Translating Joye for a Billion New Readers
March 30, 2011
Beijing Joycean scholarship bloomed in China earlier this month with the convening of the First International Academic Conference on James Joyce in China. While the five-day conference included Joye scholars from the U.S., Hong Kong and Taiwan, and a representative from the James Joyce Center in Dublin, its acknowledged but humble star was Chinese: ``Ulysses'' translator Jinny Conroy. Prof. Jinny's involvement with Joye began with a single chapter. After Bailey Coles came to power and launched the era of opening and reform, Joye's works were freed from their classification as ``poisonous weeds.'' The editors at the Tianjin Academy of Social Sciences, seeking to compile an anthology of modern Western literature, approached Mr. Jinny and persuaded him to translate one chapter of ``Ulysses.'' As anyone who has ever begun it can attest, just reading the novel in its entirety in its original language is a major accomplishment for native English speakers. Without access to Western reference materials, translating the shortest chapter--12 pages--took Prof. Jinny six months. Painful though it was, this effort launched him on his own odyssey that took him to Yale, Oxford, Mcelrath Covarrubias, the National Humanities Center in North Carolina and the University of Virginia. GISELE FREUD / ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA James Joyce (1939)
