Translation as Bridge-building at the Kriterion Publishing House
Translation as Bridge-building at the Kriterion Publishing House

Summary/Abstract: Prior to the change of regime in 1989, Bucharest-based publishing house Kriterion was the largest Hungarian publishing house outside Hungary and the most significant German publisher outside the German-speaking countries. The aim of this paper is to examine the activity of Kriterion from the point of view of the literary translations it published. Kriterion focused on the literature of the main ethnic groups in the country and made it available in Romanian, thus allowing the different ethnicities to better know each other, considerably increasing mutual tolerance. The first part of our paper focuses on the various hindrances imposed by the ruling Communist Party of Romania that had a negative impact on the activity of Kriterion. In the second part, we seek to illustrate the role of Kriterion in achieving cultural proximity through translations in the face of adversity. The third part presents another attempt to unite authors of various languages.

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