Jason Goodwin’s ‘Possible Worlds’ Unveiled in Translation (Studies) (original) (raw)
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Advances in Language and Literary Studies, 2020
The aim of this article is to examine the first two books in Jason Goodwin’s detective Yashim series and their Turkish translations in terms of “back translation”. Research subjects are The Janissary Tree (2006) and its Turkish translations by Çiğdem Öztekin dated 2006 and by Fethi Aytuna dated 2016 as well as The Snake Stone (2007) and its Turkish translations by Ali Cevat Akkoyunlu dated 2007 and by Fethi Aytuna dated 2017. The theoretical framework is based on the concepts of “foreign language creation”, a text describing a specific culture in a foreign language, and “textless back translation”, translation of a “foreign language creation” back into the language of that specific culture. Describing the Ottoman culture in English, Goodwin’s books can be considered as “foreign language creation” while their Turkish translations, which bring the culture back into its own land, can be considered as “textless back translation”. Depicting a foreign culture in his own language, thereby ...
RumeliDE Dil ve Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi, 2022
Literary works are representatives of their own culture whereas translations generally represent cultures of others. There are indeed some exceptional situations that compel translation as a discipline to interact with some other disciplines like history and cultural studies. When a literary text introduces its readers to another culture and represents a foreign culture through translation, things get complicated in terms of translation. It becomes more intriguing if the translator "find himself writing his own history" while translating a historical novel on his people and homeland (Karadağ, 2019: 32). This study aims to make a descriptive study of David Hotham's historical novel The Turks and its Turkish translation Türkler by Mehmet Ali Kayabal, in the light of "Foreign Language Creation" and "Textless Back Translation". The findings of the research highlight the choices of various translation methods used in the translation of a historical novel, the switch of roles in between translator and writer, and unveils the emergence of some critical questions by virtue of distinctive representations of the same literary text. The research in this respect tries to describe the outcomes of "Foreign Language Creation" and "Textless Back Translation" in historical texts and through the questions it puts forward it calls for further research in the field.
To Translate or Not to Translate? 19th Century Ottoman Communities and Fiction
In the 19th century, Turcophone communities of the Ottoman Empire displayed a keen interest in European fiction. This study questions whether translating European works was simply linguistic substitution or rather had intrinsic dimensions such as cultural appropriation. It also investigates the reciprocity of literary production, and offers some observations on how translation influences and inspires " the making of literature ". The methods used are mainly based on statistical interpretation of bibliographic data and comparative sociological analysis. Turkish works printed in Arabic, Armenian and Greek alphabets are the objects of investigation. The findings demonstrate that translation in the Ottoman mind is actually an active literary appropriation primarily due to differences in the criterion of " modern fiction " from European standards where the differences are exaggerated by the Ottoman notion of translation, lending the translator liberating space and opportunity to interfere with the original text. Moreover, the inter-mingling between the oral and print cultures that obscures the definition of literary genres adds another level of complexity. It is also revealed that the millets of the Empire affected each other's choice and taste resulting in a web of interactions that exhibit the literary market and literary " canon " of the period.
Translation Studies, 2010
This paper addresses a relatively little explored area of Turkish literary translation history and sets out to contextualize a series of alternative translation practices previously expressed as ''marginal'' forms of translation. These practices are instances of textual production that can be classified neither as translation proper nor as indigenous creation: they are mainly concealed translation and pseudotranslations. The study argues that marginal forms of translation offer information regarding the literary habitus of readers in Turkey, and suggests that the second half of the twentieth century saw a transformation in this habitus which can be traced through the shifts in the use and presentation of concealed translations and pseudotranslations. After providing a historical overview of the use of such translations as a cultural and commercial tool by Turkish writers and publishers, the paper discusses two recent cases which defy established perceptions about pseudotranslations.
Review of Literatures of the European Union, 2006
Turkey has a very rich tradition of translations from various languages. We know that translations from Persian and Arabic into Turkish go back to the pre-Ottoman period in Anatolia in the thirteenth century and continued in the Ottoman period up to the decline of the Ottoman Empire in the early twentieth century (Paker 2002: p. viii). Technical translations from Western languages, mainly from French, started during the eighteenth century when the Turks felt the superior progress of Europe, especially in military equipment and organisation. All these translations played an important role in the transformation of Turkish culture. However, it is generally accepted that (literary) translations from the Western languages played an important role and function in the Turkish modernisation process, as manifested in the form of Westernisation starting in the mid-nineteenth century. This paper seeks to describe the history of translation in Turkey from the mid-nineteenth to the late twentieth century, with the aim of seeking out patterns which can shed light on the meanings and implications of translation policies and contribute to a fuller depiction of the socio-cultural context of translation. It is an attempt to recover and analyse the discourses surrounding and constructing historical data in Turkey, especially within the framework of its Westernisation movement 1. My main assumption is that translations from Western literatures were used as the main tool in the modernisation of the Turkish society and that the cultural policies played an important role in this process. The analysis of the major political, social and cultural conditions during 1 Parts of this paper are based on my book Translation and Westernisation in Turkey, Istanbul: Ege, 2004.
