Translating Samuel Beckett around the World

It is an unpreceded critical journey around the world that José Francisco Fernández and Pascale Sardin present in this rewarding collection of essays. Translating Samuel Beckett around the World offers an inclusive foray into the art of translation beyond the confines of French and English. The bold series of linguistic explorations chronicles the shifting geography of the translations of Beckett’s works and probes into the cultural and political resonances of the rewriting practices in their various national contexts. 

Nadia Louar, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, USA


That Beckett’s work is now treated as ‘world literature’ is largely thanks to translations into the most diverse languages, from Icelandic to Chinese. Fernández and Sardin have done a brilliant job in assembling this rich and timely volume of essays, drawing attention to the challenges of translating an author who was a self-translator himself and foregrounding the important work of translators around the globe.


Dirk Van Hulle, University of Oxford, UK

The global reception of Samuel Beckett raises numerous questions: in which areas of the world was Beckett first translated? Why were Beckett texts sometimes slow to penetrate certain cultures? How were national literatures impacted by Beckett’s oeuvre? Translating Samuel Beckett around the World brings together leading researchers in Beckett studies to discuss these questions and explore the fate of Beckett in their own societies and national languages. The current text provides ample coverage of the presence of Beckett in geographical contexts normally ignored by literary criticism, and reveals unknown aspects of the 1969 Nobel Prize winner interacting with translators of his work in a number of different countries.   


José Francisco Fernández is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Almería, Spain.His most recent work focuses on Samuel Beckett’s reception in Spain. He has also translated into Spanish three novels and three short stories by Samuel Beckett.
Pascale Sardin is Professor in English studies at Bordeaux Montaigne University, France. Her research focuses on issues of translation, feminism and twentieth-century British and Anglo-Irish literature. She has published widely on Samuel Beckett.