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Abstract
Translating Western classics into Turkish was always, both in the Ottoman Empire and in the Turkish Republic, closely linked with the idea of progress. Islamic publishers, which previously refrained from publishing translations of these classics, seem now to have discovered them. This article discusses the so-called “ideological distortions” found in these translations and debated in the Turkish press in 2006. It is argued that the movement of Islamic publishers from peripheral to central positions in the Turkish publishing market left traces not only in their publication lists, but also in their strategies of translating Western classical works – strategies that are not restricted to Islamic domestication. The article shows that source-text-oriented translations, too, can serve the expansion of the hegemony of Islamic circles in Turkish society.
Notes
1. Radikal is a left-liberal daily newspaper. Published by the large and dominant Turkish media corporation Doğan Medya, it can be seen as one of the representatives of mainstream media in Turkey.
2. “Hayirli Sabahlar Hans Öğrencilere tavsiye edilen ‘100 Temel Eser'i her yayinevi kendi ideolojisine göre çevirmiş.”
3. Although the adjective “Islamist” is widely used to define these publishers in colloquial language as well as by some academics, I prefer to use the word “Islamic” to refer to the background and target readership of these publishers. The adjective “Islamist” already assumes a politically active stance, and the validation of that stance is not the subject of the present article.
4. See Mutlu (Citation1995); Karadağ (Citation2003 ,Citation2008); Neydim (Citation2006a). Several masters projects were also undertaken on the topic at the Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies, Istanbul University.
5. For a detailed analysis of this debate and its reception in modern Turkey see Paker (Citation2006).
6. According to Kurultay, “this project could not be completed, being shallow and full of internal contradictions” (Kurultay Citation1999, 13; my translation).
7. In addition to the quality of the translations, other shortcomings were mentioned. The fact that the names of the translators were not printed in some of the books, especially, was taken to indicate that greedy publishing houses were adapting existing translations to avoid paying fees to the initial translators. The infringement of copyright arising from translations of classical works and the differences between old and new translations was discussed by translation scholars and students in the Turkish literary magazine Varlik in March 2007.
8. Brendemoen (Citation1990) provides a detailed description of developments in modern Turkish.
9. On the implication of the language reforms for Ottoman and Turkish translation history, see Paker (Citation1997 ,Citation1998 ,Citation2006); Tahir Gürçağlar (2003); Berk (Citation2004).
10. The committee appointed by the ministry to draw up the lists included well-known Turkish children's authors and university professors working on children's literature: Mustafa Ruhi Şirin (chair), Gülten Dayioğlu, Fetih Erdoğan, Mevlana İdris Zengin, Hasan Güleryüz, Prof. Dr Nilüfer Tuncer and Prof. Dr Mübeccel Gönen. However, the committee soon resigned, announcing that the ministry's views did not correspond with its own.
11. For a critique of these listings for children and youngsters, see Neydim (Citation2004).
12. In fact, in the translation of Johanna Spyri's Heidi, the grandfather is called “Alm” and not “Alp-öhi” [Alp-grandpa] as claimed by the journalist. The Turkification of Heidi's grandpa's name is thus a misinterpretation by the journalist.
13. The ruling AKP was founded by some of the members of the Virtue Party, which was closed down in 1999 due to its Islamist doctrine and agenda.
14. Between 1940 and 2000, the names of 35% of villages all over Turkey, i.e., the names of 12,211 villages, were replaced by Turkish names (Tunçel Citation2000).
15. Translation scholars have also been asked to share their opinions on other recent translation “scandals” in Turkey, for example on the translation of Georges Perec's La Disparition.
16. Peter Fawcett makes a similar point about the difficulty of distinguishing sharply between culture and ideology as influences on translation. He claims sarcastically that even “translating the apparently innocuous French expression une baguette de pain by a ‘loaf of bread’” can lay the translator open to accusations of “suppressing and repressing the Other” (Fawcett Citation1998, 107).
17. I am grateful to Erkal Ünal and Tansel Demirel for their comments on this paper.