been the recipient of the Governor General’s Award three times (1968,
1978, 1986), the Trillium Book Award three times as well (1991, 1999, 2013), and the
Giller Prize twice (1994, 2004). In 1998 she received the National Book Critics Cir-
cle Award (USA), in 2009 the Man Booker International Prize (UK), and in 2013 her
lifetime oeuvre brought her the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her published works that
circulate in the international literary field comprise fourteen short story collections
published between 1968 and 2012.
After the first publication in Canada and in the United States, her work was avail-
able on the British book market from the second half of the 1970s, which was nego-
tiated by her first literary agent, Virginia Barber, based in New York (Thacker 2005,
553). Munro’s short stories have been widely translated; these translations, however,
first appeared with a great lapse in time compared to both the first Canadian publica-
tion and to each other. As a comparison, on the European market the first German
translation of one of her short story collections came out in 1981, while the first such
translation to appear in the eight member countries of the CEACS was published in
2003, in Czech. This was followed by the first collection of short stories in Serbian
(2006). Munro was first was brought out in Slovenia in 2010, and in Romania and
Croatia in 2011; in other words, in these countries Munro was ‘discovered’ only after
her Man Booker Prize. Slovakia and Bulgaria were the last countries where Munro

Fruzsina Kovács
collections saw the light of day – in 2014 and 2015 respectively, in the wake of the
Nobel Prize. As we can see, the European reception of Alice Munro’s books is fairly
diverse in time and in these countries as well. In the case of Hungary, a few Munro
translations appeared from the second half of the 1980s in literary journals, trans-
lated among others by Judit Márta Elek (1985), Erzsébet Czine (1986), and Mária
Borbás (2003); interestingly, only Borbás can be considered a well-known translator.
The first book publication of Alice Munro’s short stories had to wait until 2006, when
Park Publishing purchased the rights to publish Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Love-
ship, Marriage. Regarding the Hungarian publication of Munro’s work, we must em-
phasize that in some cases the target culture readers could only access the texts more
than forty years after their first publishing.
Volumes and a movie-tie-in book published in Hungarian:
Title of Hungarian Translator Title of the source text, Years between

translation, date of publication source and
date of publication target text
publication
Szeret, nem szeret… Mária Borbás Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, 5

2006 Loveship, Marriage 2001
Csend, vétek, szenvedély Mónika Mesterházi Runaway 2004 3

2007
Egy jóravaló nő Mónika Mesterházi The Love of a Good Woman 10

szerelme 2008 1998
Mennyi boldogság! Mónika Mesterházi Too Much Happiness 2009 2

2011
Asszonyok, lányok élete Mónika Mesterházi Lives of Girls and Women 1971 42
2013
Drága élet 2014 Mónika Mesterházi Dear Life 2012 2
Boldog árnyak tánca Zsuzsa Rakovszky Dance of the Happy Shades 47

2015 1968
Nyílt titkok Zsuzsa Rakovszky Open Secrets 1994 22

2016
Juliet, három történet Mónika Mesterházi Julieta: three stories 2016 1

2017 (2007) (2004)
Ifjúkori barátnőm Zsuzsa Rakovszky Friend of my Youth 1990 27

2017

Fruzsina Kovács
3. Influential factors in the translation flow
The reason for delay in the publication of the translations can be traced back to the
political climate of the region in the second half of the 20th century. In the 1960s and
70s Alice Munro’s books could not enter the Hungarian literary field, not even into its
periphery (not least, of course, because she was only just emerging as a writer). Con-
temporary literature from the West was heavily censored during communism based
on socialist ideology. Only selected pieces were translated and disseminated, based
on two conditions: they either supported the socialist humanistic ideal of the regime,
or presented a critical view on capitalism and Western societies. Between 1945 and
1989 only 33 entries appear in the CEACS’s Translation Research Project database
that were translated from the English Canadian literary field. As a contrast, however,
for the 25 years following 1990, the CEACS translation project database shows 359
entries reflecting a very great variety of genres. This sudden explosion and liberation
of the publishing business was witnessed in many Central European countries, and in
fact Timothy Garton Ash already noted the trend in the mid-90s (Ash 1995). Research
has been done on the phases and ripples of change in the publishing industry in Hun-
gary, touching upon both the technological change and the restructuring of owner-
ship of the publishing houses (Laki 2008). The economic aspects of the change have
been in the focus of researchers for several decades (cf. Lux and Horváth 2018). The
change within the Hungarian literary field at first was radical. Instead of mostly Rus-
sian and ideology-driven literature, long awaited works of world literature appeared
on the market. On the cultural transfer process of science fiction and fantasy in Hun-
gary between 1989 and 1995 in-depth research has been carried out (e.g. Sohár 1999).
Further research from the viewpoint of translation sociology may add new aspects to
the analysis already made on the period following the political transformation. The
transition in the power positions of the agents and the dynamics within the field has
been a longer process in which influential factors such as cultural policy and a changed
perception of international institutional recognition can be observed.
3.1 Cultural policy
Literary translation in Canada is government-supported through the Canadian Council

for the Arts and the Department of Canadian Heritage; financial support has been part
of Canada’s cultural policy since 1957 and is now in an even increased way in the lead-up
to the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2020, where Canada will be the Guest of Honour. This sig-
nificant boost from the source culture is a marketing strategy that motivates translation
flows. Park Publisher was a recipient of a translation grant from the Canada Council

