‘It’s hard enough translating 600-word-long subordinate-clause-laden sentences while maintaining as similar a rhythm as possible,’ says Wallace translator Kostas Kaltsas.
Is There an Untranslatable Book?
By Edward Nawotka Today’s lead story describes the process of translating David Foster Wallace’s supremely complicated novel Infinite Jest into German. The translator, Ulrich Blumenbach, had no input from the author himself, but was nevertheless dealing with a book that involved “a massive text, its pages are riddled with acronyms and American pop-culture references, as well as dialects, characters with …
The Mistake on Page 1,032: On Translating Infinite Jest into German
By Amanda DeMarco “The limits of my language are the limits of my world,” Ulrich Blumenbach quotes Wittgenstein as saying in a Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung article to describe the challenges and inducements of the six years he spent translating David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest (Unendlicher Spass) into German — something he did without input from the author, who refused to speak to …
German Buch News: DFW’s Infinite Jest hits Germany, Blog Launched
By Siobhan O’Leary On August 24, the late author David Foster Wallace’s magnum opus Infinite Jest will finally be published in German. The translation itself took Ulrich Blumenbach six years to complete and the book will be printed by Kipeneheuer & Witsch as Unendlicher Spaß. Inspired by www.infinitesummer.org, as US based book club site which has been hosting a discussion …