James Joyce's novel Ulysses (1922) has been translated into at least 45 languages. Published in English and set in Dublin, the novel is renowned for its linguistic complexity, use of multiple literary styles, extensive wordplay, and dense cultural references that present exceptional challenges for translators. The first translations appeared during Joyce's lifetime: German (1927), French (1929), Czech (1930), and Japanese (1931). Joyce was personally involved in the French translation. Several languages have multiple translations, with Italian having nine versions and Portuguese six.

The translation history of Ulysses reflects broader political and cultural dynamics. In some countries, translations were suppressed by censorship or translators faced persecution (Soviet Russia); elsewhere, translations became significant cultural events (Sweden, Hungary) or political statements about the status of minority languages (Kurdish, Basque, Irish). Translators have taken diverse approaches, from prioritizing readability to maintaining the original's linguistic complexity. Particularly challenging elements include Joyce's use of different English dialects, untranslatable wordplay, and the "Oxen of the Sun" chapter, which parodies the evolution of English prose styles from Anglo-Saxon to contemporary slang. Translation teams, retranslations, and scholarly revisions have continued into the 21st century.

The language of Ulysses and issues with its translation

Ulysses, published in 1922, was translated into multiple languages, and was called to be one of the hardest books to translate. Several translators called it an "untranslatable" book, a "horror" to translate, and wrote about its "unretranslatability".

Zlatko Gorjan, the translator of the book into Croatian, wrote:

The Joyce scholar Fritz Senn compared the task of translation with heroic deeds of Odysseus:

In Joyce's lifetime, only four translations were made: German (1927), French (1929), Czech (1930) and Japanese (1931). Joyce was always interested in translations, and "felt extremely 'delighted' to read translations of Ulysses in other languages".

Joyce's English is extremely non-standard; he used words from many languages, that was called by one translator "the 'fearful jumble' of dialectal versions, cant, and pidgins". His language is "both defamiliarized and foreignized through the introduction of a wealth of foreign terms and idioms, its diachronic and synchronic expanse navigated". Joyce used Irish English and Hebrew words and phrases.

One of the most convoluted chapters of the book is "Oxen of the Sun", in which Joyce parodies the evolution of English prose:

According to the so-called "retranslation hypothesis", retranslations tend to be closer to the original text than previous translations. It was observed, for example, in Swedish, but not in Croatian and Catalan translations.

Cait Murphy shows an example of just one Joyce's wordplay that poses a challenge to translate:

Overview Ulysses has been translated into at least 45 languages. Several languages have more than one translation, for example Italian has nine, while Portuguese has six. In some countries, translations by already well-known writers and poets became known as "classic" and gained cult-like status (see German, French, Swedish, Hungarian, Finnish); in some, sparked discussions about Joyce or the translation (see Russian and Dutch); while in some countries translations were met with indifference (see Armenian, Latvian, and Belarusian); in some, translations were heavily advertised and became a cultural event (see second Swedish). Some translators did the work because of the love to Ulysses (see Danish), while for some it was a political statement about the merits of their "minor" languages (see Kurdish, Basque, Irish, Belarusian, Galician).

Translations can be unevenly divided into "early", that were done during Joyce's life (first translations into German, French, Japanese, and Czech), and "late", which benefited from amassed critical materials about the book, and often were translated from the revised editions (see Icelandic and Chinese). In several countries the publication of translation was almost impossible because of censorship: translators were arrested and executed (see Russian), the book itself was censored by omitting multiple scenes (see early Japanese, Romanian), was published abroad (see Latvian, Belarusian, Kurdish, second Arabic, Persian), or was not published before the regime's change (see Russian, Ukrainian). Multiple translators worked from exile (see Kurdish, second Arabic, Persian). In case of retranslations, younger translators often harshly criticized their predecessors (see Hungarian, Dutch, Brazilian Portuguese). Multiple translators were amateurs with no prior experience in translation or literature (see Spanish, Russian, Belarusian, Greek, Italian), though some were done by already famous writers or poets (see Czech, first Finnish, second German, Japanese, second Hungarian, Armenian). Some translations were done by teams (see French, Japanese, Flemish Dutch, Galician, the latest Brazilian Portuguese). Very few women translated the book (see Bulgarian, Macedonian, second Brazilian Portuguese). Some translations were done in just half a year (see Catalan, Finnish), while some translators worked on it for years (the longest one was Danish, that took it translator 18 years; the same translator then continued to work on the retranslation).

