Inside Animalinside, Ottilie Mulzet's Translation of László Krasznahorkai’s ÁllatVanBent

László Krasznahorkai is now the best-known Hungarian writer in the Englishspeaking world (perhaps in the world, period). But what is the precise nature of the relationship between his Hungarian works and their English translations that have been, on the whole, so well received in Britain and especially the USA? This article takes a very close linguistic look at one his shorter works, ÁllatVanBent, in a version by Ottilie Mulzet, co-recipient with George Szirtes of the translators’ share of the 2015 Man Booker International Prize, which recognized Krasznahorkai for his “achievement in fiction on the world stage.” I argue that Ottilie Mulzet’s translation is in a hybrid English that in some places evidences a misunderstanding of the Hungarian, and in others claims to be a foreignized, “Krasznahorkai-English” that is, however, insufficiently justified by the original. More broadly, the article thus takes issue with an increasingly widely held view that the translator is not merely a co-author but enjoys a kind of authorial autonomy that implies that the translation can be judged without close reference to the original. As Krasznahorkai’s known views on translation suggest the acceptance of this notion, he is therefore, to a degree, complicit in the partial misrepresentation (and hence misconstrual)


Introduction
It is now almost fifty years since James S. Holmes identified translation criticism as an autonomous branch of applied translation studies. He wrote: "Doubtless the activities of translation interpretation and evaluation will always elude the grasp of objective analysis to some extent, and so continue to reflect the intuitive, impressionist attitudes and stances of the critic. But closer contact between translation scholars and translation critics could do a great deal Following the pioneering translations of Krasznahorkai's novels by George Szirtes, and of several of his shorter pieces by John Batki, the work of Ottilie Mulzet on Seiobo járt odalent (2008)/Seiobo There Below (2013) and Báró Wenckheim hazatér (2016)/Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming (2019) has now made more of Krasznahorkai's remarkable oeuvre available to an English-language readership. In particular, Mulzet's translation of a further thousand pages (or more) of his distinctive prose has helped to cement Krasznahorkai's worldwide reputation, and for this she is greatly to be commended. Not least, it is on the basis of the English translations that many readers, as well as distinguished writers, scholars and critics such as W. G. Sebald, Susan Sontag and James Wood have been able to compare Krasznahorkairightlywith the likes of Gogol, Melville, Kafka and Beckett. Nevertheless, the relationship of this translation to the Hungarian original raises issues about the practice and the theory of translation, some of which I try to address below. Hence, while it is beyond the scope of these notes to review the reception of Krasznahorkai in the English-speaking world, one of my aims here is to help nuance those literary comparisons through a detailed examination of the translation of this compact but entirely characteristic work of Krasznahorkai's. To those new to Krasznahorkai, and to Animalinside in particular, I would recommend James Wood's wide-ranging and perceptive review of the translation (Wood 2011), though it is symptomatic that when Krasznahorkai himself was asked to suggest an introduction to his work, he proposed the Book of Revelation.
The following notes are structured as follows. Part I, Sound, considers the repetitions so fundamental to this work. In Part II, Content Words, I look at issues of lexis. Part III, Grammar (Function Words), is perforce limited to the discussion of a small number of elements vital to the smooth flow of the text. (Evidence for syntax will be found throughout). Part IV reflects on some particular limitations of the translation, while Part V, finally, considers Animalinside in the context of Ottilie Mulzet's overall approach to translation. The following abbreviations are used: K: Krasznahorkai (Hungarian is always cited in italics); M: Mulzet; S: precedes a suggested [S]hortly before starting work on the translation, I received a highly unequivocal instruction from the author: 'there are many repetitions in the text, and this is very important; repeat everything exactly as it is in the original regardless of what the English language WANTS....' Not only did I adhere to this advice, but even before receiving the message I was personally aware of how appropriate this command was.... [C]rucially, repetition is intrinsic to the idea of apocalypse in itself (Mulzet 2010).