RumeliDE Dil ve Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi, 2016
This article aims to investigate the effects of the Ottoman/Turkish morals and customs on the selection of novels to be translated from Western languages into Ottoman Turkish and the translation strategies deployed by the translators between the Tanzimat Period and the Alphabet Reform in witness of the prefaces written by the translators and publishers of the period. The novel, as a literary genre, entered the Ottoman/Turkish literary system in the Tanzimat Period and a high number of translated and original novels were produced in the historical period examined in the present study. Conformity of the content of the works with the Ottoman/Turkish morals and customs emerges as a major issue in the context of the translations in question. In terms of preliminary and operational norms (Gideon Toury), translators and/or publishers either viewed the content-related conformity as a criterion in selecting works for translation or they decided to change or omit the parts in the source texts that they considered inappropriate for the Ottoman/Turkish "national morals" (âdât-ı millî) and Islamic morals. While some translators were sensitive about the Turkish language, some others were specifically concerned about the material and spiritual characteristics of the Turks and the Turkish authors. In the present study, the forewords and afterwords by the translators and publishers will be discussed in relation to the memoirs of the translators and publishers. Moreover, the emphasis on the "idea of nationality" (millîlik) and the "cultural repertoire" (Itamar Even-Zohar) desired to be created accordingly by the translators and publishers will be examined via the analysis of a selected corpus of forewords and afterwords. The results of the examination will be evaluated in the context of contemporary theories of translation with the aim of shedding light on the function of the activity of translation-defined as a means of intercultural communication and interaction-in the context of Turkish nationalism in the relevant historical period.
This Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of Turkish literature within both a local and global context. Across eight thematic sections a collection of subject experts use close readings of literature materials to provide a critical survey of the main issues and topics within the literature. The chapters provide analysis on a wide range of genres and text types, including novels, poetry, religious texts, and drama, with works studied ranging from the fourteenth century right up to the present day. Using such a historic scope allows the volume to be read across cultures and time, while simultaneously contextualizing and investigating how modern Turkish literature interacts with world literature, and finds its place within it. Collectively, the authors challenge the national literary historiography by replacing the Ottoman Turkish literature in the Anatolian civilizations with its plurality of cultures. They also seek to overcome the institutional and theoretical shortcomings within current study of such works, suggesting new approaches and methods for the study of Turkish literature. The Routledge Handbook on Turkish Literature marks a new departure in the reading and studying of Turkish literature. It will be a vital resource for those studying literature, Middle East studies, Turkish and Ottoman history, social sciences, and political science. Didem Havlioğlu is a literary historian working on women and gender in the Ottoman intellectual culture. She has published several articles both in Turkish and English. Her book Mihrî Hatun: Performance, Gender-Bending, and Subversion in Early Modern Ottoman Intellectual History (2017) introduces Mihrî Hatun (ca. 1460-1515), the first woman writer in Ottoman history whose work survived in manuscript copies, and contextualizes her work in the early modern intellectual culture. She is currently an associate professor of the practice, teaching in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University. Zeynep Uysal is an associate professor of modern Turkish literature at Boğaziçi University. As a visiting scholar, she taught modern Turkish literature and gave public lectures in the Oriental Institute at the University of Oxford between 2001 and 2003. She published a book titled Olağanüstü Masaldan Çağdaş Anlatıya: Muhayyelât-ı Aziz Efendi [From Marvelous Tales to Modern Narratives: Aziz Efendi's Imaginations] in 2006. She edited a book, titled Edebiyatın Omzundaki Melek: Edebiyatın Tarihle İlişkisi Üzerine Yazılar, about the relationship between history and literature in 2011. Her recent book, Metruk Ev, on the leading modern Turkish writer Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil, was published in 2014. She has also written extensively on various issues in modern Turkish literature, including the relationship between literature and space, literature and history, and literature and nationalism in leading academic journals.
Translation & Interpreting, 2023
Translation has a rich history in Ottoman and Turkish literature, and a study of transmesis in a transfiction has great potentials for analyzing the praxis and pragmatics of translation in Turkey. This study focuses on the translational action in the mirror of fiction with a case study on the Turkish novel Mütercim (2013) [Translator] by Alper Gürkan. Investigating translation both as a performance (i.e., text) and an experience (i.e., agency), the analysis is constructed upon four categories: 1) actual translation in its technical sense; (2) the agency of the translator as a subject and object of the translation; (3) figurative/metaphoric use of translation; and (4) the potentials of mistranslation visa -vis pseudotranslation. The multi-layered translational baggage of the novel serves as a site par excellence to delimit the definition of translation, which begins as a faithful translation and ends up as an almost genuine writing, a mistranslation in the novel. Skillfully imposed attributions to change, transformation, fragmentation, and dislocation under a translational context determine the fate of both the text and the agent in Mütercim: corrupted and originally lost. This elegy for origins resonates in the discourse of the author as neo-Ottoman fantasy where we witness the emergence of translation as the lieu of historical criticism under the guise of a transfiction.