Fruzsina Kovács
for the Arts both in 2017 and in 2018. Besides financial support, cultural events (for
example, book fairs) play an important role in translation flows. Canada was the guest
of honor at the International Book Festival Budapest in 2007, where Canada presented
800 Canadian titles and introduced seven Canadian authors to agents of the Hungarian
literary field who were present at this well visited annual event (Eszéki 2007). The fair
was probably a motivation for publishing Munro, as suggested by the sequence of dates
for publications of her work as shown in the table above.
3.2 The Nobel effect
During the years of communism, the recipients of the Nobel Prize in the Eastern Bloc
were discouraged from associating high value with the award of the Swedish Academy,
or even from attending the award-giving ceremony. After the peaceful transition of
1989, however, the international symbolic capital of the Nobel Prize within a global
literary system became a significant marker for all agents in the translation trajectory.
James F. English points out about the nature and dynamics of circulation of cultural
value that “the modern ascendancy of cultural prizes may conveniently be said to
have started in 1901 with the Nobel Prize for Literature, perhaps the oldest prize that
strikes us as fully contemporary, as being less a historical artifact than a part of our
own moment” (English 2005, 28).
In the case of Hungary, the effect the Nobel Prize has on the literary field is even
more recent. Hungarian publishers now seek to secure rights for international au-
thors who are likely to win this recognition, as they know that not only current trans-
lations, but previous volumes of the author will sell immediately, topping the best-
seller lists at least for a short time.1 The Nobel Prize is surrounded by media attention
and publicity, which again drive sales. Park Publishing in 2006 made an initial finan-
cial investment to introduce Munro, and for several years continued to balance costs
by publishing commercial titles to break even with the publishing costs of highbrow
literature. The volume of short stories did not immediately become a success. When
Munro’s Nobel was announced on 10 October 2013, all daily and weekly newspapers
as well as national TV channels reported the event. With the author, all agents of the
field – translators, publisher, editors, etc. – shifted to a more central place in the liter-
ary field. On the international level, BookNet Canada and Nielsen Book collected data
1) Research results on the effect of the Nobel Prize vary. Andreas Hedberg examined the role of
independent publishers since 2000 in publishing French and Romance language fiction into Swedish
(2016). In the interviews he conducted, he refers to the Nobel effect as a short-term increase in the sales of
books. Anna Gunder studied the Nobel effect on Icelandic literary translation between 1949 and 1969 into
Swedish (2011). The author could not find direct correlation between the institutional recognition of the
Nobel and the number of published translations, thus calls for further research.

Fruzsina Kovács
on the sales of Munro’s books through an eight-week period, starting before the an-
nouncement of the Nobel Prize. The figures show that the sales of Munro’s short story
collections soared internationally due to the prize (BookNet Canada). Although the
Hungarian market can be considered small in the context of the global book market –
print runs of even 3,000 copies are considered to be a fair amount for literary books
– the fact that further collections of short stories have been translated since 2013
suggests an increase in the sales figures of the Hungarian publisher as well.
Although the above-mentioned two factors – the financial support of the
source country and the Nobel effect – have been new and influential in the Hun-
garian literary field, they can be characteristic of other translation flows within
the Central European literary field as well. Beyond the macro level enquiry, ques-
tions at the mezzo and the micro level of the literary flow might point to de-
tails that are more specific to the Hungarian reception of Alice Munro’s books.
4. Reception and the dynamics of the market
Several national publishers have brought out English-Canadian literature for the
Hungarian readers since the turn of the century, among them Ulpius, Jelenkor and
Európa, which has been publishing world literature since 1948. However, the transla-
tion rights for Alice Munro’s books were all promptly secured by Park, a fairly young
company, founded in 1988, at the change of the political transformation. The profile
of Park Publishing has changed over the years, adapting to the dynamics of the na-
tional and international book markets. As seen in its lists, first it was publishing non-
fiction and serving popular reading tastes to gain capital, but in a few years’ time it
expanded its portfolio to literary works endowed with symbolic value, and published
works of Nobel Prize winning authors such as Saul Bellow and Toni Morrison. In 2013
Park Publishing joined a conglomerate, Libri Publishing Group, that currently incor-
porates 10 publishing houses. In this case, the publishing of Alice Munro’s lifework
connected large-scale production poles (Sapiro 2008, 2010), that is Random House
and Park Publishing, which after the merge with Libri is considered a large-scale pub-
lisher within the Hungarian context.
4.1 Marketing strategies of the publisher
Several different types of marketing strategies have been used by Park Publisher that
influence the reception of Munro’s books. On the visual level, the volumes have been
labelled with special stickers that mark the symbolic capital, referring to the Inter-
national Man Booker Prize and/or the Nobel in literature. These books get special

