In this paper, we examine the relationship between language proficiency and metalinguistic awareness among Hungarian secondary school students in Harghita County, Romania, using empirical data from a fact-finding study conducted in the school year 2023–2024. After outlining the theoretical framework and describing the research methodology, the study presents findings based on a sample of 1,520 participants. As both languages under investigation have been learned/acquired after the mother tongue, the paper first reports the results of the English and Romanian proficiency tests, followed by an analysis of the factors that participants identified as influencing their performance. Finally, the study explores how students perceive the role of metalinguistic awareness and metalinguistic knowledge in their language learning outcomes. By comparing the acquisition processes of the two languages, the research demonstrates that the mode of learning plays a decisive role in shaping the function of metalinguistic awareness.

The corpus-linguistic approach in translation studies, which gained prominence in the discipline with the study of translation universals (Baker 1995), became one of the most significant and prolific research paradigms of recent decades, largely thanks to technological advances and increasingly sophisticated research tools. This development laid the foundations for corpus-based translation studies. At the same time, the growing professionalization of the field and the digitalization of the translation industry have transformed not only the translation process and the role of the translator (Eszenyi et al.2023, Massey et al.2023) but also the linguistic characteristics of translated texts (Daems et al. 2018, De Clercq et al. 2021). The augmented translation environment – characterized by the widespread use of CAT tools and the rapidly improving performance of neural machine translation (NMT) and generative AI – raises the question of whether it is still appropriate to speak of translation, translators, transfer operations, and translation universals in the traditional sense or new definitions are needed. Against this backdrop, the present paper explores how the project-based approach, the digital transformation and growing automation have affected the translation process and translated discourse, while also considering the past, present, and future challenges of corpus construction, corpus design, and corpus-based translation research.

Derrida’s notion of différance and the concept of tzimtzum in the Lurianic Kabbalah share intriguing overlaps in their perspectives on absence as a precondition for meaning. The concept of tzimtzum in Etz Chaim explains the act of creation through divine contraction, a paradoxical withdrawal of the infinite (the Ein Sof) that creates the space for differentiation, structure, and thereby meaning to emerge. Derrida’s concept of différance involving deferral and difference illustrates how meaning is never fully present but always mediated by traces, gaps, and absences. Derrida’s radical openness in interpretation and the radically fixed framework that builds the mystical premise appear to create a juxtaposing paradigm. What kind of interpretative or traditional reactions generate these foundation-shattering premises in presence-centric systems?

The translation of Romanian-language news into Hungarian is essential for supplying content to Hungarian online news portals in Romania.In the present study, we focus on news texts, as they emerge on the website of Romania’s national news agency Agerpres, and their translation into Hungarian. News texts are typically precise, accurate, and factual, which requires that their content usually employ a neutral and objective style. The question we aim to answer is whether the distortions, inaccuracies, and the other phenomena that can be spotted are translation errors or the natural ingredients of news translation that have been found in the research carried out in other countries (Bielsa–Bassnett 2009; Valdeón 2005, 2008; etc.). We do not intend to accomplish quantitative research but rather to carry out a qualitative analysis based on a case study in order to identify tendencies and observe translation practices in the field of news rendering. We intend to continue our investigation by forthcoming steps and scrutiny. The shifts, distortions, and alterations we have identified in our corpus include summarizing, reordering, adding, explicitations and suppressing information, omissions, and calque translations, all of which echo the findings of more complex research.

Fairy tales establish a secure value system for children.During story listening, the dual consciousness – referred to as “enchanted consciousness” by Sartre – leans towards unreality, acting as a source of joy, a bearer of tension, and simultaneously a means of tension release. This dual consciousness in fairy tales is a journey between reality and illusion. Fairy tales play a crucial role in the development of emotional intelligence (EQ). Furthermore, story listening forms the foundation for internal image creation, enabling children to become proficient readers. Acquiring knowledge of Propp’s defined fairy tale structure enhances text comprehension and facilitates the development of critical and creative reading skills during pedagogical practice.

