Some Peculiarities of Reduplication as a Musical Device of James Joyce in «Finnegans Wake» and its Translatability

Abstract

The article deals with language experiments of James Joyce in his novel «Finnegans Wake». The reduplication in the novel is found to be multifaceted and multifunctional. Not only does it strengthen an emotional component, but also creates tone-painting, thus being an inherent part of the author’s word play. A detailed classification of the randomly selected occasional lexical units formed by reduplication is suggested. Among the partial reduplication, divergent modifications are found to dominate. The research concerned the possibilities of translating the revealed occasional words into Russian (A. Rene, A. Volokhonskii versions), German (D. Stündel version) and Spanish (M. Zabaloi). Various translation strategies are considered. The research has found that interlingual transference of the writer’s reduplication is possible, but highly subjective and therefore radical transformation of the source text is often required, leading to creation of the modified version of «Finnegans Wake» rather than its translation in the true sense.