Jahn, Manfred. 1989a.

Rev. of Gardt, Andreas, James Joyce auf Deutsch: Mglichkeiten der

Literarischen bersetzung (Frankfurt: Lang, 1989). James Joyce
Quarterly 27.1: 160-164.
Gardt subdivides his study (a 1987 Heidelberg doctoral dissertation) according to
primary texts: there is a chapter on "Eveline", one on "Sirens", one on two poems
from Pomes Penyeach, and one on Exiles. In each case he discusses at least two, but
usually more, competing translations, covering all major and some minor German
translators of Joyce in the process.
He starts off with a methodological chapter devoted to current trends in translation
theory, adopting an approach which begins not with the translator translating but with
the translator as reader. The translator-as-reader, just like any other reader, creatively
acts on "impulses" (23) from the text, in the sense of Iser and Ingarden, to derive an
overall understanding of it. Unlike any other reader he is reading and understanding it
for the potential readers of the translation (31), which means he has to exercise special
care. In today's version of the hermeneutic process we irrationally move "bottom up"
to derive hypothetical "deep structures" and "top down" to test whether our
assumptions check out on the surface. Once a consistent and cohesive interpretation
(deep structure) has been arrived at, the translator's ultimate goal is to create an
independent text which contains the same set of literary impulses as the original,
allowing the target audience an equivalent reading experience.
In the case of "Eveline", Gardt mainly investigates strategies for rendering expressive
sentence rhythm, diction, and leitmotifs. A [End of p. 160] few examples suffice to
show that Goyert's (1928) translation is seriously defective, particularly in the areas of
mind style and key words, whereas Zimmer's (1969) translation often displays great
sensitivity to the text. Even at the very beginning, in the first sentence, Goyert's
translation for "invade" ("herabsank") loses the crucial image; Zimmer's "eindrang"
retains it (65). Later, for "she had begun to like him", Goyert translates "und dann
hatte sie ihn auch bald geliebt", asserting exactly what the original does not imply.
Goyert is also too formal in his presentation of the colloquial and idiomatic elements
of Eveline's thoughts and blurs the distinction from genuine authorial passages (71).
In fairness to Goyert, Gardt points out that Zimmer's translation profits from the
increased temporal distance to the original and the body of secondary literature that
has evolved.
The advantages of hindsight in translation are even more obvious in the case of
Ulysses. In 1927, apart from a motley collection of basically unhelpful critical
statements - Gilbert's book did not appear until 1930 - Goyert had almost nothing to
go on except a four-day meeting with the author, whose command of German was
questionable (94). His translation was granted the coveted authorisation, which
subsequently served both as a selling point for the Rhein Verlag and as a cover for
Goyert. But Joyce insisted on very extensive revisions for the 1930 edition, and Gardt
quotes a spiteful Tucholsky as saying "Hier ist entweder ein Mord geschehen oder
eine Leiche photographiert" (97). Forty years later, Wollschlger not only had access
to the mass of published Joyce criticism but was able to shape his translation on the