Fruzsina Kovács
promotion: they are placed in the forefront with the bestsellers at the place of sell-
ing. Various cultural events are organized by the publisher, bookshops as well as aca-
demia to familiarize the public with Munro’s work. Among these a panel discussion
took place in Írók Boltja [Writers’ bookshop] a well-known bookshop in Budapest,
on 4 December 2013, where three agents of the literary field cooperated. The chief
editor of Park Publishing, Vera Tönkő, journalist Ildikó Orosz and translator Mónika
Mesterházi discussed the specific challenges of the translation and publication of the
texts. Other events include a film screening in the city of Szeged on 28 April 2014
of Sarah Polley’s Away from Her (Egyre távolabb [Further and further] in Hungary),
a film adaptation based on a Munro short story, and a discussion after the screening.
The panelists were three literary scholars, Katalin Kürtösi, Éva Zsizsmann and János
Kenyeres.
Although Munro’s short stories became well known in the form of printed books,
the literary content is carried by other media as well. An audio book featuring well-
known Hungarian actress Anikó Für was placed on the Hungarian market by Kossuth
Publishing House – founded in 1944 – to reach the audience with a preference for
auditory information. Film adaptations that have appeared in Hungary include Sarah
Polley’s Away from Her (based on Munro’s short story “The Bear Came Over the Moun-
tain”), screened in the largest art cinema in Budapest (Művész) on 27 June 2007, and
the above-mentioned film by Pedro Almodóvar, premiered in Művész on 4 May 2017.
Film adaptations can also open the way for, complement or enhance literary recep-
tion. In readers’ responses, which I am going to discuss later, several mentions of the
film adaptations can be found, which suggest that the texts and the audiovisual input
are consumed together.
Pascale Casanova points out that international literary exchanges depend on the
structure of the world literary field, on the literary capital that a nation holds, and the
developed nature of the given literary field. Thus, these exchanges are often unequal:
the agents of the flow are quick to gain capital by translating, in other words ‘high-
jack capital’ in the struggle for autonomy of the national field (Casanova 2019, 291).
Casanova – based on Bourdieu – explains that national literary fields struggling for
an autonomous position aim to bridge the time gap between source text and target
text publication. “In these situations of specific ‘delay,’ translation is the only means
of making up literary time. In other words, it is an instrument of ‘temporal accelera-
tion’: translation allows the whole of a national field which is temporally very distant
from the literary centers, to enter into the world literary competition by revealing
the state of (aesthetic) struggles at the literary meridian” (Casanova 2010, 294). In
the reshaped literary field after 1989, the publishers had the freedom to select the
texts for translation but, as we see in the case of Alice Munro’s books, while trying
to ‘make up literary time’ by publishing translations from the literary centres, they

Fruzsina Kovács
had to renegotiate their position in the national field and adapt to the dynamics of
a global book market.
In the international literary field, more and more emphasis is placed on marketing
events such as book fairs and on the placement of texts alongside film adaptations.
We can see that the agents of the translation trajectory in Hungary, the publisher,
the distributor, the marketer, the translator, etc., while aiming to achieve their own
aspirations within the literary field according to their set dispositions and position,
sometimes also collaborated.
4.2 The translators
Alice Munro’s collections of short stories have been translated into Hungarian by
three renowned translators. Mária Borbás translated the first published volume,
titled Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, the next five volumes were
rendered by Mónika Mesterházi, then the following three collections by Zsuzsa
Rakovszky. Who are these translators, and what kind of cultural capital do they hold
in the Hungarian or international literary field?
Mária Borbás was born in 1930, studied Hungarian, French and English at Eöt-
vös Loránd University in Budapest and later worked for Európa Publishing House as
an editor. She is a highly respected Hungarian literary translator who has translated
world literature extensively. She has also published two books on the professional
aspects of literary translation. She was awarded the Attila József literary prize in
Hungary in 1994. Mónika Mesterházi was born in 1967 and studied Hungarian and
English at Eötvös Loránd University, from where she holds a PhD in contemporary
Irish literature. She has received four Hungarian literary prizes (1996, 2005, 2007,
2008), among them the Attila József Prize and the Artisjus Prize. She is a translator
of contemporary poetry and fiction, and has also published four volumes of her own
poetry (1992, 1995, 1999, 2007). Zsuzsa Rakovszky was born in 1950 and studied
Hungarian and English at Eötvös Loránd University. She writes both fiction and poet-
ry, and has extensive institutional recognition. She translates world literature as well
as contemporary commercial fiction. Rakovszky has been awarded numerous literary
and state prizes, including the Attila József Prize (1988), the Kossuth Prize (2010),
and the Hungarian Laurel Wreath Award (1997).
We can see that all three translators are endowed with different kinds of symbolic
capital. They hold prizes and literary awards for their achievement, but the translated
works that they have ‘consecrated’ also become their ‘transnationally accumulated
symbolic capital’ (Sapiro 2008). Casanova points out that

Fruzsina Kovács
in the world literary universe translation is both one of the main weapons in the struggle for
literary legitimacy and the great authority of specific consecration. For a dominated writer,
struggling for access to translation is in fact a matter of struggling for his or her existence
as a legitimate member of the world republic of letters for access to the literary centers (to
the critical and consecrating authorities), and for the right to be read by those who decree
that what they read is worth reading. […] In other words, in the dominated regions of the
literary field, translation is the only specific means of being perceived, becoming visible, of
existing. (Casanova 2010, 295-96)
Although Park Publishing House may have chosen the translators for their existing
symbolic capital, for the translators, working with Alice Munro’s texts may also have
meant a process of legitimization of their own literary career as well in the aftermath
of the political transformation.
Bourdieu’s sociology allows for an integration of translation practice into his heuris-
tic (‘field’) model. The practice of translation, like every practice in Bourdieu’s terms,
is based upon a coincidence of two instances (generally separated by scholars): the
external instance of literary texts (what we have customarily called the literary insti-
tution and what Bourdieu calls the fields) and the internal instance (textual produc-
tions and products, the producing agents and their ‘habitus’) (Gouanvic 2005, 147).
In the next section I turn to the reception perceived in paratexts and in the re-
sponses of readers on a micro level.
5. Reactions and responses of the readers
“Even if people are not aware that a given text is a translation, they nevertheless react
to it as a text; and these reactions themselves are of relevance to translation research,”
says Andrew Chesterman (2007, 179). He posits that translations will induce a reac-
tion in society that may manifest itself in certain responses, i.e. “observable acts of
behaviour” (ibid., 179). In this section I examine the reception of Alice Munro’s short
stories based on the readers’ responses. From a text typological point of view, I differ-
entiate between critical responses in literary journals, articles of journalists published
in newspapers targeting the general public, and the informal web2 online discussion
forum of readers based on Lothar Hoffmann’s genre analysis (Hoffmann 1991). Nine
Hungarian literary journals (Korunk, Élet és Irodalom, Műút, Látó, Holmi, Jelenkor, Ár-
gus, Nagyvilág, and the Szépirodalmi Figyelő), six newspapers (Magyar Napló, 168 óra,
Magyar Nemzet, HVG, Magyar Narancs, Népszabadság), and Litera.hu, an online liter-
ary magazine aiming at a general readership, have been surveyed for responses to
Munro’s published books. The largest online discussion forum of books in Hungary,

