Lessons Experimental Translators Can Learn from Finnegans Wake by Douglas Robinson

Lessons Experimental Translators Can Learn from Finnegans Wake by Douglas Robinson

Inspiring translators by making specific experimental writing strategies available to them, this book reimagines experimental translation through close readings of Finnegans Wake.

Robinson’s engagement with translational aspects of Finnegans Wake provides rich and useful insights into experimental translation that encourage new approaches to translation theory and practice. The author analyses Joyce’s serial homophonic translations, portmanteau words, and heteronyms along translational lines (following Fritz Senn, Clive Hart, Patrick O’Neill, and others), and offers a showcase translation of Walter Benjamin’s “Task of the Translator” using all three experimental techniques borrowed from the Wake.

The book will be a valuable addition to any postgraduate course in translation theory, literary theory, and Joycean literature. Translation scholars, students, and researchers will find this text a compelling read.

Douglas Robinson is a prolific scholar, with three dozen books, seven dozen articles and book chapters, and numerous book-length translations from Finnish into English. He has taught all over the world, including the University of Mississippi, the University of Jyväskylä and the University of Tampere in Finland, Lingnan University, and Hong Kong Baptist University. Upon his official retirement in 2020 he became Emeritus Professor of Translation, Interpreting, and Intercultural Studies at Hong Kong Baptist University and Professor of Translation Studies and Head of the Division of Intercultural Communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen).