Annotation James Joyce&rsquo
s Finnegans Wake has repeatedly been declared to be entirely untranslatable. Nonetheless, it has been translated, transposed, or transcreated into a surprising variety of languages &ndash
including complete renditions in French, German, Portuguese, Dutch, Japanese, and Korean, and partial renditions in Italian, Spanish, and a variety of other languages. Impossible Joyceexplores the fascinating range of different approaches adopted by translators in coming to grips with Joyce&rsquo
s astonishing literary text. In this study, Patrick O&rsquo
Neill builds on an approach first developed in his book Polyglot Joyce, but deepens his focus by considering Finnegans Wakeexclusively. Venturing from Umberto Eco&rsquo
s assertion that the novel is a machine designed to generate as many meanings as possible for readers, he provides a sustained examination of the textual effects generated by comparative readings of translated excerpts. In doing so, O&rsquo
Neill makes manifest the ways in which attempts to translate this extraordinary text have resulted in a cumulative extension of Finnegans Wakeinto an even more extraordinary macrotext encompassing and subsuming its collective renderings.