In my recent article, published in Arab World Books, titled “The Hidden Side of a Nobel Prize Winner: László Krasznahorkai’s Profound Pessimism,” I noted that he remained largely unfamiliar to much of the world. Andrew Ervin echoed this in his piece “Is This the First-Ever English Language Review of László Krasznahorkai?” published in the Philadelphia City Paper and reprinted by Literary Hub.
As Ervin observed, “few [Hungarian writers] have been translated and even fewer have received any sort of exposure here in the New World.” He highlighted the challenge posed by Hungary’s language, describing it as “among the most unique and inaccessible in the world,” a reality that has limited the international reach of its literature. Such barriers help explain why a writer of Krasznahorkai’s magnitude remained little known outside his country until he received the Nobel Prize.
Translation Creates a New Work in a Different Language
Krasznahorkai has spoken forcefully about these hurdles, arguing that translation can never truly mirror the original work. In his view, a translation does not reproduce the author’s book but creates a new one—something that belongs to the translator rather than the writer. This conviction carries particular weight coming from an author whose work has appeared in more than twenty languages. In an interview with The White Review, he stated that believing a translation can be identified with the original is “an absurdity.” The text that appears in another language is, in his words, “the work of the translator,” a separate creation that resembles the original only as distant relatives resemble one another. The original remains tied to the language in which it was first conceived, shaped, and heard internally by the author. Anything beyond that language becomes another work entirely.
He described the process even more vividly In Asymptote Journal, imagining himself standing before a sealed cloister where he places his manuscript into a hidden compartment. The mechanism turns, unseen, and months or years later the translation appears. He does not know what has happened inside, what choices the translator has made, or how his sentences have survived the journey. He admitted that he “has no idea” how his books sound in other languages, because the internal rhythm and breath of Hungarian cannot be carried across intact. The translator must build something new in another linguistic world, creating not a copy, but a parallel work that stands on its own.
Why True Accuracy in Translation Is Unattainable
True literature is a perfect fusion of linguistic genius and unique culture—a fusion that translation can never fully replicate. There is no substitute for reading a text in its original language. This is especially true for languages from distinct linguistic families, such as Hungarian, a Finno-Ugric language. This fundamental difference creates profound challenges that make truly accurate translation into English nearly impossible.
Krasznahorkai often highlighted his language’s uniqueness: its complexity and its elasticity—its ability to stretch into long, spiraling structures or contract into dense, compact forms. Hungarian, with its agglutinative nature, allows clauses to be arranged with remarkable freedom, letting a sentence unfold in a continuous flow that mirrors a stream of thought rather than a strict grammatical order. This flexibility gives his writing its characteristic rhythm, a kind of internal music that is inseparable from the language itself.
English, by contrast, a Germanic language, is more confined in its natural syntactic patterns. It requires clearer segmentation, shorter units, and a more rigid sequence of subjects, verbs, and objects. It cannot support the same length or fluidity without feeling strained or artificial. As a result, translators must deconstruct and reshape his prose into forms native to English. Even the most skilled translators, whom Krasznahorkai praises, are forced to make interpretive decisions that inevitably move the text further from its source. The outcome is not a mirror of the original but a skilled re-creation, built within the inescapable limits of another tongue.
These deep structural differences show why translation cannot deliver a perfectly accurate representation of a writer’s intention or style when the languages themselves are built on such divergent principles.
Nobel Laureates Voice Concerns About Translation
László Krasznahorkai is not the only Nobel Prize in Literature laureate to speak openly about the limits of translation and highlight its imperfections. Other winners have also reflected on how meaning, rhythm, and intention can shift—and even change radically—when a work crosses linguistic borders.
Joseph Brodsky, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1987, often warned that translation could never fully preserve the music and structure of his Russian poetry. He believed that the rhythm and inner architecture of a poem are bound to the language in which they were created, and that any attempt to carry them into another tongue would inevitably alter their essence. Brodsky frequently took part in self-translation, not to mirror the original, but to rebuild it anew in English, accepting that the result was necessarily a different work.
Annie Ernaux, the 2022 Nobel laureate, expressed her own unease with the way translation can simplify or diminish a writer’s intended depth. She observed that when her books appear in other languages, “it bothers me to see that it has been simplified and that the meanings have been reduced.” Her concern mirrors the struggle faced by many authors whose voices rely heavily on nuance, tone, and cultural context—elements that often shift in translation.
Together with Krasznahorkai’s reflections, these testimonies from Brodsky and Ernaux reveal a clear pattern: even among the world’s most celebrated writers, there is a shared awareness that translation, no matter how careful, cannot fully reproduce the original.
The Renaissance Warning: “Traduttore, Traditore
These concerns highlight a reality often overlooked by literary circles: translation betrays literature. The idea that translation betrays the original, however, is far older than modern debates about language barriers. Although contemporary writers such as László Krasznahorkai speak powerfully about the impossibility of carrying a text intact into another language, the fear itself reaches deep into literary history.
For centuries, readers and writers have recognised that something essential is always lost when a work moves from one linguistic world to another. This anxiety is captured in the old Italian proverb: “Traduttore, traditore” — “Translator, traitor.” Emerging during the Renaissance, the proverb reflects a long-standing belief that any translation inevitably alters, reshapes, or diminishes the original. The expression became foundational in European literary culture, shaping early discussions about fidelity, style, and the limits of linguistic equivalence.
Over time, major writers and thinkers have echoed the same concern. Jorge Luis Borges wrote extensively about how translations transform a text, sometimes subtly, sometimes radically. Walter Benjamin, in The Task of the Translator, argued that a translation can never reproduce the inner life or “essence” of the original work. Umberto Eco observed that “the translator negotiates meaning,” acknowledging that every translation contains the imprint of the translator’s own interpretation. Haruki Murakami, both a novelist and translator, has admitted that translated works inevitably carry a different rhythm, voice, and cultural texture.
Even in contemporary literature, the idea persists. Salman Rushdie has frequently reflected on the way stories change when they cross borders—linguistic, cultural, or historical. While he did not coin the phrase “translation is betrayal,” he recognises that narrative meaning shifts the moment it enters another language, becoming a new creation shaped by the translator’s choices.
Towards a Universal Literary Language
From early literary history to modern global literature, the conclusion remains consistent: translation does not preserve a text; it transforms it. Every translated work carries both the shadow of the original and the clear imprint of the translator.
Ironically, this process is not so different from using AI to present a text in another form. Yet translated works—often sounding more like the translator than the author—are welcomed and even celebrated with major literary prizes, while the use of AI stirs controversy, even when it merely carries out the same task.
The challenges of translation show how difficult it remains to bring literature across languages, especially from complex linguistic traditions such as Hungarian, as demonstrated by recent Nobel Prize–winning work. Misinterpretations, inaccuracies, and the struggle to preserve beauty and style often appear during translation, even when handled with care. As someone working in this field, I can attest to how demanding it is to carry a writer’s full meaning and rhythm into another language.
Based on this reality, it may be wiser to begin shaping a future in which works written directly in English become the standard for international judging, strengthening English as our shared global literary language. Nobel Laureate José Saramago (Nobel Prize in Literature 1998) once said, “Writers create national literature with their language, but world literature is written by translators.”
With all the losses that occur in translation—the author’s voice, the rhythm of the original language, the cultural nuances, and the subtle layers of meaning—I would argue: “World literature is not a literature translated from a national language. World literature is written directly in one language, the global language.”
In other words, "World literature is not born from a national language few understand, but from the language of the world—one all humans understand, and one we should all learn and defend.”
