Competition and co-operation for recognition and professional esteem in the literary translation industry

ABSTRACT

Current literature on translation sociology often attributes the competitive disposition among freelance literary translators to a drive for symbolic capital. At the same time, co-operation has mostly been researched within the context of non-literary translation. This article aims to contribute to debates on the transposability of competitive and co-operative dispositions among freelance literary translators by examining a case study from Turkey. In an unprecedented collaborative project, 83 translators came together to render Sei Shōnagon’s classic The Pillow Book into Turkish as Yastıkname. The translation process coincided with the establishment of ÇEVBİR, the Professional Association of Translators in Turkey, which champions translators’ rights, promoting professionalization and co-operation. The study concludes that in a reputation-based industry, literary translators strive to garner more status for themselves while simultaneously engaging in co-operative networks to access and share a variety of resources and to enhance solidarity.

KEYWORDS:

• co-operation
• competition
• literary translation
• ÇEVBİR
• sociology of translation

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Matthias Zick Varul, Hande Eagle and Şule Demirkol-Ertürk for their suggestions and help.

Note on contributor

Duygu Tekgül obtained her BA degree in translation and interpreting studies at Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, then completed an MA in publishing and language at Oxford Brookes University and a PhD in sociology at Exeter University. She currently teaches translation at Yeditepe University, Istanbul, and carries out research in the sociology of translation and in intercultural communication.

Notes

1. The Makura no Sōshi was first translated into English as The Pillow-Book of Sei Shonagon by Arthur Waley in 1928 (Henitiuk 2012, 20). Ivan Morris’ 1967 version is the first full translation to appear in English while a new translation by Meredith McKinney was published by Penguin in 2006 (ibid., 21–22).

2. “Habitus” is a widely used term in the sociology of translation, and I take ethos to be an element of the habitus (see Bourdieu [1984] 1993, 86). However, in this case, I prefer to use ethos instead of habitus because it “has an ethical dimension” (ibid.) and because I would like to emphasize the specificity of translator dispositions as opposed to habitus, which has come to denote a more general system of dispositions. The concepts of illusio and ethos have been discussed in relation to the sociology of translation by a number of scholars (see e.g. Gouanvic 2001, 2005; Meylaerts 2010; Sela-Sheffy 2014).

3. In July 2016, their Facebook account boasted almost 2250 “likes” and their Twitter account had more than 850 followers.

4. Reproduced with the kind permission of respective members, who wish to remain anonymous.

5. I have not been able to locate this edition. In my research I used the 1971 Penguin edition which contains the same translation by Ivan Morris.

6. The French translation is attributed to André Beaujard while the German text was rendered by Mamoru Watanabe.

7. The English words and phrases in parentheses are from Morris’ English translation but we cannot readily assume that the Turkish fragments are direct translations of these since a number of intermediary texts were involved.

8. “Buda yardımcıları olsun” is an allusion to the Turkish phrase “Allah yardımcıları olsun”, which back-translates as “may God help them”. This is clearly not a literal translation of the English text and might have been based on the German, French or Spanish translation [see Shōnagon/Morris 1971, 141; Şonagon/ÇEVBİR 2006, 163].

9. The English phrases in square brackets are my glosses, where I might not have achieved stylistic equivalence within the space of parenthetical information.

10. These have no common equivalents in English, but may be translated literally as “Germanist” and “Japanist”.