Judith Sollosy was whisked out of Hungary along with her younger sister Klara and most of her family just before the defeat of the Popular Uprising of 1956. She grew up on Long Island, New York. She studied for her B.A. at Barnard College, Columbia University, where she majored in literature and minored in art history. She received her M.A. in dramatic literature and literary theory at the State University of New York at Buffalo, where she also studied for her Ph.D. and pursued the study of film history. Meanwhile, she taught as a teaching assistant and lecturer (New York State Teachers College). Though her schoolmates had once given her a book entitled "You Can't Go Home Again", she married acclaimed Hungarian film director Imre Fehér and settled in Budapest Hungary in 1975 with frequent visits back home. Since as an American citizen she could not teach full time at a Hungarian university, she worked as senior editor at Corvina Books, Budapest, for whom she is still freelancing. For several years she also contributed cultural reviews and features for the English-language weeklies "Budapest Sun" and "Budapest Week" and for the film magazine "Filmvilág". Throughout the years she has lectured on translation at ELTE University, Budapest, Miskolc University, and the Institute for Translators and Interpreters, now a department of ELTE. After the change in regime in 1989, she was able to teach full time at the Department of Applied Linguistics at ELTE, when she contributed two chapters on 20th century American culture and literature to the college Internet textbook, "Netting America". She is presently conducting seminars on translation for students of the Balassi Bálint Institute, Budapest. Because of her elemental love of the theater, she has also set up a small venture bringing favorite English-language plays to Hungary, including Arthur Miller's "The Ride Down Mt. Morgan", G.R. Gurney's "Sylvia", D.R. Wilde's "Mother and the Angel", and Ken Ludwig's "Leading Ladies", all of which have been staged in her translation. Meanwhile she has always written two books on translation and has edited special Hungarian issues for "Chattahoochee Review" and "Words without Borders". She has also written a number of essays on translation and contemporary Hungarian literature. One of her nurtured plans is a series of articles on translating Péter Esterházy, entitled "Esterházy per se", some of which have already appeared in various journals as well as on the Internet. She has also tried her hand at writing film scripts and plays, but has thought better of it and has pressed the Delete button on her computer before anyone could find out how little of her budding talent remains for such things, though who knows? All the same, she is proud that her translations into English have appeared in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia and Hungary and in journals and magazines including "Cross Currents", "Common Knowledge", "Partisan Review", "The New Yorker", and "PEN America", and that she is regularly reviewed in "The New York Times" and "The London Times". She is furthermore a speaker, panelist, presenter and workshop leader on translation and women's issues. In 1996 she was awarded the Hungarian PEN Club's Ady Medal for popularizing contemporary Hungarian literature in the United States.
Judith Sollosy
translator & writer