In postmodern literature, genre hybridization and thematic richness are far from being rare phenomena. However, when a classicist and translator chooses the verse novel as the most suitable genre for a story inspired by Stesichorus’s Geryoneis fragments, the otentially overwhelming richness of themes becomes almost self-evident. Canadian poet Anne Carson’s verse novel Autobiography of Red already creates an intriguing constellation with its title and genre-defining subtitle. This is further expanded on by the paratexts that introduce the main text, culminating in yet another label that ushers readers into Red’s life: romance. This red Geryon is neither the Geryon of Stesichorus nor the one from Apollodorus’s Bibliotheca. Carson’s Geryon is a protagonist constructed at the intersection of mythological monsters, the literary traditions of monstrosity, and the queer experience. His comingof-age story may feel familiar, but its poetic and stylistic rendering offers something profoundly novel. This study examines the genre hybridization in Autobiography of Red, with a primary focus on the traditions of the verse novel, as well as the semantic domains created by the layering of topoi drawn from various literary and cultural traditions.

This paper explores how modernist writers, specifically D. H. Lawrence and James Joyce, employ intermedial techniques (ekphrasis, multimodality, sonic-textual layering, Bakhtinian parodying of media, etc.) to capture a collective experience of neophobia as the fear of modernity and novelty. Using examples from The Rainbow, Aaron’s Rod, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake, the study discusses the concept of affective intermediality as cases of intermedialized textual elements targeting emotions and leading to actions; this helps examine how fear operates as a cultural and aesthetic collective concept, which is encoded in archetypal imagery, subconscious referencing and allusions, and medial suggestive forms. The hermeneutic method and close reading applied allow the conclusion that the writers reflect on the critical matters of the turbulent reality and, through affect and suggestiveness, impact the readers: they manifest the feeling of fear, refer to the subconscious, cause confusion and the sense of loss, puzzlement, and shock, bring forward empathy, comparison, and frustration. As an outcome, the collective memory targeted through neophobia becomes a veiled layer of modernist novels, an active construct of affective intermediality.

The traditional technique of embroidery has earned a significant position among the media of activist art and creative activism (craftivism) in the past two decades. It has also become one of the popular “slow” activities shared in communities that support community building. Examples of such activities, located in the Central European region that is defined by stances and ideas in interconnected cultures rather than by mere geographic proximity, may not be numerous. Nevertheless, they prove to be relevant for an enquiry into the phenomenon. This phenomenon has been researched mainly by Western scholars so far; only recently were they joined by a few scholars who come from and focus on Central and Eastern Europe. Taking the prevalence of cultural history and feminist perspective into account, this paper suggests a shift of approach by analysing the semiotic and multimodal aspects of the issue. The focus will be on the concurrence of iconicity and symbolism of the traditional patterns and newly introduced ones, on transmediations of narrative structures into embroidered representations, and on the multimodality of communication. The multimodal approach appears necessary due to the paradoxical relation between the materiality of the original media product and the immateriality of its media of display and distribution, typically social media. The characteristics and communicational potential of embroideries will be exemplified by the individual project “Vyzhyvanka” by Rufina Bazlova, a Prague-based, Belarus-born visual artist, and by the collective creations of the Slovak craftivist group, the KundyCrew.

The article is a theoretical study of the role of translation/ interpreting/mediation as the 5th foreign language learning skill (along with the four traditional ones: speaking, listening, reading, writing) in tourism industry studies, taking into account the knowledge of easy-to-read language text production. In today’s globalized world and in the context of European mobility, interdisciplinary education is gaining increasing attention. Although the profession of an interpreter and translator is taught in separate study programmes in Europe and worldwide, the tourism sector is one of the areas where both interpretation and translation skills and the presentation of information in plain/easy-to-read language are essential. The aim of the author’s theoretical research is to outline the place of these skills in the structure of professional competence in tourism. To this end, the types of translation required in the tourism sector as well as the techniques of simplified text production are analysed in the context of translatology. The author also gives a brief overview of easy and plain language, its role in language use and also in foreign language learning in general, highlighting the tourism sector.