Playboy, Hero, Champion – Retranslations of J. M. Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World in Hungary

Résumé

This paper looks at four Hungarian translations of John Millington Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World (1907) – the published first translation that introduced the Irish writer’s work to Hungarian readers in 1960 and three retranslations commissioned for specific theatre performances of the play (Nádasdy, 2004; Benedek, 2013; Hamvai, 2019). Through the case study, the paper investigates the ways in which Synge’s modern classic, rooted in the historical specificity of the Irish cultural nationalist movement in the early twentieth century, is enabled to speak, through translation and retranslation, to Hungarian audiences from 1960 to the present. The exploration of retranslations focuses on the rendering of unique language use in dramatic literature, in this case, dialect. The Hiberno-English dialect of the play is its most conspicuous and challenging feature, partly because it has manyfold functions not easily transferrable for a non-Irish audience. The retranslators of Synge’s play approach the problems posed by translating dialect in various different ways, which in turn leads to the reaccentuation of different aspects of the play. The paper concludes considering the impact of retranslation on the play’s presence in Hungary with the observation that the strategies (re)translators use for rendering the play’s unique language is motivated by the context of the specific production, but in general, retranslation contributes significantly to the canonization of the play in Hungary.