04/06/2026
Last month, Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ, translated by Lin King won the International Booker Prize. In her acceptance speech, Yáng said: “There may be a time lag between the writing of a work and the translation of it but translation allows writing to transcend the limits of time and space.”
Since its publication in 1922, James Joyce’s Ulysses has been formally translated into at least 44 languages, first into German in 1927. The novel has been called “untranslatable” due its revolutionary stream-of-consciousness form, disregard for grammar, and extensive wordplay and references.
The list of translations is certainly impressive but there is a notable absence of African languages. For the novel’s centenary in 2022, the Embassy of Ireland in South Africa commissioned part of Ulysses to be translated into isiZulu. Rising to the challenge, Sandile Ngidi translated Molly Bloom’s soliloquy, the dense closing chapter of the novel, notorious for its unruly structure and linguistic complexity. A true feat of translation that certainly transcends “the limits of time and space” carrying readers right into Molly’s Dublin.
The isiZulu translation of Molly Bloom’s soliloquy will be read at our Bloomsday event on 13 June alongside passages from Ulysses in English, Dutch, French, and German.
