The following is a response by Arle Lommel, Indiana University, to a review of a book he translated, Hungarian Folk Instruments, in the Journal of Folklore Research Reviews (02/16/2010). Click here to read the original review.
I thank you for publishing Jon Kay’s favorable review of Hungarian Folk Instruments. As translator of this work, I appreciate the comments and praise for the work, which won a prize for the best-designed book in Hungary in 2008. One of the reviewer’s concerns raises an interesting issue, one that Robert Mandel and I discussed at length prior to publication. Kay writes, "at times the oversimplification of the names of instruments seems too general. For example, using ’hammer dulcimer’ to mean cymbalom, which is a distinctive type of hammer dulcimer."
I must acknowledge that the general, indeed almost universal, practice would have been to use the Hungarian name, cimbalom, in such cases to refer to the Hungarian type of instrument. While this usage is widely accepted as way of showing respect for "native" terms, it contributes, paradoxically and contrary to all intentions, to a provincialization of those terms by limiting their scope to specific, ethnic types (e.g., cimbalom = "Hungarian hammered dulcimer"). The Hungarian term, however, is in fact directly equivalent to the English term "hammered dulcimer" and is used in Hungarian to refer to all types of the instrument.
My practice in Hungarian Folk Instruments was to translate names as generally as possible and to use the English equivalent with the Hungarian term in parentheses at the first occurrence in order to show their equivalence and not unduly limit the Hungarian terms to the narrow ethnic window of the book. Where Hungarian terms were particularly interesting, I provided literal English translations (neologisms) along with the Hungarian terms—e.g., "guffaw-er" (röhög?) for a ratchet—in order to convey a sense of the linguistic characteristics of the Hungarian name. These practices were intended to provide relevant linguistic information to readers without making claims that confine the terms to ethnic territories.
Kay is correct that this practice may seem like oversimplification and certainly does stand out as an unusual practice in contemporary folkloristic scholarship. The decision Mandel and I came to was done to correct the opposite oversimplification that could result from standard practices. Kay’s response shows that this decision touches on an area of some concern, and it is one for which I do not know of any entirely satisfactory solution, since none that I can see will fulfill all possible requirements. I don’t know how best to deal with these issues (and clearly the approach we took falls short of eliciting the ideal response), but I appreciate Kay for drawing attention to this perplexing issue.
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[Review length: 448 words • Review posted on February 23, 2010]