Some repetitionsmost clearly at the level of individual words, for example a cluster of important verbs in I and XIV -are in all likelihood resistant to "consistent" translation; the cluster mentioned is discussed in Part IV. At the other extreme are XII and XIII, sections of which are identical. (This is also the case in I, where approximately halfway through the subject switches from the third person and repeats what has been said, but in the first person singular. However, irrespective of whether or not the translation is correct, the translator varies her own wording on ten occasions). In between I tentatively identify two kinds of repetition, simple and cumulative. However, despite Krasznahorkai's injunction, some repetitions are noticeably not replicated in Mulzet's translation: (1)/IV K: úgy kell ezt elképzelni K: úgy kell elképzelni M: you have to imagine it like this M: how this has to be imagined S: the way (this/it) should be imagined Two, more complex instances: (2)/I K: ezek a perspektívák nem alkalmasak arra, hogy létezni tudjon bennük (repeated a few lines later, in the first person:) K: ezek a perspektívák ugyanis nem alkalmasak arra, hogy létezni tudjam (sic) bennük (NB ugyanis 'since, for (it is the case that)') M: these perspectives are not made for him to exist in them M: these perspectives are not even made so that I can exist in them S: these perspectives are incompatible with his being able to exist in them S: for these perspectives are incompatible with my being able to exist in them (3)/I (admittedly a difficult pair) K: minden, ami volt, már nincs, minden, ami lenne, az nem lesz, így hát számára az sincs, ami van (repeated a few lines later in the first person:) K: minden, ami számomra volt, már nincsen, minden, ami számomra lenne, az nem lesz, így hát nekem az sincs, ami van. (NB These clauses differ only minimally, as the underlined számára/számomra/ nekem add only marginal emphasis to 'for him/for me/for me', while nincs and nincsen 'there is not' are semantically identical.) M: everything he was is no more, everything that could shall never be, so that for him there is not even anything that is M: everything that there was for me has become nothing, everything that could ever be for me is naught, so that for me there is nothing that even is Perhaps: S: Everything that existed, no longer exists, everything that could exist, will not exist, so for him there does not exist even what there is. S: Everything that for me existed, no longer exists, everything that for me could exist, will not exist, so for me there does not exist even what there is.
In the kind of repetition I call cumulative, a repeated element X is modified by an adjectival or adverbial modifier Y, formulaically [X, Y X], the unit having a strong emotional, generally negative, charge. Examples (4)-(7) are basically fine, though certain other adjustments are suggested: (4)/VIII K: egyedül vagyok, végtelenül egyedül, annyira egyedül, hogy... (three times) [X (egyedül [vagyok]), Y (végtelenül) X (egyedül)] M: I am alone, endlessly alone, so incredibly alone that... (three times) S: I am alone, infinitely alone, so alone that... (three times) (5)/IX K: csak egyszer, csak egyetlen egyszer, megtalálni [X ([csak] egyszer), Y ([csak] egyetlen) X(egyszer)] M: just once, (I said), just once to find S: to find just once, just one single time (6)/I K: ehhez a térhez neki nincs köze, az égadta világon semmi köze nincs ehhez a struktúrához (repeated, in the first person, on the opposite page) [X (nincs köze), Y (az égadta világon) X (semmi köze nincs)] M: he has nothing in common with this space, in the entire God-given world he has nothing in common with this structure S: he has nothing in common with this space, he has absolutely nothing in the world in common with this structure (For more on the idiom köze van/nincs (semmi) köze, see Sherwood 2011, passim) In the following set Y must be translated by a postmodifier. One reason for the importance of this set is that the infinite (the eternal, the unquantifiable, the immeasurable, as opposed to the finiteness of the specific, the itemizable, the mensurable) plays a key role not only in this work but throughout Krasznahorkai's oeuvre. In this case three cumulative repetitions are supported by two further, very similar items. I have adjusted the sequence and layout to facilitate comparison: évek, mérhetetlen mélységű évek óta K(ii) évek, mérhetetlen mély évek óta K(iii) csak évek, mérhetetlen mélységű évek múlva K(iv) egy újabb mérhetetlen mélységű év However, although a quite similar unit, mérhetetlen évek "immeasurable years," occurs in the following section, VIII, the [X, Y, X] structure has been missed: (8)/VIII K: ahogy véget ér ez az évek, ez a mérhetetlen évek óta készített ugrásom [[ez az] X (évek), [ez a] Y (mérhetetlen) X (évek)] M: and as the years reach their end, my leap which I have prepared for all of these immeasurable years S: and as this leap of mine, for which I have prepared for years, for immeasurable years, comes to an end C: It is not the years, and certainly not "all of these years," that come to an end; it is the leap. This section is mainly about the arc-like form and content of Animal's leap, with 'arc' occurring 11 times. A possible reason for the flawed rendering is discussed in Part III.