Fruzsina Kovács
www.moly.hu, was the source for the readers’ informal responses. Forty published ar-
ticles and 170 online forum entries have been examined according to the following
aspects: date of publication, whether they were published in response to Alice Mun-
ro’s Nobel Prize, the mention of the text being a translation, the person or habitus of
the translator and the mention of any other agents of the literary field.
It may not be surprising that 84% of the articles aimed at the general public ap-
peared only after October 2013; 75% of them, that is 12 articles, were published
between 10 October 2013 and 28 February 2014 in connection with Munro’s Nobel
Prize. In the same time period, seven publications appeared in literary journals, which
is 33% of the articles aimed to reach literary experts. Thus we can see that the re-
sponses of literary critics are more evenly spread out in time, and only part of their
responses are connected to the award of the Swedish Academy; they mostly focus on
the literary aspects of Munro’s work. Almost half (49%) of the examined 21 articles
that were published in literary journals were brought out by the prestigious Hungar-
ian literary journal Élet és Irodalom. These publications have appeared from 2007 on,
that is from the launch of the first translated collection of stories, and since that time
Munro’s work has been regularly reviewed there. In 2007, Runaway – the second col-
lection appearing in Hungary – received very positive critical acclaim in Élet és Iroda-
lom (Bazsányi 2007), which may have moved Munro’s work from the periphery to
a more central place in the Hungarian literary field.
Among the articles written for the general public, I will highlight an article by
journalist Ildikó Orosz. On the one hand, she reports about the Budapest Interna-
tional Book Festival, where Canada was a guest of honor in 2007, on the other hand,
she comments on the two published volumes of Alice Munro, whom she refers to as
a “possible Nobel Prize winner” at that time. The journalist differentiates between the
translations done by Mária Borbás and Mónika Mesterházi, and considers the work
of Borbás a “fair” translation, while refers to Mesterházi as the “Hungarian voice” of
Munro and says that “… for the precise, unadorned sentences following the original
text, the praise goes to Mónika Mesterházi” (Orosz 2007).
A total of 63% of the literary journal and newspaper responses examined recog-
nize that the published volumes are translations, even if that only means mention-
ing the name of the translator. When referring to the translator’s work, they use
phrases such as “excellent translation,” “clearly reflects the original,” “a sensitive
interpretation,” “solves the task very well.” “a worthy rendering of the original,” on
one occasion “mistranslation” and also once “not Munro’s style.” In the total of 40
articles examined, there are five critical remarks on the translator’s strategies. Two
of these refer to the translation of Canadian realia, one to the translation of a name,
one to a stylistic problem, and once an alternative meaning of a phrase is offered by
the critic. It is important to point out that the agents of the literary field reacted

Fruzsina Kovács
to the cultural product immediately after its appearance on the market with critical
reviews, journalistic writing, and interviews with the translators and the chief edi-
tor. These responses have also made the translators and other agents visible, to use
Venuti’s term (Venuti 2009).
The differences between the voices of the translators were also pointed out by lit-
erary critic Borbála Ruff in the 28 February 2014 issue of Élet és Irodalom, in which
she reviews four collections of short stories. She remarks on the stylistic differences
between the translated texts “I feel that Mária Borbás in her translations did not find
what Mónika Mesterházi instinctively discovered and fine-tuned to be the most valu-
able trait of the texts. Munro’s stories are complex. Their structure may be simple,
but by playing with language, important moments that may almost go unnoticed in
everyday happenings become emphatic” (Ruff 2014d). Although Ruff does not specify
“what” – that is, the “most valuable trait” of the texts, which is present in one text
and not in the other – she emphasizes Munro’s crystal-clear style and the instinctive
attitude of the translator when rendering the text. This response refers to the three
different translator habitus. Mária Borbás uses domesticating strategies (Bánhegyi,
2015), Mónika Mesterházi aims to give a precise translation of specifically Canadian
terms such as those for natural species, while keeping the concise, unadorned style of
the texts, and Zsuzsa Rakovszky makes textual coherence a priority, creating a narra-
tive that runs smoothly. The reception of Munro surveyed in this article shows that
the responses, although only to a small extent (5%), make mention of the fact that
the texts were translated by multiple translators and point to different habitus.
The reception also includes four interviews and a translator’s commentary. This
latter text was published by a literary journal entitled Holmi as a preface to Mónika
Mesterházi’s translation of Runaway; in it she comments on the literary features
of Munro’s writing (Mesterházi 2007). Two interviews with Mesterházi were pub-
lished in printed media, one interview with translator Zsuzsa Rakovszky and one
with Vera Tönkő, the chief editor of Park Publishing, in online media. The inter-
views all appeared in media targeting the general public (Heti Világgazdaság, Magyar
Narancs and Litera.hu). While the translators talk about the challenges of rendering
the text, Mesterházi also draws attention to the often undervalued work of revis-
ers and proofreaders. The interview with the chief editor of Park allows an insight
into the network of the agents in the literary field, as she explains that a Canadian
friend of András Rochlitz, CEO of Park Publishing, recommended Munro’s recently
published book, Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, in 2001, which
appeared later in Hungarian in 2006. In the interview, the chief editor also says that
they maintain contact with the writer through her literary agent.
Finally, I would like to turn to the reader, who as an agent in the flow has several
different possibilities to respond to the texts. One of the most important online read-

