Abstract: Fritz Senn is the founder and President of the Zurich James Joyce Foundation (1985- ), former European editor of James Joyce Quarterly (1963-1985), former President of the International James Joyce Foundation (1977-1982) and Visiting Professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo and Ohio State University. As one of the first-generation Joycean scholars, Fritz Senn has been playing an active and leading role in the Joycean circle in the West. Invited and sponsored by the Zurich James Joyce Foundation, Dr. Huang He went to Switzerland as a visiting scholar in 2018. During her stay, she interviewed Fritz Senn on issues concerning the history and development of Joycean studies in the West, the art of language in Joyce’s works, Joyce’s view on language and the translation of Joyce’s works. In this interview, Mr. Senn reflects on his early encounter with Joyce and explains his philological approach to Joyce’s texts with numerous interesting examples. Fritz Senn puts much emphasis on how he regards Joyce’s texts as a dynamic process and how he always approaches Joyce from the specific words on the pages, examining the life of words and Joyce’s idiosyncratic treatment of language.

Key words: James Joyce, Ulysses, philology, language, translation