Finally, before leaving repetitions, let me illustrate the converse, which is occasionally found: when only partly parallel phrases are turned into an erroneous (simple) repetition: (9)/VIII K: rajtam kívül nincs is voltaképpen senki K: rajtam kívül nincs is voltaképpen semmi M: apart from me there isn't in fact anyone else at all M: apart from me there isn't in fact anyone else at all S: apart from me there is, in fact, no one (at all) S: apart from me there is, in fact, nothing (at all) C: In Ottilie Mulzet's later translations from other authors, too, there are similar issues with "who" and "what." In an extract from Gábor Schein's Svéd/Swedish, tudom, kikre gondol "I knew what he was thinking of" (recte: "who he was thinking of") (Schein-Mulzet 2016); and in one of his poems, nem jut előre, aki érdemes "what is deserving does not come first" (recte approximately: "it's not the deserving who get ahead," crucial for the contemporary message of this poem) (Schein-Mulzet 2012).

Part II: Lexis (Content Words)
I take as a case study the modifier égadta (világon) in (6) above, repeated here for convenience and renumbered.
(10)/I K: ehhez a térhez neki nincs köze, az égadta világon semmi köze nincs ehhez a struktúrához (repeated, in the first person, on the opposite page) M: he has nothing in common with this space, in the entire God-given world he has nothing in common with this structure S: he has nothing in common with this space, he has absolutely nothing in the world in common with this structure This idiom bears particular scrutiny because it is one of group of three closely related phrases, of which the most common (c. 33,000 hits in Google's advanced search) in the form az égvilágon semmi köze nincs/sincs (valamihez) "nothing in the world to do (with something)". Krasznahorkai's favorite but overall less frequent (c. 1,500 hits) variant of this, az égadta világon semmi köze nincs/sincs, adds to the exasperation something like the force and tone of "not the blindest bit" in "makes not the blindest bit of difference." (There is also an even less frequent, and most mysterious, variant, az ég egy adta világon semmi köze nincs/sincs (c. 1,100 hits)). The translation I suggest may be less colorful, but a little further investigation of the expression will go some way to justifying it.
While it is true that ég ['heaven'] and isten ['God'] are often interchangeable in Hungarian and English, especially in exclamations such as az ég/Isten szerelmére! ['for heaven's/God's sake!']; adja az ég/Isten! ['(may) heaven/God grant (that...)'], in the above example they are not. "God-given world" is a very positive phrase in English, used overwhelmingly in Christian/biblical contexts (c. 23,000 hits) for the wonderful world given to us by God. The choice of translation was perhaps influenced by the existence of istenadta, which looks like a calque of "God-given;" however, this tends to mean the opposite, as in the [X, Y X] repetition, a nép, az istenadta nép, in János Arany's famous poem A walesi bárdok/The Bards of Wales ("that wretched breed" in Bernard Adams's translation). In later translations by Ottilie Mulzet, too, idioms based on isten are not satisfactorily rendered: istenigazából ['by the truth of God'], where the Hungarian is simply an emphatic ['really and truly']; and isten háta mögött ['God's little acre'] is the title of Erskine Caldwell's 1933 novel God's Little Acre, and the 1958 film with the same title, about a dysfunctional farming family in Georgia obsessed with sex and wealth, whereas the Hungarian means "in the back of beyond." (Krasznahorkai-Mulzet 2019: [vii] and 12, respectively). The major pre-internet Hungarian-English paper dictionary (Országh et al. 1998) has entries for égvilágon, istenadta, istenigazából and az isten háta mögött, though not for égadta (világon), for which an internet search is necessary.
