Finnegans Wake: Beyond the Limits of Translation

Many deem James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake an untranslatable novel. Despite this, the characteristics that appear to obscure its meaning, such as semantic multiplicity and experimental syntax, also make it particularly open to interpretation and resignification—thus, to translation. The present paper proposes a flexible, creative, playful, and free approach to its translation. I discuss the possibilities derived from such an approach through the analysis and translation of fragments of Finnegans Wake into Spanish, and I support this approach to the translation process with some of the most prominent research on the translations of Joyce’s works, up to date scholarship from Translation Studies, and relevant testimonies from Joyce himself and from translators and writers who have studied his literary production. I argue that Finnegans Wake is a text that tries to capture language itself, transcends linguistic barriers by resisting rigidity of meaning, and achieves an “openness” and freedom that, paradoxically, have somewhat limited the efforts to translate it. Therefore, I propose that if Joyce did not limit himself in his creative process, it is necessary that we, as readers and translators, accept without fear the challenges presented to us by Finnegans Wake and dare to create new art from it.