Fruzsina Kovács
ing communities in Hungary is Moly.hu. The web2-based readers’ forum was launched
in 2008, and currently has 207,577 members (31 August 2017). Hungarian researcher
Máté Tóth has studied the sociological aspects of the online community, the attitudes
and motivation of participation and the reading tastes of the members in comparison
with the Norwegian readers’ portal Boekelskere.no. His quantitative study shows that
the “majority of the members of Moly.hu (83.5%) are women, belonging mostly to
a young age group. The average age of female members was 27.5, for male 27 years,
the average age 27.4. […] Those who filled in the questionnaire fall into the highly
educated category in their age group, mostly university students or with a university
degree” (Tóth 2011). Tóth points out that “the users of the book community belong
to a fairly homogeneous group, and this virtual space does not lend the possibility to
negotiate differing opinions, exchange views between members belonging to various
layers of society” (ibid.). He adds that although there is no great difference in the
sociological status of the users, the reading tastes do present a great variety, thus the
dialogue, and expressing opinions are still meaningful exchanges on the interface of
the online forum.
I examined 170 posts that appeared between 1 December 2008 and 31 August 2017
for this current study. The posts concern the eight volumes of Munro that had been
published up to August 2017, although the amount of responses for each book vary
to a great extent. Due to the diverse number of posts (one volume has been evalu-
ated by only two members) and the homogeneous nature of the online community,
we cannot claim that these posts are representative of Hungarian readers’ tastes, but
we can nevertheless examine the comments thematically for any mention regarding
the dynamics and agents of the Hungarian literary field which affect the reception of
Munro’s work.
The responses given by readers to the short stories vary indeed according to read-
ing tastes. The posts are highly subjective; a common characteristic of the posts is
that the readers express their opinion fairly soon after having read the book. Besides
expressing likes and dislikes, the comments can be thematically categorized by com-
ments on the book cover, the Nobel Prize, the translation of the title, the translators
and audiovisual adaptations. A high number of posts refer to the cover, which shows
that the book cover influences reception even before one’s exposure to the text. One
commenter says: “If I only saw the cover and the title, I would have never read it…”
(langimari, 19 November 2013). Posts that appear after October 2013 often regarded
the Nobel Prize as a guarantee, as a label of quality, which then influenced the readers’
“horizon of expectations” (to use a term from Jauss 1982). The work of the translator
was only commented upon by 3% of the responses examined, in connection with only
three volumes. Out of these five responses, one praises the translator; the other four,
however, connect their bad reading experience with bad translation, but, unlike the

Fruzsina Kovács
literary critics, do not give an example of the mistakes that were noticed. Regarding
the film adaptations of Munro’s short stories, the readers recommended the public
screening event. Although a wide range of opinions is expressed on Moly.hu, the pos-
sibility of expressing a personal opinion on a reading experience is an important fea-
ture of the literary field that did not characterize the cultural field before 1989.
We can conclude that Munro’s oeuvre has moved from a peripheral position, being
published occasionally in literary magazines, to a central position in the Hungarian
literary field via translation. The reception of Munro’s short stories has been closely
connected to the translation process as well, as three highly regarded translators have
been involved in the co-creation of the texts. The published volumes have received
extensive literary praise and prompted all agents in the field to respond in various
ways. The reception of the books and the attitudes of the agents of the field have been
closely connected with the transnational symbolic capital that Alice Munro holds, part
of which capital is due to the Nobel Prize. The effect of this institutional recognition
has been a major factor, but as we have seen, it is not exclusive in the responses. The
positions and the role of agents within the literary field have significantly changed
since the political transformation, where relations are continuously being negotiated
by the agents, and in which key figures are the publishers, the translators and the
readers. To answer the question of how many Hungarian voices Munro has, we have to
consider not only the translators, but the voice artist of the audio book, the reviewers
and proofreaders as well as the editors who have shaped the voice that Hungarian
readers can pick up. To them, we can also add those who have influenced the language
use of translation professionals and the teachers of translation in the past 25 years.
This ‘heteroglossia’, to use Mikhail Bakhtin’s term, is also quite usual in Canada, from
where Alice Munro’s narratives originate. The multiple voices of the agents in the
literary field thus form the social context of the Hungarian reception of the texts.
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Contributors / Contributeurs
Andrei Andreev is a lecturer at New Bulgarian University, Sofia, where for the past twenty
years he has taught Canadian Studies, Literature in English, English for Academic Purposes,
Translation Skills, and other subjects. His academic interests lie in culture studies, modern
literature in English, and translation studies. He has published over twenty articles, mainly
on literature and culture studies, in both Bulgarian and international journals. Currently, he is
President of the Bulgarian chapter of the Central European Association for Canadian Studies
and member of the Executive Board of the Bulgarian Society for British Studies.
Monica Bottez is Professor of English at the University of Bucharest and Director of the
Canadian Studies Centre there. She teaches courses in Victorian literature, English Canadian
Literature, Multiculturalism, Imagology, and Narratology to BA and MA students, and super-
vises doctoral theses. Her publications include books (Aspects of the Victorian Novel: Recurrent
Images in Dickens’s Work, 1985; Motley Landscapes: Studies in Post-War American Fiction, 1997;
Analysing Narrative Fiction: Reading Strategies, 2007; Infinite Horizons: Canadian Fiction in Eng-
lish, 2010), articles on Romanian post-communism and on various Canadian (Margaret At-
wood, Frances Brooke, Joy Kogawa, Margaret Laurence, Ronald Lee, Alice Munro, Howard
O’Hagan, Kenneth Radu, Ray Smith, Sheila Watson, Rudy Wiebe) American (David Guterson
and William Faulkner) and Romanian (Mihail Sadoveanu) authors and translations from Oscar
Wilde, Evelyn Waugh, Margaret Atwood and Paul Theroux.
Adela Catană has a PhD in Philology from the University of Bucharest and is currently
employed at the Ferdinand I Military Technical Academy in Bucharest. During her career, she
has been a visiting scholar at several institutions such as the Catholic University of Louvain,
Belgium; the Free University, Berlin, Germany; and the University of Glasgow, United King-
dom. She is an active member of the CEACS and her academic interests include Canadian but
also comparative literature, utopian studies and intercultural communication; these have been
materialized in numerous papers presented at national and international conferences and pub-
lished by various IDB indexed journals.
Ileana Neli Eiben est maître assistant à l’Université de l’Ouest de Timişoara, Roumanie.
Elle enseigne le français dans le cadre du Département des langues et littératures modernes de
la Faculté des Lettres, Histoire et Théologie. Ses principales lignes de recherche sont : l’autotra-
duction, les études québécoises, la littérature migrante et l’écriture féminine. Elle est membre
fondateur des associations Asociaţia de studii francofone DF et Isttrarom – Translationes et
membre de plusieurs organisations: Conseil International d’Études Francophones, l’Association