Mainly to preempt possible accusations of nitpicking, I offer in the Appendix numerous further examples of Ottilie Mulzet's rendering of certain words and phrases. While some of these may seem less serious than others, the issues they raise would certainly need attending to in any future edition.

Part III: Grammar (Function Words)
As mentioned, limitations of space must limit the discussion here to "function (grammatical) words," closed classes of words with little lexical meaning that generally express grammatical relationships between other (open classes of) words within a sentence. Even within this group I am able to discuss in detail only a couple of sub-groups.
(a) DETERMINERS Example (8)/VIII is repeated here for convenience: K ahogy véget ér ez az évek, ez a mérhetetlen évek óta készített ugrásom M and as the years reach their end, my leap which I have prepared for all of these immeasurable years S and as this leap of mine, for which I have prepared for years, for immeasurable years, comes to an end As pointed out earlier, the subject here is the noun phrase ez az [...] ugrásom ['this... jump of mine'] the intervening material being adjectival: that is, it is the leap that comes to an end, not the years. The missing of the [X, Y X] repetition is perhaps due to the visual (though not aural) similarities between the definite article a (before a vowel az) ['the'], which is a (stressless) proclitic (that is, the stress is drawn onto the following syllable), the distal demonstrative pronoun az ['that'] (proximal counterpart ez ['this']), which are independent words, and the demonstrative adjective which is formed by combining the two, for example az a fiú, ez a fiú [ (11), (19), (30), and (31). Similarly, egy ['1'], the numeral one, is an independent word, while egy ['a(n)'], the indefinite article, is a stressless proclitic. In the translation egy is disorientatingly often wrongly translated as the numeral: ['there is/are not'] is above 400, some 7% of its total vocabulary. Despite the very frequent use of "not even" in the translation, few of the 54 occurrences of se(m) "neither, nor" (which is sometimes postposed) mean "not even"though that may, on occasion, be an acceptable and  (m)... se(m)... is standard for "neither... nor...," so that "not even" is not motivated: (47)/II K: nem kell se tőletek semmi, se senki mástól M: I don't even need anything from you, or anyone else S: I don't need anything, either from you, or from anyone else Only the circumfixed még ... is (this occurs only once) and its negative counterpart, még ... se(m) (six occurrences), both of which wrap tightly around the item restricted, ensure the meaning 'even' and 'not even', respectively. So the following is fine: (48)/III K: de még ez se elég nagy nekem M: but even that isn't big enough for me The rendering of (49) is close, though the suggestion would be closer: (49)/VII K: nem lesz neked még szemed se M: you won't even have any eyes S: you won't have even eyes On the other hand, the remaining five translations are not so good, those for (52), (53) and (54) being especially challenging.
(50)/II K: nem tudjátok még ezt sem, pedig itt az idő, hogy kezdjetek félni és rettegni és szorongani M: you don't even know that the time has come, however, for you to start to be afraid, and to be terrified and to be anxious S: you don't know even that [i.e. referring to the previous clause], yet the time has come for you to start to be afraid and be terrified and be in anguish On the other hand, the "not even" in (2) above is not only unmotivated but makes the sentence virtually uninterpretable: M: these perspectives are not even made so that I can exist in them The element már and its congeners, such as máris, már ... is (compare még ... is, above), and márpedig, occur over fifty times in this text. Important as they are, their translation is problematic and variable, and a detailed discussion of them must be left to another occasion.
Likewise, there is room to illustrate another adverb, épp(en), only with a single quotation, which nonetheless demonstrates a range of problems (inter alia: determiner errors, failure of repetition, unmotivated English (bolded)). Ottilie Mulzet's renderings are more broadly discussed in section V.
