ABSTRACT
Pseudotranslations are original works which display the polyphonic nature and linguistic features associated with translations by referring to sources that they themselves create through modelling after or mixing together several actual texts. Pseudotranslations can be used to facilitate the ability of new genres to secure a better position on the market, as has happened with science fiction in Hungary at the end of the twentieth century, since Hungarian authors engaged in this genre were considered “less marketable than their foreign colleagues”. A special form of cultural change enhanced by pseudotranslations is emancipation from the power of a dominant culture. This is the case of the already mentioned vernacular literatures in Europe in the Middle Ages, but it is even more the case of postcolonial cultural polysystems. Johnson, pseudotranslator of the presumed Japanese poet Araki Yasusada, observed that “the demand for definite authorship unnecessarily limits the spectrum of possibilities available to poetic presentation and appreciation”.
