Ceyda Elgul | Bogazici University (original) (raw)

Papers by Ceyda Elgul

RumeliDE Dil ve Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi, 35, 1505-1517, 2023

Bu çalışmada Cumhuriyet Dönemi Türk aydını Yaşar Nabi Nayır’ın, hem Tercüme Bürosu ve Türk Dil Ku... more Bu çalışmada Cumhuriyet Dönemi Türk aydını Yaşar Nabi Nayır’ın, hem Tercüme Bürosu ve Türk Dil Kurumu gibi devlet destekli dil projelerinde yer almış olması, hem de Erken Cumhuriyet Dönemi özel yayın sektörünün ilk girişimcilerinden olması göz önünde bulundurulmakta ve kendisinin bir bürokratik entelektüel ve kültür girişimcisi olarak çeviri odaklı biyografisi sunulmaktadır. Çeviribilimde yaygınlaşan sosyolojik bakış açısı kültür öznelerinin çevirmen kimliğini popüler bir çalışma alanı haline getirmiş; gerek çeviri repertuvarları, gerek ise çeviri stratejileri, kültürel dönemeç öncesinde görünmez kılınan çevirmen kimliğinin artık görünür bir araştırma konusu olarak çalışılmasında veri olarak kullanılmaya başlanmıştır. Günümüzde hem dijital hem basılı formatta çeviri öznelerinin arşivleri hazırlanıp sunulmakta, bu arşivler irdelenmekte, çevirmen biyografileri yazılmakta, çevirmenin kültür repertuvarlarının oluşumu ve yeniden düzenlenmesindeki rolü vurgulanmaktadır. Makale, bu araştırma çerçevesi dahilinde Yaşar Nabi Nayır’ın çeviri faaliyetlerine odaklanan bir biyografisini sunarak bu özne merkezli paradigmaya katkı sağlamayı amaçlar. Makalede Yaşar Nabi Nayır’ın, içinde çeviriyi de barındıran edebiyat faaliyetlerinin hizmet ettiği kültür repertuvarı araştırılmakta, bu kültür repertuvarının hedefleri açıklanmakta ve çevirinin bu repertuvarın oluşumunda oynadığı şekillendirici rol sorgulanmaktadır. Asal olarak yazarın 1937 yılında yayınladığı edebiyat güncesi kaynak alınmakta, yazarın bu eserde Türk okuruyla paylaştığı edebiyat ve çeviri üzerine düşünceleri dönemin çeviri söylemi bağlamında irdelenmektedir. Ayrıca, Nayır’ın 1933 yılında kurduğu Varlık Dergisi ile 1946 yılında kurduğu Varlık Yayınları’na değinilmektedir.

İstanbul Üniversitesi Çeviribilim Dergisi - Istanbul University Journal of Translation Studies, 19:82-94, 2023

This paper explores Nihal Yeğinobalı’s 1991 translation of Manuel Puig’s first novel La Traición ... more This paper explores Nihal Yeğinobalı’s 1991 translation of Manuel Puig’s first novel La Traición de Rita Hayworth into Turkish in light of Antoine Berman’s model of translation criticism that highlights the social aspect of translation products and asks the critics to examine the translation project within a context that includes the translator’s elaboration of the meaning, purpose, mode, and form of their work. This concerns the historical, social, literary, and ideological discourse on translation surrounding the translator; thus the critic also discovers whether the translator internalizes these norms or acts against them. Because Yeğinobalı’s work is an indirect translation, the study introduces the medium text that the translator utilized, namely the English translation of the novel by Suzanne Jill Levine, and it discusses the topic of indirect translation in light of the translation norms and market conditions surrounding Yeğinobalı. Lastly, the study employs Berman’s stage of confrontation in which the source text is compared with the translation in light of the aforementioned data. The paper concludes with its findings on the examined translation product that covers both the textual and the contextual factors and presents the implications of Berman’s critical model on research in literary translation.

Comparative Literature Studies 59:4, 2022

This article surveys the development and operation of biography in Turkish in light of a selectio... more This article surveys the development and operation of biography in Turkish in light of a selection of publisher’s series presented in the region starting from the nineteenth century. In addition to introducing the biography series as gateways for a survey of life-writing activities in the region, the study explores how biographies translated from other languages appear in relation to the biographies that were originally written in Turkish. In this research setting, the terms “minor” and “major” are elaborated in two layers. First, the study interrogates the content of the selected series that embrace individuals from “minor” and “major” regions of the world; and second, it explores whether translation appears as a “minor” activity in these series that remains as an invisible form of textual production. In both contexts, the assets that represent the “minor” and “major” are considered not as active competitors but as the collaborators of the publisher’s commercial and social literary agendas.

