Finnegans Wake a huge hit in China!

[McGrain]

No word of a lie!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/feb/05/finnegans-wake-china-james-joyce-hit

[Emil Miller]

No word of a lie!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/feb/05/finnegans-wake-china-james-joyce-hit

Well since the Chinese traditionally read from right to left, it might make it easier to understand.

[MorpheusSandman]

Well since the Chinese traditionally read from right to left, it might make it easier to understand.I laughed copiously.

[ralfyman]

This is very interesting news. Thanks!

[FenwickS]

Can't wait for the English translation!

[osho]

In fact Joyce is given much more credit than he deserves. His words are clumsy and in fact he has arrogantly borrowed from English dictionary and today if I want to write a difficult essay in English I have multiple sources to suffuse the articles with the bombastic words to confuse my readers. No matter what literary genres or schools of thought claim most readers look for unity and symmetry in a piece of literature and Joyce on the contrary had prodded his books through use of junks of ideas he had incoherently and inconsistently cultivated in his head.

I wonder why this craze for Ulysses in China? Why her so many sleepless nights and why had she tire or retire towards that worthless accomplishment? Just out of vainglory and nothing else.

[JBI]

it sold an initial printing of a few thousand. For China that is quite far from a best seller. The question is how many will actually read it. 10, 1000? I hear Ulysses made a splash in the 80s but a professor said the Chinese public who read it didn't understand it. As for the translation, it is in simplified prose translation.

This new Finnegans WAke I hear is in opaque prose. It will help the esteem but still nobody will read it.

[osho]

Why this craze for James Joyce is an enigma since the world does not go stop without his pedantic literary creations. He has not added anything to my world of knowledge, let alone any entertainment.

I am unsure whether Dai could do poetic justice by translating this non-translatable book and the simple Chinese folk unaccustomed to western thoughts find the book stone-soup. It is the sheer obsessiveness of the few critics that added too much to it

[YesNo]

Can't wait for the English translation!

Me, too. I might finally be able to get past the first 25 pages.

[stlukesguild]

Osho... you need to get over yourself and your obsessive notion that every book you don't like... or don't understand... is inherently bad. And your portrayal of the poor simple Chinese folk unaccustomed to Western thinking is patronizing in the extreme.

[Jassy Melson]

How do you know it'a big hit in China? Did you read it on the internet, or hear it on Comedy Central or Saturday Night Live? Something tells me that Joyce would be incomprehensible to the Chinese.

[maxphisher]

How do you know it'a big hit in China? Did you read it on the internet, or hear it on Comedy Central or Saturday Night Live? Something tells me that Joyce would be incomprehensible to the Chinese.

I am curious why you think this. I would agree that the translation process would probably prove rather futile and would result in a vastly different and relatively bastardized text. However, I would not accept that eastern cultures, primarily the Chinese, would get lost in the content or philosophy. Much of Joyce's philosophy is a culmination of universal themes and experiences, and many of the concepts can be translated into contexts within other cultures. I am definitely not trying to attack your answer; it is just that you left it very open for interpretation, which is dangerous. ;)

That being said, I have definitely been very curious about the translation itself. Attempting to give FW any singular and linear linguistic structure seems almost impossible. Joyce definitely didn't speak Chinese, and so much of the text is reliant on his understanding of how his word choices and creations are actually structured. Perhaps it sounds silly, but I just can't help but wonder if Chinese is simply something for which he hadn't planned.

[osho]

The fact is China today is emerging in all aspects. Since China is rising and the people of China are acutely inquisitive and they do not want to remain ignorant of the things happening globally. Of course James Joyce is a popular writer and despite the fact that his books are hard to comprehend yet the magic of it does not fail to act readers throug

[JBI]

The fact is China today is emerging in all aspects. Since China is rising and the people of China are acutely inquisitive and they do not want to remain ignorant of the things happening globally. Of course James Joyce is a popular writer and despite the fact that his books are hard to comprehend yet the magic of it does not fail to act readers throug

You don't know what you are talking about. Just stop now. The climate for literature in china is at its worst in 2000 years. James Joyce was a best seller almost 30 years ago when Western and experimental literature made a massive splash. You just read as if you're ignorant, and you are projecting your own views ontO a massive public who you don't understand.

Finnegans wake is not a best seller in China. Jin Yong, Mo Yan and others are. They have sold tens of millions, or in Jin yong's case, hundreds of millions. Less than ten thousand books does not count in China.

[mona amon]

Exactly what I felt sometime back when there was a thread/post about Mein Kampf being a bestseller in India. I couldn't really 'disprove' it, but for someone living in India it just doesn't seem anything like a bestseller, or even a remotely popular or well known book. Ten thousand copies do not make a bestseller in countries with a population of over a billion, and where other books sell in millions.

[Eiseabhal]

Greens going red! Apparently an Irish business took delivery of several tens of thousands of Mr Mao's wee red book. It was a paper recycling firm. No word of a fib!

[cafolini]

Now, first of all, there is a lot of the Cacian aberrations and a lot of Cacian in the Osho aberrations.
Then there is JBI for whom nobody reads anything.
And let's clarify something. The Chinese seldom read the West in Chinese. The one's who can read Joyce will do it in English. Why would they translate a work of that sort to Chinese? Ridiculous. It is a good hit in China, but it is read in English. What would a translation do for the Chinese? They have so many dialects...