Introduction: Translation, modernity and its dissidents: Turkey as a “republic of translation”

Translation from Western sources has been a major means to modernize, Europeanize and Westernize both Ottoman and Republican Turkey. The 1839 proclamation of the reforms in the Tanzimat (reorganization) period during the Ottoman Empire marked the beginning of the transformation of this multilingual and multicultural empire into a nation-state in the early twentieth century. It is legitimate to argue that this transformation involved the cultural “translation” of an Eastern empire following Western models: translation as the importation of structures and models, as well as translation in the narrower sense – i.e., the translation of a wide variety of texts into (Ottoman) Turkish – were indispensable tools in the process. Although critical voices have been raised against this Westernization process, especially since the late 1980s, translation is still seen as an important key to the country's affiliation with Western modernity. In contemporary Turkey, too, translation continues to play an important role as a means to import and export cultural, commercial and technical commodities or as a tool to harmonize laws and regulations following supranational treaties in a globalized world.

Following the establishment of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, the role of translation became pivotal. Analysing this phenomenon for the first decades of what he calls a “republic of translation”,1 Turgay Kurultay claims that the traditionally low status of translation in many cultures was uniquely turned upside down when translation became the “essential source of knowledge and culture” (Kurultay 1999, 13; my translation). This conception and status of translation in cultural and social planning may be one important reason why translation studies in Turkey has, in the past few decades, become an attractive discipline witnessing remarkable growth. In the Republic's early years, translation was perceived as a way of modernizing the country and narrowing the gap vis-à-vis Western Europe. However, the unexpected complexities of Turkish modernity's reliance on translation as a vehicle of change also prompted critical reflection – perhaps another reason why several Turkish scholars became part of the initial “invisible college” (Hermans 1999, 12) that paved the way for the new discipline worldwide. The Ottoman Empire and contemporary Turkey are certainly fruitful sites for research incorporating different perspectives from translation studies and providing a variety of case studies to test and develop methodologies.

The present Special Issue reflects these vivid and diverse interests, with contributions covering a time span from the last decades of the Ottoman Empire until the present day. The framework they draw on, overtly or implicitly, is the historical connection of translation in Turkey with the reception of, and reflection upon, modernization as Westernization/Europeanization. Özlem Berk Albachten's contribution focuses on an important aspect of Turkish modernization during the first decades of the Republic, the reform of higher education in line with Western European models. German-speaking academics who lived in Turkish exile between 1933 and 1945, mainly in Istanbul and Ankara, were important agents in this process. Berk Albachten's study of this little-researched topic in Turkish translation studies reveals that the exile experience transformed and translated not only the higher education system but also all the subjects involved.

For the empire to be remoulded into a nation-state, citizens were required to conform to the needs and imagination of the nation-state, i.e., to transform their identity into a monolingual and monocultural one. In his article, Christopher Larkosh juxtaposes Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the driving agent behind this grand project of translation, with one of Turkey's most important twentieth-century poets, Nazım Hikmet, on the one hand, and the Turkish-Italian film director Ferzan Özpetek on the other. Such a hyphenated identity is not only specific to Özpetek but can, argues Larkosh, also be attributed to Atatürk and Hikmet. The former grew up in times of unrest in Thessalonica and came to Asia Minor to rule the new state, whereas the latter was forced to leave Turkey and live in exile in Russia. All three are figures that have transcended fixed borders and thus challenged the monolingual identity still assumed in today's nation-states.

The transformation of Turkish towns and cities and the creation of urban planning as a modern discipline is a highly visible site for Turkish modernization. As a researcher whose major field of interest is urban planning and sociology, Nihal Ekin Erkan uses the concept of translation as an interdisciplinary tool to reflect on urban planning both as a discipline and as a transformative activity. Using “translation” in this interdisciplinary way, we must remain aware of the risk that the concept's current success as an analytical tool may lead to a certain dilution and thus impairment of its effectiveness. However, Ekin Erkan's contribution demonstrates the value of applying the conception of translation used in contemporary translation studies: as an act that involves different temporal and spatial contexts, negotiations and, inevitably, conflicts.

The project of modernization as Westernization, in fact Europeanization, has triggered resistance from the Tanzimat period until the present day, and the readiness to read translations of Western European works of literature has remained largely restricted to supporters of that project. Yet to speak of pro- and anti-Western leagues in Turkey is too simplistic, as Elif Daldeniz's article shows. In fact, translations of Western classics – as symbols of Western modernity – are currently enjoying more and more popularity in Islamic circles, and have become an indispensable part of the publication lists of Islamic publishing houses. The study of this new translational phenomenon may help us understand the ongoing transformation processes in other Islamic groupings of Turkish society. Though explicitly challenged from the 1980s on, the exalted status of Western modernity still exists in this country, enabling the presentation of notions from the “West” in the shape of a new modernity discovering traditional practices. Şebnem Susam-Sarajeva's analysis of websites promoting natural birth in Turkey not only demonstrates how contentious the notion of modernity can be in different contexts, but also opens up research in translation studies to new fields, where translation may present itself in both explicit and unnoticed ways.

Translations in their disguised forms are the subject of şehnaz Tahir Gürçağlar's paper; this time the prevalence of concealed translations and pseudotranslations in Turkish literature over the past six decades. Comparing two strands of pseudotranslations from the 1950s and 1990s, Tahir Gürçağlar reveals how different socio-political contexts and contested understandings of modern authorship, or even the rejection of (Western) concepts of intellectual ownership, may use the same medium for different purposes. These silenced or energetically foregrounded forms of translation found in the Turkish case offer valuable indicators to help refine concepts and methods that are currently applied in translation studies. At the same time, the persistence of pseudotranslations can also be read as clear evidence of the continued high status of translations from Western sources. That status is also manifest in the reception of translations of texts by important figures of Western thinking. Ayşenaz Koş's article focuses on the travels of the work of an outstanding twentieth-century figure, Jean-Paul Sartre. To the extent that Turkey remains a “republic of translation”, the introduction of ideas and theories via translated works of intellectuals and thinkers will be a rich field for future research.

Discussing materials from Turkey – be it literally the geographic area of this country, or the region embedded in the Mediterranean, or the realms of the Turkish highways of the internet – all the present articles were written in a language other than Turkish. All the contributors are acting as translators transferring and interpreting their cases from Turkey for an international readership; all are inevitably transcending the local perhaps in the hope of finding “an alternative forum for discussion and feedback” (Paker 2002, 121) and initiating a debate outside Turkey. Moreover, by translating the local not only into another language but also into the discipline of translation studies through their concepts and methodologies, all the contributions help us reflect on the discipline itself and on the potentials of interdisciplinary research. Insights from Turkey as a republic of translation show how valuable the gaze of translation studies can be in analysing phenomena that tend to go unnoticed when translation is seen as a transparent and predictable tool of communication.

Notes

1. As Turgay Kurultay (1999, 13) points out, Turkey was first characterized as a “republic of translation” by the translator and scholar Azra Erhat.