(57)/IV K: egy térben, mely szűk nekem, elviselhetetlenül szűk, mely pedig néha éppen csak hogy szűk, de éppen ekkor, amikor éppen csak szűk, amikor csak egy kissé szűk az a tér, akkor a legelviselhetetlenebb (..., a few lines later:) olyan térbe érkezem, mely szűk nekem, néha éppen csak szűk, de gyakran rendkívüli módon az, kibírhatatlanul M: in that one space, which is too tight for me, unbearably small, although at times it is only exactly a bit too tight, and it is exactly then, when it is exactly just a bit too tight, that it is the most unbearable.... I'll end up in a space that is too tight for me, at times only exactly just a bit too tight, but amazingly very often just that, unendurable S: in a space that is too tight for me, unbearably tight, yet on occasion it's no more than merely tight, and it is just then, when it is merely tight, when that space is only just a little too tight, that's when it's most unbearable.... I land in a space that is too tight for me, at times it's no more than merely tight, but often it is extraordinarily so, unendurably

Part IV: The Limits of Translatability (MEG)FESZÍT-FESZÜL, IGE, BELETERÍT
A noted critic herself, Ottilie Mulzet is well aware of ÁllatVanBent's "Judaeo-Christian narratives" and "biblical framework," if only to claim that the work cannot be fitted into any of the former, and to assert that the latter is "undermined yet transformed through its shift into a radically non-European, non-Abrahamic tale of possession by deities or demons" (Mulzet 2010). But I wonder how far the work's specifically Christian imagery and references will be clear to the reader of the translation. Perhaps the parallelism between the fourteen images, each responding to and accompanied by a text, and the fourteen Stations of the Cross, accompanied at each Station by a specific prayer, will resonate with some (Szigeti Kovács 2011). But for the Hungarian reader there are highly explicit Christian, and perhaps even Nietzschean, allusions from the very beginning of the work. In I there are already five occurrences of words based on feszít, a verb concretely indicating stretching, flexing, tensingbut crucially, megfeszít is used in the sense "crucifies," while the noun derived from feszül, its intransitive counterpart, is feszület and refers to the original crucifix on Golgotha, and the devotional object, wherever it is located. However, none of these images come through in the translation.

(58)/I K: Ki akar törni, és a falakat megpróbálja szétfeszíteni, de azok feszítik ki őt, és ott marad ebben a megfeszítettségben, ebben a kifeszítettségben...és most már örökké csak a megfeszítettsége és az üvöltése ő
For the non-Hungarian reader an intermediate Mischsprache might be: He wants to break out and tries to feszít apart the walls, but it is the walls that feszít him 'out,' and there he remains in this state of megfeszítedness (crucifiedness), in this state of 'out'feszítedness ... and henceforth he consists solely of his feszítedness and his howling M(i): He wants to break free, attempts to stretch open the walls, but he has been tautened by them, and there he remains in this tautening, in this constraint...and now and forever he shall be nothing but his own tautening and his own howling, M(ii): I want to break out, I want to stretch open the walls, but they have tautened me here, and here I remain in this tautening, in this constraint...and now and forever I shall be nothing but my own tautening and my own howling (NB Here some repetitions, too, are not replicated: these are bolded). S(i): he wants to break out and attempts to push/force/rend the walls apart/asunder, but it is the walls that constrain him, and there he remains, in this state of constraint, this state of tension, and by now he consists only of his constraint and his howling And in the post-apocalyptic XIV we come full circle, returning to the Crucifixion: (59)/XIV K: nincs, kiapadt örökre, ami örökre feszített valamit fölfelé, na, most már nem feszít semmit soha többé M: that which made it tauten upwards for all time has now been spent for all time, see, and nothing shall tauten anything else ever again S: there is nothing: that which tensed something permanently upright has been drained for all time, I tell you, it will never make anything tense ever again C: Is there perhaps a hint of a supplicant crouching at the foot of the (representation of the) cross, looking upwards at the body of Christ?