Internationale des Études Québécoises, l’Association d’études canadiennes en Europe Centrale.

Elle est secrétaire de rédaction de la revue Dialogues francophones. Elle est auteur de l’ouvrage
Sur une visibilité de l’autotraducteur : Dumitru Tsepeneag et Felicia Mihali et elle a publié une qua-
rantaine d’articles et de comptes rendus. Elle a aussi coordonné, seule ou avec d’autres collè-
gues, des volumes collectifs et plusieurs numéros thématiques de revue.
Michelle Gadpaille is a Canadian who teaches at the Faculty of Arts in Maribor, Slove-
nia. In The Canadian Short Story (Oxford 1989), she wrote one of the early academic studies to
recognize the significance of Alice Munro’s work. Her research interests have moved on from
short fiction genres, to early Canadian literature, for example the monograph “As She Should
Be”: Codes of conduct in Early Canadian Women’s Writing (Heidelberg 2010), and most recently to
slave narrative, in the upcoming study The Ethical Atlantic: Advocacy Networking and the Slavery
Narrative, 1830–1850.
Vladislava Gordić-Petković is a Professor of English and American Literature at the

University of Novi Sad, Serbia. She has written widely on English and American contemporary
fiction, women’s writing, Shakespearean tragedy, literary theory, media, and technology. She
has published nine books so far: two book-length studies dealing with the contemporary short
story (The Syntax of Silence (1995), and Hemingway (2000)), three books about women’s writing
and contemporary fiction (Correspondence: The Currents and Characters of Postmodern Fiction
(2000), On the Female Continent (2007), and Mysticism and Mechanisms (2010)) and two col-
lections of short essays (The Literature and the Quotidian (2007) and Formatting (2009)). Her
newspaper articles about literature and modern technologies are collected in Virtual Literature
(2004) and Virtual Literature 2: Literature, Technology, Ideology (2007).
Lucia Grauzľová is Assistant Professor at the Department of English and American Stud-
ies at the Faculty of Arts of Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia, where she teaches
American Literature, Canadian Studies, and Academic Writing. Her doctoral thesis was on the
concepts of home and language in Caribbean-Canadian literature. Her research continues to
focus on black Canadian writing and history and Canadian transcultural literature. She has also
conducted research and published on the reception of Canadian literature in Slovakia.
Sanja Ignjatović is a PhD student at the Philology Department and a teaching assistant
at the Faculty of Philosophy in Niš for Canadian Studies and British Studies courses, but also
Medieval English Literature, Renaissance Literature and Shakespeare – Special Course 1. Her
main fields of interest include literary theory and criticism, contemporary short fiction, as well
as cognitive poetics.
Jana Javorčíková has worked at the Department of English and American Studies in
Banská Bystrica, Slovakia, since 1997. She specializes in the literatures and cultures of the Eng-
lish-speaking countries (she currently teaches courses in American studies, Canadian studies,
modern and 17th-to-19th-century English literature and selected courses in American drama

and literature). Her recent publications include a coursebook of English literature entitled Con-
temporary Literature in English: Selected Historical, Social and Cultural Contexts (2012) and a two-
volume reader on Canadian literature entitled Slovak Immigration to Canada: Narrated Histories
and Written Histories (2010). She has also published widely in the fields of Canadian and Ameri-
can studies and literature. In 2005–2006, she spent a year teaching literature and culture at
Minneapolis Community and Technical College in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Fruzsina Kovács is preparing a doctoral thesis at Pázmány Péter Catholic University in

