Erika Barta

“I was born in Eger. In 1991 I graduated from the Tömörkény István High School and Secondary School of Art in Szeged, Szeged, in the ceramics department – ceramics as a “weekend creative activity” has been present in my life ever since. From 1996, I studied Chinese, Mongolian, political theory and cultural management at the Eötvös Lóránd University. In Beijing, I attended part-time courses at the Beijing Language and Culture University (BLCU, 1997-1998) and the Beijing Teacher Training University (BNU, 2002). I graduated as an Orientalist (Sinologist) in 2001. I currently live in Budapest with my family.

My relationship with China began almost 30 years ago when I enrolled in a Tai Chi course in Szeged and met the nice Chinese instructor. Since then, he has been my spouse and I have the opportunity to spend a few months a year in China (at least that was the custom until the pandemic started…) – the world’s most populous country is now my second home, which I think I now not only know but understand. After happy years at university, I have continued to be close to the Chinese community in our country, getting to know many of them on a more serious level and making many friends. For 25 years, I have been working to promote and develop Sino-Hungarian relations as a Sino-Hungarian interpreter, tour guide, language teacher and translator. Currently, I am working to strengthen cultural relations by working as a freelance translator, mainly translating novels and short stories by contemporary Chinese writers, works by Chinese poets into Hungarian, and participating in the compilation and editing of books published in Hungarian. As an invited speaker at international translation and publishing conferences, I participated in the Xichang International Poetry Festival in 2016, the SFLTP International Conference of Translators and Publishers in 2017, etc. I am involved in the organisation of literary and cultural events, the most significant being the Chinese-Hungarian Poetry Evening co-organised by MKBT in 2017 at the National Széchényi Library, which was attended by representatives of Chinese publishers, Hungarian sinologists and literary scholars.

I currently head the Chinese editorial office of the Beijing Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press (BFSU – FLTRP) and Kossuth Publishing House in Budapest, established in 2018. The aim of the editorial work is to publish works related to Chinese culture in Hungarian and to introduce the works of Hungarian authors to the Chinese reading public. We have published several publications on various topics, which were presented at the 2019 Budapest International Book Festival, for example.”