Finally, in the very last climactic lines of the work we have the adverbial participle (inve) of the intransitive megfeszül ['in a state of being stretched/tensed/crucified']: (60)/XIV K: abban állunk, egymással szemben, megfeszülve, csupa izom mind a két oldalon M: in which we stand facing each other, tensed, on each side pure muscle S: in which we stand face to face, tensed/crucified, sheer muscle on both sides C: Is there perhaps a hint, Cubist fashion, of the thieves on either side of Christ?
A few lines earlier in XIV we also find, (61)/XIV K: nem hangzik el többé semmiféle ige M: no verb at all shall ever be heard again S: no word of any kind will ever be heard again Here the Hungarian suggests not, or not only, the modern sense of ige ['verb'], but its biblical origin as "the Word"that was in the beginning, and was with God, and was God (Az kezdetben vala amaz ige, és az az ige vala az Istennél, és az ige Isten vala, John 1:1, cited from Gáspár Károli's 1590 Protestant Bible). This is the sense retained in e.g. igehirdetés ['sermon;' literally 'proclamation of (God's) word'].
Returning to I, the second sentence of the work begins: (62)/I K: Beleterítették ebbe a pillanatba M: They have placed him inside this moment This might be more literally rendered "He has been rolled/wrapped/enfolded (right) into this moment," with bele-['(right) into'] prefixed to terít ['spreads, (un)folds, stretches out, lays'], the sense of the verb connecting it to feszít and its form to tér (stem tere-), from which it is derived. To me, in this rich context, this hints at the winding sheet (burial shroud or cloth) in which the body of Christ was wrapped by Joseph when it was taken down from the cross. The word tér, a key and oft-repeated word in the text, is a complex of up to three, almost certainly related, words but must here unavoidably be rendered "space;" yet, for a Hungarian speaker, it has connotations such as "free, open space," "extended (field/ground/area/level ground)," while ebbe a pillanatba may echo ebbe a ... térbe ['into this ... space']. This connects space and time in a very modern continuum, while maintaining a link with the fundamental echoes of Christianity in the text and also reminding us that in each of the 14 texts it is either time or space that is out of joint. However, as these ruminations suggest, it is well-nigh impossible to suggest such echoes and reverberations in translation. That is, of course, hardly the fault of the translator, though perhaps something more could have been done.
It is worth mentioning another element in the Hungarian original that is similarly difficult to echo: the suggestion of the splitting of the atom both as a source of energy and of a holocaust (atom bomb): (63)/XIV K: még a mag se hasad az anyagban tovább, mert nincs többé erő, ami bármit hajtana M: because the seed can burst within the material no longer, because there is no strength any longer that could propel anything forward S: [very unsatisfactorily, not a translation at all, just a gloss] even the seed/atom no longer bursts/splits (matter), because there is no longer any force to drive anything at all C: The combination of mag ['seed, atom'] and the intransitive hasad ['split/burst (open)'] necessarily suggests the Hungarian for maghasadás ['nuclear fission']. For the Hungarian reader the line simultaneously echoes part of Attila József's famous Altató/Lullaby: "The coat is sleeping on the chair,/its tear takes forty winks, quite wise,/today it won't split further there" (translated by Edwin Morgan) [Alszik a széken a kabát,/szunnyadozik a szakadás,/máma már nem hasad tovább].

Part V: Ottilie Mulzet and Translation Theory
While the issues raised in Part IV may well be intractable, many of the deficiencies noted in Parts I to III could, as I have suggested, be fairly easily remedied. The problem is not so much Krasznahorkai's language, which is, on the whole, straightforward. Much more problematic is the interpretation of the work as a whole, which for the reader of the English translation must depend on the very precise and accurate rendering of the Hungarian. A longer extract from one of Veronica Scott Esposito's interviews with the translator, tellingly entitled 'Creating an "Animal English"', will shed some light on Ottilie Mulzet's general approach to the translation of Animalinside, and raises a fundamental issue in translation theory: OM: I am more than convinced that many 'minor languages' (to use a Deleuzian term again) exist within English: there is African English, Indian English, Afro-American Vernacular, etc. And so my goal in translating a text like Animalinside is -I would hope -to create a space for one of these 'minor Englishes,' perhaps an entirely new 'animal English,' while translating this work. A text translated in such a way could possibly fulfil the 'task of the translator,' as set out by Walter Benjamin, which is to maintain the underlying 'foreignness' of the text even despite its rendering into the language of its presumed readers.
