Gün Benderli Togay Receives Balassi Prize for Literary Translation

Gün Benderli Togay (L) after receiving the prize

Literary translator Gün Benderli Togay received this year’s Balassi Grand Prize for Literary Translation for her unparalleled work in promoting the values of Hungarian culture, announced the State Secretary for the Development of Bilateral Relations at the award ceremony on Wednesday.

Boglárka Illés stressed that with the award, established in 2017, the Foreign Ministry expresses its gratitude to the Turkish literary translator for her activities in promoting Hungarian culture and literature. The aim of the Balassi Grand Prize for Literary Translation is to make translators at least as well-known and visible as authors, she added.

The State Secretary referred to the art of Bálint Balassi (1554-1594), that laid the foundations for Hungarian love and religious poetry. Boglárka Illés described Balassi as a poet of his time, a true Renaissance man who played a significant role in the creation of Hungarian literature.

Literary translator Baris Yilmaz, Assistant Professor at the University of Szeged, stressed that in a year that marks the 100th anniversary of the establishment of Turkish-Hungarian diplomatic relations, it is a great pleasure to award the prize to Gün Benderli Togay.

The 94-year-old Turkish literary translator has done an infinite amount to strengthen the Turkish-Hungarian friendship,

he praised the winner.

Togay moved to Budapest in the early 1950s at the suggestion of the Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet after her studies at the Sorbonne in Paris, and became a staff member of the Turkish broadcasts at Magyar Rádió.

Since then, she has lived in Hungary with some interruptions, had her children in Hungary, but has never been separated from the language of her homeland.

Her career as a translator began in the late 1990s with Imre Madách’s The Tragedy of Man (Az ember tragédiája), and since then she has translated into Turkish works by such greats of contemporary Hungarian literature as Péter Esterházy and Péter Nádas, László Krasznahorkai, Imre Kertész, Krisztián Grecsó, Szilárd Rubin, György Spiró, György Dragomán, Krisztina Tóth, and Ádam Bodor. Most recently she translated Géza Ottlik’s classic masterpiece School at the Frontier (Iskola a határon) into Turkish.

According to Baris Yilmaz, Togay is not only a great translator, but also an extraordinary personality who is honest, direct, and outspoken.

She is able to translate complex sentences and phrases “that seem impossible because of cultural differences and language barriers” into Turkish with finesse and ease.

The magnificence of her work not only inspires admiration but also gives us the courage that it is possible to undertake this challenging task, said Baris Yilmaz, who has never translated poetry but is one of the authors of the best Turkish-Hungarian and Hungarian-Turkish dictionaries, in addition to his translations and books.

Via MTI, Featured image: MTI/Lakatos Péter