Croatian translations of James!Joyce's Ulysses

This paper is a comparative analysis of the two existing Croatian translations of Ulysses by Zlatko Gorjan (1957) and Luko Paljetak (1989, published in 199 1). The analysis is based on close reading and deals with linguistic, stylistic, textual and cultural issues relevant to the translations. Moreover, it takes into account a literary and historical context when the translations were published, the issue of literary reception, the interaction of these translations with the translations of other works Joyce alludes to in Ulysses rendered into Croatian and the positioning of Croatian translations in relation to the translations of Ulysses into other languages. The conclusions presented in the paper are based on the contrastive analysis and annotation of a large corpus of literary allusions in the two Croatian translations of Ulysses, from which a number of examples have been selected for discussion. The approach to the analysis is descriptive. In some examples the Croatian translations are compared with the French translation by Auguste Morel and the Italian translation by Giulio de Angelis. The paper argues that some translation strategies adopted by Croatian translators need to be considered by taking into account the dynamics underlying the interaction of translation and the target culture. In light of the facts presented the conclusion is reached that the two Croatian translations are in many respects complementary in their rendering of several aspects of Joyce's novel.