VSE: Perhaps what you're creating a space for is a Krasznahorkai-English (sic).... OM: I certainly think there should be a space for a Krasznahorkai-English. As I said, I think contemporary English is infinitely enriched by all the 'minor Englishes' out there, and yet English itself, as one of the dominant linguistic paradigms of our age...still needs this injection of 'difference.' English is the great normalizer of our time, while many smaller languages of the world are literally fighting for survival...and as such, any crack or fissure where 'otherness'however unfashionable that term may have becomecan creep in is, in my view to be welcomed. (Esposito-Mulzet: 2011) A "geophilosophical" reading of the work, on the basis of Deleuze and Guattari's Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature (1975) and of other writers' works, is certainly possible (Horváth-Lovász 2016). Among a number of perceptive remarks by Horváth and Lovász à propos of ÁllatVanBent are that "terror is least escapable and treatable when the precise object of it cannot be defined," and that "Krasznahorkai denies the reader even the comfort of normal terror, of everyday fear." Such a geophilosophical approach is especially worthy of attention in light of the looming ecological catastrophe threatening our planet.
Rather less persuasive, to this linguist at least, is the invocation of Deleuze and Guattari in connection with the English language's alleged need for an "injection of difference." Deleuze and Giattari's term "minor literature" refers rather to those obliged to use the language of the dominant culture as their own, so this is hardly something that can be "created" (i.e., "re-created") in translation. In particular, it is not clear to me in what sense the English of an individual writer (in this case, Ottilie Mulzet's translation of a writer), or the English of a particular work (in this case, Animalinside) can be usefully compared to the many different varieties of English found in Africa ("African English," unless it is a slip for "South African English," is not an acceptable term), or to Indian English, or to the variety of English spoken by some working-and middleclass African Americans. Therefore I could not agree that the goal of the translation should be the "creation of space for a minor English," nor an "entirely new 'animal English'", nor a "Krasznahorkai-English" (whatever heavy lifting that hyphen may be doing: how helpful would it be to speak of a translator's "Kafka-English," or "Godot-English"?). On the contrary, I must wonder whether Ottilie Mulzet's appeal to what in translation theory has been called foreignization is not being invoked (rather) to claim that her translations reflect features of Krasznahorkai's Hungarian. As I have tried to show, in a number of instances Ottilie Mulzet is "creative" where such creativity is not only unmotivated but misrepresents the words of Krasznahorkai. Yet this does not seem to trouble her: for example, it is striking that in her very wide-ranging Paris lecture, already mentioned above (Mulzet 2010), she misquotes her own translation at least once: XIV K: mert mi azt akarjuk, hogy nyomotok se maradjon, hogy levonuljatok a színről, és most már nincs nyom, és üres a szín, mi elvégetük ezt, és így van jól M: because we want not a single trace of you to remain, we want you to withdraw, and now already there is no trace, and the stage is empty, and we were the ones who did it, and it is good this way 2010 Lecture: we want you to withdraw, and already how there is no trace, and the stage is empty, and we were the ones who did it, and it is good this way More seriously, she cites approvingly her own mistranslations at least three times, see the numbered examples in the Appendix: /IV (see the Appendix): "Yet in the end, Animalinside cannot be entirely fitted into any Judeo-Christian narratives of apocalypse, whether they end in salvation or in the inferno; as the Beast himself might say, it does not remain 'still inside something whose dimensions could be called redundantly inabundant.'" Let me offer a final illustration, a look at just one phrase, one of the very many tesserae that make up Krasznahorkai's extraordinarily powerful, highly original, and most carefully constructed language mosaic.
