Translating is so very much a matter of individual choices and style that it is hard to comment on another's work without appearing to nit-pick. The style Imre Kertész adopts in Kaddish for the Unborn Child depends crucially for its effect on its weaving together of a densely poetic web of allusions and associations. It is very clearly constructed as a stream-of-consciousness text that runs together numerous strands of memory, of both personal and wider cultural significance, in setting out the reasons why the narrator chooses not to father a child. Sustaining that delicate web in the target language (English) must be a prime task for any translator who hopes to pass on an idea of its magic in the Hungarian. Even quite small disruptions or distortions are jarring.
The problems with the American translation, for me, start with the title: Kaddish for a Child Not Born (Nortwestern University Press, 1997) sounds and is awkward, a signal of more awkwardnesses (and worse) to come. Besides the lumpy prose, the text is so riddled with errors that one is forced to conclude that the translators were unequipped for the task - a sadly all too common event with the miserably few Hungarian works that get published in the UK or America (a long-running average of one or two titles per year).
For some inexplicable reason, the quotation from Paul Celan's 'Death Fugue' used as a motto at the front of the Hungarian text is omitted. This is not a trivial slip, as the whole poem is the direct source of some of the most striking imagery in the text (the page references are to the American edition): not just what is in the epigraph - "...more darkly now stroke your strings then as smoke you will rise into air / then a grave you will have in the clouds there one lies unconfined" (p.16), but also lines such as "he whistles his Jews out, in earth has them dig for a grave" (reference omitted on p. 20, 27, 66); "death is a Master from Germany his eyes are blue / he strikes you with leaden bullets his aim is true" (lamely rendered, on p. 45, as "Death is a blue-eyed German maistro and magister, he may come at any time, wherever he may find you, he'll take aim and he never misses"); "your golden hair Margarete / your ashen hair Shulamith" (p. 57). Kertész himself has remarked that "the Paul Celan motto was only added to Kaddish at a later stage, when I noticed that my sentences were quite involuntarily following the poem's rhythm of thought. Earlier on I had often read the text in the original German, because it is virtually untranslatable, and then I found that the images and metaphors of my own text were returning, time and time again, to Celan's Fugue."
That is not the only puzzling omission, incidentally. At the very least, the translators seem to be bulćmics of sorts, as well as having no comprehension of what air-raid precautions might be, for on page 16 we get: "No, indeed, the village relatives (I no longer remember how we were related, why should I, anyway, they have dug their graves a long, long time ago in the air where the smoke from their remains dissipated), they were real Jews: prayer in the morning, prayer in the evening, prayer before food, prayer with the wine...other than that, they were fine people, though unbearably boring, of course, for a little boy from Budapest. I believe the war had already started then, but as everything was still quiet and beautiful here, we merely practised darkening the windows;..." (Try: "...no, the 'auntie' and 'uncle' (I no longer recall exactly how we were related, but then why would I recall, they long ago dug their graves in the air into which they were sent up in smoke) were real Jews, with prayers in the morning, prayers in the evening, prayers before meals, prayers over the wine, but otherwise decent people, even if unbearably dull, of course, for a young boy from Pest, their food dripping with grease, goose, cholent, and suety raisin slices of flódni. I think war had already broken out, but everything was still nice and quiet here in our country, they were still only conducting blackout drills,..."). More food aversion on pages 20-21: "I don't want to remember, in this respect, not even in the sense of the famous *...* dipping ladyfingers into premixed spiced tea instead of the famous *...*. Although, of course, I do want to remember..." What the hell is that supposed to mean? Someone freaking out? You might be forgiven for not noticing that this is a straightforward reference to Proust, because the actual Hungarian text runs more like: "...I don't want to remember, to dunk ladyfingers, as it were, in my cup of Garzon scented tea-bag mixture, instead of the madeleine cakes that are unknown, even as unobtainable articles, in this benighted part of the world, though of course I want to remember..."
The Shulamith referred to above is misprinted as "Julamith", by the way. Nor does "a stardust melody" (p. 20) have quite the signification of 'Stardust Melody'. It is equally irritating, if not downright puzzling, to find (on p. 25) "Hauthausen... Hain Street" (did the printer runs out of m's?). Similarly, on page 30, one might just about work out what is meant by "...he is the demon, who takes all our demonlike qualities upon his shoulders, like an Antichrist shouldering his iron cross, and doesn't insultingly escape our claws to prematurely hang himself like Stravrozin." But might it not help if this were set into proper English? "...he is the devil who will carry all of our own devilishness on his shoulders, like an Anti-Christ bearing the Iron Cross, and will not insolently slip through our fingers to string himself up before the time, as Stavrogin did." More seriously, back on page 25, is the word "Kistavesa", which any reader would be forgiven for not recognising is actually 'Kistarcsa', one of several notorious places on the outskirts of Budapest that Eichmann's
SS Sonderkommando (and their willing Hungarian helpers) set up as a transit camp for deporting the Jews to Auschwitz in 1944.
That leads straight to egregious mistranslations. Does it matter that the Hun-garian word which in English means 'beech wood' is translated (p. 1) as "oak forest or glade"? One tree is pretty much like another, after all. Well, try the German for beech wood: 'Buchenwald...' (And the tree motif is picked up later, with an oblique reference to a line from one of Horace's Odes, quoted by both Schopenhauer and Nietzsche: "Why do you torture your poor reason for insight into the riddle of eternity? Why do we simply not lie down under the high plantane? or here under this pine tree?"). A similar failure of cultural bearings on the translators' part means you will probably miss the allusion to Arnold Schönberg's composition in "...the last soma Jisroel of the Warsaw captive..." (p. 20). But most hilarious of all is (p. 80): "His Most Honorable Highness the Governor, dressed in a hat as large as the sea and a mysterious fringed uniform." Anyone might guess that this refers to Miklós Horthy, Hungary's head of state from 1920 to 1944: "His Serene Highness the Regent, in his admiral's cap and that arcane uniform with the tasselled epaulets" Yes, the translators have read the Hungarian word for 'admiral' - tengernagy - literally as 'sea-big'.
It gets no better when it's a question of figures that one might hope were common knowledge, even in America. On page 12, for instance, we get "I only do this as really simply a precautionary measure, as if I were, or rather, had been, a cautious, promiscuous person moving in AIDS-affiliated circles." How does a "circle" of people affiliate to AIDS? Is it a club? Try: "...I adopt that pose merely as a prophylactic, as if I were a wary libertine moving around in an AIDS-infected milieu..."
What you're getting, dear reader, is bunkum, and not even the most astute amongst you could guess that the work of a deserved Nobel laureate was behind the original on which this travesty is based (p. 82): "Scandal ... was the term they used to describe these inevitable, always unexpected, and, one could say, rain falls. You must imagine these... in the manner of when a drunk gentleman, after controlling himself for a while, finally gives in to temptation and falls down with a sigh, relaxing..." The Hungarian text shows that this puzzling association of rainfall with scandal is just a figment of the translators' imagination: "Scandal... that's what they called these irresistible, always unexpected plunges into licentiousness, so to say, which you should imagine, I said to my wife, as somewhat like an inebriated gentleman, who, having kept a strict hold on himself for a good while, suddenly yields to temptation and falls down flat on the ground in
relief..."

Tim Wilkinson
an Englishman, is an editor and translator who spent three years in Hungary in the Seventies, subediting academic journals. He has translated a number of Hungarian scholarly books (mainly on history) and works of fiction.