Budapest, Hungary. Her PhD research focuses on the sociological aspects of the literary transla-
tion flow from Canada to Hungary between 1989–2014. She holds an MA in English language
and literature from the University of Debrecen, and a postgraduate degree in translation from
the University of Miskolc. Her research interests include international cultural networks, ideol-
ogy and change in the literary field, sociology of translation and research methodology. She has
been a participant at several summer schools, including the CETRA Research Summer School
in Antwerp in 2018 and the Salzburg Easter School in 2016, and she is a member of several
translation research initiatives, including the Hieronymus Translation Studies Research Group
at PPCU and the Translation Research Project of CEACS.
KATALIN KÜRTÖSI is Professor at the Department of Comparative Literature, University

of Szeged. Her main research interests are modern drama and theatre, and culture in Canada
(Anglophone, Francophone, ‘ethnic’). She has authored three monographs – the latest (2013)
being Modernism on the ‘Margin’ – The ‘Margin’ on Modernism. Manifestations in Canadian Cul-
ture – edited several volumes, and served as Editor-in-chief of the Central European Journal of
Canadian Studies / Revue d’études canadiennes en Europe centrale (2001-2009). She was awarded a
Certificate of Merit by the International Council for Canadian Studies in 2010 and by the Cen-
tral European Association for Canadian Studies/Association d’Études Canadiennes en Europe
Centrale in 2015. She has been President of the CEACS since 2018.
Vesna Lopičić is a Professor of Anglo-American Literature and Culture at the University of

Niš, Serbia. Her publications include Fall into Culture: Human Nature in the Work of William Gold-
ing and Margaret Atwood (2002), two collections of essays on Canadian literature, a number of
course books, readers, and over twenty books of edited conference proceedings. She co-edited
(with B. Mišić Ilić) three collections of essays Identity Issues: Literary and Linguistic Landscapes
(2010), Challenging Change: Literary and Linguistic Responses (2012) and Values across Cultures
and Times (2014) published by CSP. She teaches Canadian Studies and Canadian Literature
courses. Her research is focused on short fiction in English.
Tjaša Mohar is a Teaching Assistant at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Maribor,
Slovenia. In 2016 she defended her PhD thesis on the reception and popularity of Alice Mun-
ro’s works in Slovenia. Her research interests include Canadian literature, the short story, sty-
listics, narratology and literary translation. She has translated three of Alice Munro’s short
story collections into Slovene: Dear Life (Ljubo življenje, Celje 2014), Runaway (Ubežnica, Celje

2015) and The View from Castle Rock (Pogled z grajske pečine, Celje 2017). She has been the
CEACS representative for Slovenia since 2013.
Jelena Novaković est Professeur de littérature française et francophone, Faculté de Phi-

lologie de Belgrade; traductrice; Rédactrice en chef de la Revue de Philologie; Présidente de l’ASEC
(2013–2015); membre du Bureau consultatif de l’AECEC (2008–2015). Elle est l’auteur de onze
livres, dont : La nature dans l’oeuvre de Julien Gracq (1988), Le monde surréel de Breton (1991),
Typologie du surréalisme (2002), Recherches sur le surréalisme (2009), Recherches intertextuelles,
I et II (1912 et 1914), Ivo Andrić : la littérature française au miroir d’une lecture serbe (2014), et
de plus de 250 articles sur les littératures française et francophones. Elle est aussi l’lauréate de
plusieurs prix : pour la traduction (1997 et 1999), pour la contribution dans le domaine des
projets scientifiques (2004) et dans le domaine des études françaises (2008).
Tomaž Onič is an Associate Professor of English Literature in the Department of English and
American Studies at the Faculty of Arts, University of Maribor. His teaching experience encom-
passes a variety of courses in literature and literary translation taught at the home institution
as well as at several other universities. His research interests include contemporary British and
American drama in close connection with translation and cultural studies as well as literary
stylistics. In recent years the focus of his research interest has been the plays of Harold Pinter
and their reception in the Slovene cultural space. He has also conducted contrastive studies of
the translations of Shakespeare’s plays into Slovene as well as of the meeting points of drama
and opera librettos.
Ana-Magdalena Petraru has been teaching English for almost a decade at Alexandru
Ioan Cuza University of Iasi. She holds a PhD in Philology awarded for the thesis The English
Canadian Novel. Translations and Critical Studies (1915–2010), subsequently published in 2016,
and a postdoc in the Romanian discourse on translation. Her research interests include Cana-
dian Studies, Translation Studies, English teaching methodology, literature and film. She coor-
dinated the 2016 volume Metamorfoze ale identității de margine [Metamorphoses of marginal
identities] and has authored many articles in conference proceedings, most notably “Canadian
Humour Unveiled: Stephen Leacock in (Pre)Communist Romania”, “High and Low Canadian
Literary Products in Post-Communist Romania”, and “Northrop Frye in Romania: Translations
and Critical Studies”.
Petra Sapun Kurtin graduated in English and German Language and Literature from the
University of Rijeka, Croatia, and is enrolled in a PhD program in Comparative Literature at
the University of Zagreb. In 2011/2012 she spent a research year in US graduate programmes
on a Fulbright scholarship at New York University in New York and Tulane University in New
Orleans. From 2015–2018 she was at the English Department at University of Rijeka as re-
search and teaching assistant. She is currently writing her thesis on New Orleans literature as
a 2018/2019 Research Fellow at the Wirth Institute for Austrian and Central European Studies
at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.

