Derek Pyle and Sara Jewell of Waywords and Meansigns recently interview Fuat Sevimay, on translating Finnegans Wake into Turkish. Sevimay’s unabridged translation is forthcoming in 2016 from Sel Publishing Company.
“[Joyce], the master builder, says something in so-called English but the same word indicates something else if you read half of it in Gaelic and the rest in Latin. You have to correspond all three of them and if, in a way you succeed—bad news—that’s not enough. Your word has to get the right syntax within the sentence and—worse news—it still may not be enough. You also have to catch the phonetic. Oh, I’m tired. But Finnegans Wake deserves it all.”
