"“Tea, with Roti and Butter, Mister?”" by Sudarshan Ramani

Article Title

“Tea, with Roti and Butter, Mister?” An Examination of a Single Phrase in a Sentence from Finnegans Wake

Authors

Sudarshan Ramani, University at Albany, State University of New YorkFollow

Abstract

My paper discusses issues of translation particularly in relation to the untranslatable as understood by Jacques Derrida in “Des tours de Babel.” A single sentence from Finnegans Wake by James Joyce: "cha kai rotty kai makkar, sahib" sheds light on the issues of polysemy in a novel that deliberately overturns assumptions about the English language. Finnegans Wake as can be seen in the study of this sentence, was composed in anticipation of a non-European reader and a non-European audience. Joyce in this instance is performing an act of translation, one which translates a sentence of Hindi (albeit grammatically suspect) in a polysemic work, creating a sense of openness in its attitude to translation.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Recommended Citation

Ramani, Sudarshan (2021) "“Tea, with Roti and Butter, Mister?” An Examination of a Single Phrase in a Sentence from Finnegans Wake," Living in Languages: Vol. 1, Article 6.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/liljournal/vol1/iss1/6

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