Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2004. Vol. 4. Eger Journal of English Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 30)
ALBERT PÉTER VERMES Culture in Translation: Strategies and Operations
94 Albert Péter Vermes stylistic values in terms of the formality of the relationship between speaker and listener. In other cases the encyclopaedic content of the original expression can be regained with relatively little effort through activating some global contextual assumptions (English community work for Hungarian társadalmi munka , English council for Hungarian tanács , which roughly corresponds to 'local authority'). Similarly, in the English text we have counter-revolution for the original ellenforradalom , which is a precise translation of the logical content, and in the context gradually built up in the story it also carries the relevant encyclopaedic assumption that it refers to the events of 1956. On the other hand, there are also cases where translation proper is used to introduce completely new concepts into the target reader's cognitive environment. This happens, for example, when Hungarian paprikás krumpli (a typical Hungarian dish) is rendered as paprika-potato in the translation. There is another interesting example which shows that translations, when combined in delicate ways, may also serve the preservation of culturally induced implicatures through the extension of the context. Volt cukrászda, két konkurens (la) kocsma, melyet mindenki a régi nevén hívott, a (2a) Serház meg a Kondász (az öreg Kondász még élt, asztala volt a sarokban, és pintenként rendelte a sört, amiről a gyakran cserélődő csaposok ritkán tudták, mennyi, hát, fiacskám, egy (3a) korsó meg egy vágás! [...]). (Esterházy, p. 10, italics as in original) There was a café of sorts and two rival (lb) taverns, which everyone called by their old names, the (2b) Beerhall and the Kondász (old man Kondász was still kicking, he had his own table in the corner and ordered beer by the pint, an unknown quantity for the succession of ever new barkeepers, it's a (3b) pitcher and a dash, son! [...])• (Sollosy, p. 4, italics as in original) The problem here is that the Hungarian word 'ser' in (2a) Serház , the original of (2b), is associated with an encyclopaedic assumption to the effect that the expression is old-fashioned, it is not used any longer, and evokes the atmosphere of "the golden days" of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Since in this part of the book the writer describes the layering upon each other of the past and present, this assumption definitely has some contextual importance here. However, the English word 'beer' does not carry a comparable assumption and this part of the context is thus lost in the translation. On the other hand, it has a near synonym in English, 'ale', which does contain in its encyclopaedic entry the assumption, waking images of the past, that this drink is brewed in the traditional way, as it used to be in the past, without adding hops. Moreover, the related compound
