Russian facets in J. Joyce’s neologisms and their interlanguage translation
- Pages
- 23-33
Abstract
The paper examines nonce words in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, particularly those originating from the Russian language. The research aims at defining word-formation patterns of the units in question and studying limitations of their interlanguage translation. Based on morphemic and word-formation analysis of the English deviated lexical units, as well as a comprehensive comparative analysis of the occasional words in the source and target languages, various types and grades of the lexical deviations and translation issues are outlined. The paper reveals certain features — the word-play based on phonetic similarity, repetition of foreign word meaning in a short context, transfer of morphological markers, and others. Being a most challenging phenomenon, interlanguage nonce words cause enormous difficulties in translation and thus require special attention. The full and incomplete versions of Finnegans Wake in German (D. Stündel, I. Horn, R. Weninger, F. Rathjen), Russian (A. Rene, A. Volokhonsky) and Spanish (M. Zabaloy) languages are explored. Various translation strategies are considered. However brilliant the exemplified decisions are, they are predictably subjective. The required transformation of the source test is often radical and added comments are bulky, leading to the creation of the modified version of Finnegans Wake rather than a translation in the true sense.