suggestions, support and advice of experts like Arno Schmidt, Klaus Reichert and
Fritz Senn. He was also given four years to do it (98).
For the "Sirens" episode, Gardt contrasts Goyert's and Wollschlger's versions of
musical analogies, expressive form, leitmotifs, neologisms, puns, and character
diction. As expected, and more clearly than in "Eveline", Goyert is revealed as a
reductionist who often defensively clings to the denotative content, loses most of the
idiom and music of the original and produces a "normalized" text (127). Wollschlger,
on the other hand, rises to the challenge and often creates exactly the stylistic effects
that are at work in the original (according to our present understanding of it). There
does come, of course, a point when translating Ulysses becomes a matter of ingenuity,
sheer luck, and also utter hopelessness. When Bloom chuckles gleefully over his own
"Pat is a waiter who waits while you wait", Goyert more or less gives up: "Pat ist
Kellner, der bedient, whrend man wartet", whereas Wollschlger makes quite a
creditable [End of p. 161] effort with "Pat ist ein Aufwrter, der aufwartet, whrend
man abwartet" (136; but why not "... der aufwartet, whrend man drauf wartet"?).
Neither translator can do anything with the "rows of cast steel" pun (117) though
Wollschlger often tries to compensate for such unavoidable loss by providing a
similar effect in the immediate context. Unfortunately, this practice may overstimulate
the translator's creative energy and develop into a tendency to improve on the text.
This is actually one of the few points of criticism that Gardt, after very careful
deliberation, does level against Wollschlger (108, 158). (Would Wollschlger have
gone as far as he did, one sometimes wonders, if Goyert had not stopped so short?)
On the poems "Alone" and "A Memory", both from Pomes Penyeach, Gardt takes into
account no less than eight German translations - four each. His discussion covers a
generous 54 pages, and since both poems are just a few lines long, he provides a
substantial critical contribution on them - much more than for "Eveline" or "Sirens"
where he works on excerpts and starts off from established or even hackneyed critical
positions to which little additional insight accrues.
The difficulties in "Alone" are its associative imagery, its lyricisms and its complex
mood. Despite this, all four translators do relatively well, even though Broch (1935)
assimilates it to his own more expressionistic ways, Claes/Lohner (1957) tend to leave
out the overtones of sex and guilt, Geilinger's (1967) version does not cohere well and
Wollschlger (1981) perhaps slightly overaccentuates the erotic element.
"A Memory of the Players/in a Mirror at Midnight" (to give the full and semantically
loaded title) is more interesting, both in its own right and because the translations
diverge wildly. The problem can be narrowed down to an interesting ambiguity in the
opening lines, which run:
They mouth love's language, Gnash
The thirteen teeth
Your lean jaws grin with. [...]
This is variously read as (i) "[You (they?), the players] gnash [indicative] ..." or (ii)
"Gnash [imperative][your, the speaker's] thirteen teeth ...". Kalmer's (1927) translation
favours (i), Bran's (1932) favours (ii), Claes/Lohner (1957) use an ungrammatical
construction to support both and Wollschlger (1981) leaves it genuinely ambiguous.
In Gardt's view Wollschlger's version is superior to the others because it alone

functionally expresses the ambiguity. It may be argued, however, that the poem,
though ambiguous in parts, is not ambiguous as a [End of p. 162] whole. Its initial
ambiguity indeed forces the reader to pause, backtrack and sort out the point of view but after that, and retrospectively even in line 1, only reading (ii) makes sense otherwise one would have to visualize thirteen collective players' teeth in line 2. In
this view Kalmer simply gets it wrong; Claes/Lohner, vainly hoping that the sense
will take care of itself, make it a free-for-all; Bran disambiguates in the proper
direction but fails to provide a stumbling block; and Wollschlger, again, goes a bit
too far in making his ambiguity more absolute and harder to resolve than the
original's.
For Exiles it is von Mettal (1919 - the first performance version) vs. Kremer (1956)
vs. Reichert (1968). Gardt takes great pains to establish that Exiles exhibits the same
thematic complexities we find in Joyce's other works, and bases his comparisons on
an analysis of the handling of ideolects, dialogue technique, repetitions and word
motifs. While the results (Reichert finishes first, von Mettal comes an honorable
second, Kremer third) are again painstakingly worked out, one wonders if Gardt really
required 69 pages to obtain them.
It is to Gardt's credit that he does not shy away from pronouncing judgment, positive
or negative. He does it methodically, fairly and reliably. After all, there are good and
bad translations and the target audience acts on recommendations or criticisms, not on
analytical descriptions. Unfortunately, when Gardt praises a translation, he does not
just say that it captures this and that impulse or effect of the original, he says this is so
because the translator appears to have worked from a firm grasp or conception of the
deep structure of the original. Similarly, if he criticises a translation, he does not
simply say it is inaccurate or careless or superficial or without cohesion; from this he
concludes that the translator appears not to have had a proper grasp of the text's deep
structure. Intended as a reinforcement of and link-back to the theoretical basis, such
phrases become devoid of meaning after a certain number of repetitions. Some quirks
of the theoretical framework are too docilely accepted anyway; having to reconcile it
with the findings of the comparative analyses leads Gardt to another questionable
procedure which also stales with repetition. For each of the primary texts Gardt feels
compelled to outline the scope of "possible" readings. This he does by pulling an
uncalled-for and arbitrary number of half-hearted, more or less plausible hypothetical
reader responses out of a hat. After that his analysis proceeds on the assumption that a
translator should capture most (or is it all? some? the proper one?) of these responses.
In view of this it is [End of p. 163] not a little surprising that his value judgments do
come out convincingly and that the bulk of the investigation works as well as it does.

[August 22, 2000]