Early Hungarian Translations of Japanese Literature

Abstract

The aim of this study is to demonstrate that despite the fact that a notable amount of Japanese literature translation began to appear in Hungary from the mind-20th century onwards, it cannot be claimed that significant translations from Japanese literature into Hungarian did not exist prior to that period. A secondary objective of my research was to trace the path of translations through intermediary language publications all the way back to the original Japanese texts and to provide comparisons among various textual variants. By the end of my research, more than fifty Hungarian appearances were compiled, containing translations of approximately two hundred distinct Japanese texts. Based on this, I developed a categorization, distinguishing the early history of Japanese translation into three major, separate periods.