Mirna Sindičić Sabljo graduated in Comparative Literature and the History of Art at the
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb, Croatia, in 2004. In 2006, she graduated
in French and Italian Language and Literature from the University of Zadar. She earned her
PhD in Comparative Literature at the University of Zagreb in 2013. She is an Associate Profes-
sor at the Department of French and Francophone Studies at the University of Zadar, where
she teaches courses in French and Canadian literature. In 2005 and 2011, she was awarded a re-
search fellowship at the University of Paris – Sorbonne, France. So far she has published more
than thirty articles in Croatian and foreign scientific journals. Her interests include French
twentieth-century literature, French theatre and Quebec literature.
Don Sparling attended the University of Toronto and Oxford University. After coming to
Czechoslovakia in 1969 he lived and taught in Brno and Prague, first at language schools and
from 1977 at the Department of English and American Studies, Masaryk University in Brno,
where he was twice Chair. For nine years from 2000 he was Director of Masaryk University’s Of-
fice for International Studies. Founding President of the CEACS, he is currently its Treasurer.
His main fields of interest include Canadian literature (historical fiction), multiculturalism, Na-
tive studies and cultural semiotics.
Eliza Yankova read European Studies at the University of Bremen and in 2014 did her MA
degree in Professional Public Decision Making at the same university. Her main focus is migra-
tion and integration. In 2012 she participated in the ‘’Thinking Canada’’ EU-Canada study tour,
which increased her interest in Canada and gave her the chance to experience first-hand the
Canadian model of accommodating diversity and helped her to gain insight into the specifics of
contemporary Canada. Since then she has participated in many Canadian Studies conferences
and become a member of the BACS and the CEACS.

The Impact of Canadian Writing in Central Europe (1990—2017)
Canada Consumed:
Canada Consumed:
,
influence des ecrits canadiens en Europe centrale (1990—2017)
Don Sparling + Katalin Kürtösi
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How Many Hungarian Voices Does Alice Munro Have?" In: Canada Consumed The Impact of Canadian Writing in Central Europe 1990-2017

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Readers/Lecteurs : Ramona Pál-Kovács and/et Jason Blake

Technical Editor/Rédacteur technique : Pavel Křepela (Czech Republic/République tchèque)

Cover&typo/Maquette de la couverture et mise en page : Pavel Křepela (Czech Republic/République

Published by/Publié par Masaryk University Press, Brno 2019

Printed by/Imprimé par Ctrl P s.r.o., Bezručova 17a, 602 00 Brno

Copyright © 2019 Central European Association for Canadian Studies

ISBN 978–80–210–9368–3 (paperback)

CDN_Consumed_2019_text.indd 2 11.9.2019 9:51:39

I. OVERVIEWS / TOURS D’HORIZON

Reading Canada: The Reception of Canadian Writing in Bulgaria post-1990

The Reception of Canadian Writing in Croatia

Canada’s Post-Communist Literary Footprint in the Czech Lands

Hungarian Responses to Canadian Literary Works and to Leonard Cohen’s Death

English-Canadian Literature in Post-Communist Romania

Réception dans la presse roumaine des romans québécois en traduction

Present and Absent Canada: The Reception of Canadian Literature

The Impact of Canadian Literature in Slovenia since 1990

Leonard Cohen and Alice Munro in Croatia

Alice Munro and Leonard Cohen: Becoming Czech

CDN_Consumed_2019_text.indd 3 11.9.2019 9:51:39

Two Canadian Celebrities: Alice Munro and Leonard Cohen in Romania

Between Sound and Silence: Alice Munro’s Critical Acclaim in Slovakia

Alice Munro and Leonard Cohen: Ambassadors of Canadian Culture in Slovenia

Phases in the Staging of Canadian Plays in Hungarian Translation

La réception de l’écriture migrante canadienne en Serbie :

Canada at the Belgrade Book Fair: Then and Now

CDN_Consumed_2019_text.indd 4 11.9.2019 9:51:39

How Many Hungarian Voices

Le Canada à la carte : influence des écrits canadiens en Europe centrale (1990-2017) | 175

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1. Theoretical and methodological approach

Andrew Chesterman differentiates between four perspectives for research within

176 | Canada Consumed: The Impact of Canadian Writing in Central Europe (1990–2017)

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2. The author and her work

Le Canada à la carte : influence des écrits canadiens en Europe centrale (1990-2017) | 177

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Volumes and a movie-tie-in book published in Hungarian:

Title of Hungarian Translator Title of the source text, Years between

Szeret, nem szeret… Mária Borbás Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, 5

Csend, vétek, szenvedély Mónika Mesterházi Runaway 2004 3

Egy jóravaló nő Mónika Mesterházi The Love of a Good Woman 10

Mennyi boldogság! Mónika Mesterházi Too Much Happiness 2009 2

Drága élet 2014 Mónika Mesterházi Dear Life 2012 2

Boldog árnyak tánca Zsuzsa Rakovszky Dance of the Happy Shades 47

Nyílt titkok Zsuzsa Rakovszky Open Secrets 1994 22

Juliet, három történet Mónika Mesterházi Julieta: three stories 2016 1

Ifjúkori barátnőm Zsuzsa Rakovszky Friend of my Youth 1990 27

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3. Influential factors in the translation flow

3.1 Cultural policy

Literary translation in Canada is government-supported through the Canadian Council

Le Canada à la carte : influence des écrits canadiens en Europe centrale (1990-2017) | 179