My Little Woman

Lajos proudly told us once about how, while analyzing his poems in great detail young students discovered the many ways the woman appears in his poems (as lover, as a mother, and so on). Well, this issue came up also when translating his poems into Swedish, mainly because of the proper use of words.
For example, when he used in his poem Prologue expressions such as: „my baby” and „my little woman”, the raw translator could only be sure, that no poet would describe these in such a pejorative way nowadays. The translator suspects that in Gyergyószárhegy, specifically in the Roma communities of Gyergyószárhegy people generally speak in this „old-fashioned” way.
Well, Owe Berglund translated these words as „lilla kvinna”, which literally means “my little woman” and „little wife”; but he also used the Swedish expression “min älskade”, „my sweetheart” in English, describing the many ways the Hungarian language can call the loved woman. This expression can be found in older but also in modern Swedish texts. This way, the Swedish translation became a successful a faithful translation of the original Hungarian version.

Translation: Zsuzsanna Tódor, Proofreading: Gabriel Farkas
Mail to Tamás Gergely: gergely90@hotmail.com

1. Skandikamera:
   2020. december 8. 11:12

   “my baby” and “my little woman”, the raw translator could only be sure, that no poet would describe these in such a pejorative way nowadays. The translator suspects that in Gyergyószárhegy, specifically in the Roma communities of Gyergyószárhegy people generally speak in this “old-fashioned” way.

   Így van. Az öndelegált nebáncsvirág levegő után kapkodik az egykor kedvesnek szánt – manapság lekezelő – „lilla gumman” megszólításért, amit magyarul édesemnek – angolul sweetie – lehet értelmezni. (Szó szerint kis anyó vagy nénike). Így szólítjuk meg a dedósokat, a tinik egymás között használják, és az idős svéd bácsik/nénik továbbra is így szólítják meg a számukra kedves hölgyeket.