Revisiting the retranslation hypothesis: A case study of two Croatian translations of James Joyce’s Ulysses

The retranslation hypothesis was introduced to translation studies by Berman (1990) and Bensimon (1990). According to the hypothesis, retranslations tend to be closer to the source text and more foreignizing in nature, while initial translations aim to bring the source text closer to the target audience by domesticating it. Recent research challenges the validity of some elements of the retranslation hypothesis as well as its universal applicability. The aim of the paper is to examine whether the hypothesis is applicable to the first translation and retranslation of a radically modernist text such as James Joyce's 1922 novel Ulysses. A comparative analysis of selected segments from two existing translations of the novel into Croatian, the 1957 translation by Zlatko Gorjan and the 1991 retranslation by Luko Paljetak, is carried out. The closeness of the target texts to their source texts is measured in two ways. The first parameter is the number of times a translation strategy is applied. In this part of the analysis the taxonomy of translation strategies provided by Chesterman (2016) is used. Another factor considered to be a suitable parameter for estimating the closeness of a target text to its source text is the preservation of instances of creative language use, particularly suitable for analysing the translations of Ulysses. The contradictory findings related to the two observed parameters lead to the conclusion that the retranslation hypothesis does not provide a sufficiently comprehensive methodological framework for explaining the phenomenon of retranslation. In its conclusion, the paper suggests that each translation and retranslation should be observed individually and with respect to the context in which they were created.