(64)/IX K: kimondhatatlanul éhes vagyok, kínzóan, örökre kínzóan éhes [X (kínzóan), Y (örökre) X (kínzóan)], although it could be argued that örökre here is not a modifier but an inserted time adverbial. M: I am unspeakably hungry, tormentedly, eternally and tormentedly hungry For kínzóan éhes (from kínoz ['tortures, torments']) there are just over 100 hits from a variety of sources, with little duplication. Small though this number is, the collocation belongs with kínoz az éhség (over 1,200 hits), approximately "is tortured by hunger" and kínzó éhség (over 5,000 hits) "agonizing hunger." This shows that in Hungarian kínzóan éhes is idiomatic, without being run-of-the-mill and, importantly, that it is not a unique item that Krasznahorkai has created. On the English side, while there are over 1,600 hits for "tormented hunger," careful inspection shows that very many of these are duplicates, false positives (the words are separated by a punctuation mark), non-sentential clickbait for pornographic sites, or more abstract uses, so the number of hits for concrete uses is far lower. Be that as it may, there are no hits at all for "tormentedly hungry," other than from platforms citing this translation. Moreover, the use of "tormentedly" to modify an adjective is vanishingly rare, an extensive search garnering only four examples: "tormentedly precise/complicated /insecure/gorgeous." Accordingly, "tormentedly hungry" would have to mean "hungry in a tormented manner/way"but this is not what is meant by Krasznahorkai: the reference is not to the manner in which Animal (X) is hungry (cf. the tormented manner in which someone can be precise, etc.), but to what hunger does to X: it torments X. This may be the reason why this phrase is jarring, if not in fact ungrammatical, for a native speaker of English, whereas Krasznahorkai's is neither jarring nor ungrammatical for a native speaker of Hungarian. This is just one case, then, where Ottile Mulzet's one-off creation is not justified: no injection into English of "difference" is called for, there is no underlying 'foreignness' to be maintained, no crack or fissure where "otherness" is to be welcomed or allowed to creep in. Or rather, the kind of difference/foreignness/otherness that has crept in is the wrong kind.
More in line with Krasznahorkai's phrase kínzóan éhes might be "agonizingly hungry" (c. 400 hits, but supported by "agonizing hunger" with over 5,000), or even "excruciatingly hungry" (over 2,300 hits, supported by over 10,000 for "excruciating hunger pangs/pains.") Both, but especially the latter, would also be etymologically apt, for some of the reasons discussed in Part IV, as well as being supported by Neumann's image for IX, a series of telegraph pole-like structures receding into infinity that it may not be too far-fetched to see as crosses.
By way of conclusion, therefore, let me return to Ottilie Mulzet's quotation from Walter Benjamin about foreignization, to provide the full context of that remark which, as a matter of fact, is not Benjamin's at all, but cited by him from the writer and philosopher Rudolf Pannwitz: Particularly when translating from a language very remote from his own he [the translator] must go back to the primal elements of language itself and penetrate to the point where work, image, and tone converge. He must expand and deepen his language by means of the foreign language. It is not generally realized to what extent this is possible, to what extent any language can be transformed, how language differs from language almost the way dialect differs from dialect; however, this last is true only if one takes language seriously enough, not if one takes it lightly (Benjamin 2004(Benjamin /1923. My emphasis, P.S.).
But perhaps the last word should be Krasznahorkai's: "A translation is an entirely new work that should in no way be identified with the original in a different language" (cited from Horányi 2018). If this is taken at face value, Krasznahorkai has in effect licensed the translator to act not simply as co-author but as the virtually autonomous creator of a foreign-language text based in some (loose) way on the Hungarian. While with this version of ÁllatVanBent Ottilie Mulzet unquestionably made a substantial contribution to raising the profile of one of Hungary's greatest writers in the English-reading world, it is hardly the profile that Hungarian readers see. And in any case, there is rather more to László Krasznahorkai than just his profile.