Reinvented Worlds

Abstract

Every translation is interpretation. Translation is justified in difference; it promotes invention in time and space. To translate is to travel from one way of being to another, it is to transform; forms are mobile, words, names, verbal sets move. Translations deny the empire of fixed communication, so division and plurality triumph. Given names have been integrated into literary invention since Greek antiquity. Joyce chooses names very carefully. Joycian names have significant associations in the source language; literally transposed into another language create pale meanings. The boldness of reinventing them favors the vitality of the translation. The watchman in “Circe” is in the position of the observer, the reader, the translator. To watch is to observe, to awaken from immobility. In “Circe”, strategies developed in Finnegans Wake emerge. I highlight new processes in the translation: streeita (street + narrow) alley – skiléticos (ski + skeletal) ...