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Thread: Finnegans Wake a huge hit in China!

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    Registered User McGrain's Avatar
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    Finnegans Wake a huge hit in China!


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    Registered User Emil Miller's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by McGrain View Post
    Well since the Chinese traditionally read from right to left, it might make it easier to understand.
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    King of Dreams MorpheusSandman's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Emil Miller View Post
    Well since the Chinese traditionally read from right to left, it might make it easier to understand.
    I laughed copiously.
    "As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being." --Carl Gustav Jung

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    Registered User ralfyman's Avatar
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    This is very interesting news. Thanks!

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    Registered User FenwickS's Avatar
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    Can't wait for the English translation!
    "Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable."- George Bernard Shaw

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    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.

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    Bibliophile JBI's Avatar
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    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.

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    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

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    Maybe YesNo's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by FenwickS View Post
    Can't wait for the English translation!
    Me, too. I might finally be able to get past the first 25 pages.

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    Artist and Bibliophile stlukesguild's Avatar
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    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.
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    Registered User Jassy Melson's Avatar
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    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.
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    Registered User maxphisher's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jassy Melson View Post
    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.
    Last edited by maxphisher; 02-17-2013 at 11:55 AM.

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    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

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    Bibliophile JBI's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by osho View Post
    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.

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    Registered User mona amon's Avatar
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    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.
    Exit, pursued by a bear.

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