Rendering science fiction, culture, and language while translating ready player One

Abstract

The amazing science fiction setting and plot depicted by Ernest Cline in his Ready Player One may constitute a real challenge to translators and subtitlers alike as his book was also turned into a movie by Steven Spielberg. We have collected hundreds of terms from the original book (2011), its Hungarian translation (2012), the Hungarian dubbed version (March 2018), the most popular Hungarian fansub (2018), and the professional subtitle (July 2018, from the same person who translated the script for the dubbing). Having classified the collected terms into various categories, we have managed to identify successful Hungarian renditions of cultural allusions from the 1980s (movies, books, videogames, shows, songs, characters, objects, vehicles, etc.).