Welcome to James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. This episode is a special one because joining us from his home in Ireland’s capital will be translator Kenji Hayakawa, who is currently translating Finnegans Wake into Japanese. Kenji will share his insights into Joyce’s last novel, and we’ll hear him read excerpts from his translation alongside actor Richard Harte’s readings in the original English.
For a transcript of this episode, please visit https://www.onelittlegoat.org/podcast.
“James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake” is produced by One Little Goat Theatre Company, an official charity in Canada and the USA. To support our work, please visit us online to make a charitable donation and join our mailing list.
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This podcast is made possible by Friends of One Little Goat Theatre Company and the Emigrant Support Programme of the Government of Ireland. Thank you for your support! Thank you to everyone at the Irish Consulate in Toronto. Thank you to Darina Gallagher and the James Joyce Centre in Dublin for your partnership. Thank you for listening!
Mentioned: translator Kenji Hayakawa, existing Japanese translations of Finnegans Wake, why translate FW into Japanese, Kenji’s translation and annotations (with Yuta Imazeki) on https://finneganswake.net/, Japan Knowledge database, Fweet, standardized Japanese in 20th century, 18 categories of Japanese dialects, drawing on nonstandard Japanese dialect terms to translate FW, suppression of Irish language under British rule, translating into “Japaneses” plural much as Joyce wrote FW in multiple languages (dream language), translating puns and sound, thunderword #3 in English and Japanese, thunderword as a trans-lingual magical incantation, ‘horserace’ excerpt from Ch02 in English and Japanese, starting with Ch02 rather than Ch01, Vancouver FW reading group led by Kevin Spenst, community aspect of reading and translating FW, “Ballad of Persse O’Reilly” excerpt in English and Japanese, political dimensions of “Ballad,” No Kings protest against American President Donald Trump, opening line of FW in English and Japanese, “riverrun” as “Kawaran” meaning “unchanging” in Japanese, “Kaway” meaning “river” in Japanese, ‘cultural translation’ of Irish culture, Japanese script vs latin-letter scripts (English, German, etc.), James Joyce Digital Archive.
Resources: Transcript for this episode, including the text of Finnegans Wake.
Finnegans Wakes: Tales of Translation, Patrick O'Neill. University of Toronto, 2022.
The Making of Monolingual Japan: Language Ideology and Japanese Modernity, Patrick Heinrich. Bristol, UK, Multilingual Matters, 2012.