Keywords: publisher’s series, biography, genre history, macro-history, Turkish literature

Recharting Territories: Intradisciplinarity in Translation Studies (pp.123-147). Leuven University Press. , 2022

This chapter expands on the methods of “Lives in Turkish”, a digital translation history project ... more This chapter expands on the methods of “Lives in Turkish”, a digital translation history project that dwells on the journey of life-writing in Turkish. The project presents a database of Turkish language biographies published since the early 1800s. It aims to shed light on the use of the genre in the Turkish literary system. The dataset comprises meta-data about the biographical volumes and information about biography subjects. The paper first embarks on how the digital humanities frame can help illuminate the macro-contexts in the making of translation history. Then it describes the making of the bibliography and explains the collection, categorization, and documentation of the data. It discusses how the systematic structures of macro-scale bibliographies, which requires a particular organization of the dataset, can be reconciled with culture-specific peculiarities of the historical publications that tend to resist such modern reference categories as translation, original, and authorship. This requires the quantitative approach of the bibliography project to be complemented by qualitative analysis. The Ottoman-Turkish definitions of translation and original as manifest in the Ottoman-Turkish literary system, the notion of intralingual translation, and the recording of the data that predates the series of reforms brought by Turkish Modernization are given as cases that necessitate this eclectic model in the making and analysis of diachronic bibliographies that concern the Turkish literary context.

Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 49: 1-2, Sep 17, 2022

This article traces the multiple encounters of Jorge Luis Borges with Turkish readers in light of... more This article traces the multiple encounters of Jorge Luis Borges with Turkish readers in light of the publishing policies and social dynamics surrounding the region in the second half of the twentieth century. Although the first translation of his work into Turkish appeared as early as 1955, Borges became popular in Turkey during the 1980s, concurrently with many other Latin American authors, some of whom were participants in the magical realist literary stream. The article mainly investigates the positions of the Turkish translations of Borges and other Latin American writers within the 1980s literary repertoire that reflects the state of cultural production following the Turkish coup d’état in 1980. The revival of the fantastic genre by local writers during the same time period also illuminates the topic of Latin American magical realism in Turkish. Therefore, this article examines the activities of literary agents, namely the translators, editors, and critics, who acted as representatives of Borges and other Latin American authors in Turkey, in addition to mentioning the local representatives of magical realism. In order to present a holistic view, before embarking on this 1980s literary network, the study explores the initial translation of Borges into Turkish, published in a literary review in the 1950s, which seems to suggest an alternative context for the writer that carries traces of the golden age of the short story in Turkey. It concludes with a discussion of the state of Borges and Latin American literature in Turkish after the 1980s, with references to published translations and articles by local critics that delved into these particular subjects.

Kelimelerin Kıyısında: Türkiye’de Kadın Çevirmenler, Ed. Şehnaz Tahir Gürçağlar. (pp. 174-201). İstanbul: İthaki., 2019

Studies from a Retranslation Culture: The Turkish Context, Eds. Özlem Berk Albachten, Şehnaz Tahir Gürçağlar. (pp. 117-137). New York: Springer., 2019

Journal of Turkish Studies/Türklük Bilgisi Araştırmaları. Vol. 47, 2017

Tusaaji: A Translation Review 6:6, 2018

This study sets out from the mutual concerns that biographers and translators face during the pro... more This study sets out from the mutual concerns that biographers and translators face during the process of recreating a source for a new audience. It presents translation and biography writing as analogous forms of rewriting. Both biographers and translators are compelled to overcome the dilemma of the truth of the source vs. the authenticity of the rewrite. This requires them to consider matters such as fluency, (in)visibility, objectivity, fullness, accuracy, and competitiveness. Although each biography and translation offers unique solutions to these matters, they propose themselves as the "total"-exact, transparent, ultimate-representation of the source. Hence the rewriter's claim to authenticity. Based on this conceptual framework, in this paper I study the biographies Jorge Luis Borges by Jason Wilson and The Man in the Mirror of the Book by James Woodall as "authentic translations" of Jorge Luis Borges that aim to be the "total" English-language version of Jorge Luis Borges' life story. I discuss the subjectivities the biographers manifest in their works and the way in which each biography seems to present itself as total by highlighting different qualities depending on its biographer's agency.

Talks by Ceyda Elgul