Finnegans Wake, “The Centenary of Charles Dickens”, and “An Encounter”: Observations on Translating Joyce

Abstract

Having as its theme the translation of Irish novelist James Joyce’s works, the article has as its main objective present, from the perspective of a single translator, some observations on the processes of translation of three distinct Joycean productions: chapters X and XVI of Finnegans Wake, the essay “The Centenary of Charles Dickens” and the short story “An Encounter”. In order to do so, the article expounds some of the basic features of each of the abovementioned Joycean texts and discusses how such characteristics have influenced each different process of translation. With a view to illustrate the points at issue, the article broaches significant passages taken from each text, both in their original forms and translated into Portuguese. One of the results of the investigation carried out throughout the article is to make explicit how, albeit being very dissimilar from one another, all the texts, each in its own terms, display the well-known complexity that marks Joyce’s oeuvre and that demands from the translator varied solutions to the multifaceted challenges they have to face.