List of languages Language (year of the first (full) published translation, number of translations)

German (1927, 2) French (1929, 2) Czech (1930, 2) Japanese (1931, 4) Swedish (1943, 2) Spanish (1945, 5) Argentinian (1945, 2) European (1976, 3) Hungarian (1947, 2) Danish (1949, 3) Serbo-Croatian (1957, 3) Croatian (1957, 2) Serbian (2001) Italian (1960, 9) Latvian (1960) Finnish (1964, 2) Portuguese (1966, 6) Brazilian (1966, 4) European (1984, 2) Korean (1968, 3) Slovene (1968) Greek (1969, 2) Dutch (1969, 3) Polish (1969, 2) Catalan (1981, 2 + 1 unpublished) Arabic (1982, 2 + chapters) Romanian (1984, 2) Hebrew (1985) Belarusian (1988) Russian (1989 + chapters) Irish (1991) Icelandic (1992) Norwegian (1993) Slovak (1993) Chinese (1994, 3) Turkish (1996, 2) Georgian (1999) Albanian (2003) Lithuanian (2003 + chapters) Bulgarian (2004) Uzbek language (2008) Mongolian (2009) Armenian (2012) Macedonian (2012) Malayalam (2012 + chapters) Galician (2013) Basque (2015) Ukrainian (2015) Persian (2019) Kurdish (2023) Estonian (2024)

Italic year means that only part of the book was translated and published.

Early translations

German The first German translation by was published as a three-volume edition in 1927. Though Goyert had access to Joyce for consultation, he apparently made limited use of this opportunity. A revised version of his translation appeared in 1930 in two volumes, though both editions remained expensive. The translation was called "badly botched", and Goyert's "approach was clearly in keeping with the attempts by the publishers to suggest that the German Ulysses was an expensive, well-bound, well-printed piece of pornography." In the 1930 revised edition more than 6000 changes were made.

In the mid-1960s, Suhrkamp Verlag acquired the rights and commissioned Hans Wollschläger to translate Ulysses as part of their complete Joyce works edition, under 's editorship. The book was published in 1976 and became known as the "translation of the century" and "instant classic". Wollschläger was known as a "recluse genius" who never worked in a team.

After Wollschläger's death, the project to revise the translation was started. In a decade, it "effectively overhauled, mainly with the aim of factual accuracy and internal consistency". It was led by Harald Beck together with Ruth Frehner and . Though the work was completed, the publisher failed to secure right for publication, and when the revised edition was announced in 2017, the Wollschläger Estate blocked its publication, arguing that the changes had "desecrated" Wollschläger's artistic work. The 2018 Suhrkamp edition exists only in a limited run of 200 copies for libraries and scholars.

French

The first French translation was published in 1929. It was made by August Morel, Stuart Gilbert, Valery Larbaud, and publisher Adrienne Monnier. Joyce himself assisted in translation; he was involved from the very start in 1922, and even "organized them [translators] into a team with a plan and a mission". Joyce chose Larbaud as the main reviser; he also "insisted on closeness to original denotation" and was anxious of possible mistranslations. It was the second published translation of Ulysses after the 1927 German one. It was noted for "its incredible rendering of French as it was spoken in the 1920s, to the point of being praised as an 'incredible anatomy of the French language' by André Topia". Because of that, the translation became "difficult to understand without a dictionary or without notes", as Morel used too many "contemporary idioms, idiosyncrasies and slang". The book was expensive and did not sell well.

The second French translation, done by a team led by Jacques Aubert, was published by Gallimard in 2004. Aubert's team had eight people: Jacques Aubert, Marie-Danièle Vors, Michel Cusin, Pascal Bataillard (academics); Tiphaine Samoyault, , (writers); and (translator). Their way of working on the book was different from Morel's:

One of the translators, Tiphaine Samoyault, noted that such organization "facilitated the process of renouncing all linguistic normativity", Bernard Hœpffner called it an "eight-person schizophrenia". The team translated all the book's chapters except "Oxen of the Sun", that was taken from 1929 Morel's edition; according to translators, "this inscribed the history of the French translation of Ulysses within the work, making for a parallel with the particular style of the fourteenth episode, as the history of translation mirrored the history of the English language".

The second translation used the 1922 text as the source. In contrast with the Morel's translation, the new one did not "Gallicize" proper names. Each member of the team translated different episodes; this approach was criticized because it led to the loss of Joyce's leitmotifs.

Czech The first Czech translation of Ulysses appeared in 1930, as a collaborative effort between Ladislav Vymětal and . Vymětal worked on the opening sections through "Sirens" and the final portion, starting from "Circe", while Fastrová translated the middle sections beginning with "Wandering Rocks."

The next translation came from , published by Odeon in 1976 as Odysseus. Skoumal worked on the book for "five decades". Despite its substantial initial printing of 7,000 copies, the Communist regime censored it and restricted its circulation to Party members and psychiatrists. Skoumal had a personal connection to Joyce's Dublin, having visited the city in 1926. In a letter to writer Jaroslav Durych, he described Dublin as "a city of beggars, a city of poverty, dirt, dust, a city of ruined houses, a city of people who despite their humiliation have something noble (dare I say royal) about them". The initial price was 45 crowns, but at the blackmarket the book could cost 700.

Skoumal's translation is notable for its "artificial" language, though it differs from Joyce's original by employing more archaic vocabulary. This choice was partially driven by the challenges of representing regional diversity in Czech, a relatively uniform language. Instead of attempting to capture locality, Skoumal opted for temporal distance through archaic language to achieve poetic effects.

Skoumal's "highly criticised" translation was rereleased in 2012.

Japanese