Tracing the Image of Turks in Travel Writing through Translation

The main aim of this study is to examine how the images of Turks were depicted in the travel writing A Journey through the Crimea to Constantinople, written by the English traveler Elizabeth Craven, and to trace their repatriation into Turkish through translation entitled 1786’da Türkiye (Turkey in 1786) by the translator Reşat Ekrem Koçu. This study benefits from an imagological perspective in its methodology and applies a comparative textual analysis, which puts a particular emphasis on the abundance of negative images of Turks in the source text and reflects the scarcity of such images in the target text. The analysis, from an imagological lens, shows that the hetero-images of Turks, which were mostly constructed through negative implications by the foreign writer, were lost in their repatriation to their own culture. In other words, the negative images of Turks were largely omitted from the target text, and the source text was abridged to a large extent by the Turkish translator, revealing the fact that the Other’s negative views about the Turks could not cross the borders at all. This, naturally, leads the text with a pejorative tone towards the Turks to be rewritten as a target text having a commendatory tone due to the presence of a plethora of positive Turkish imagery along with the paratextual additions such as several illustrations, comments, the translator’s preface, and the publisher’s note. Therefore, the analysis suggests that the translator, as an intercultural agent, seemed to claim his position as an author-translator in the translation process while particularly illustrating the function of gatekeeping and the use of translation for selecting and highlighting the representation of mental pictures of a certain culture and period

Keywords:

Turks, images, travel writing, repatriation translation,

PDF

___

Basnett, S., & Lefevere, A. (1998). Constructing cultures: Essays on literary translation. Multilingual Matters. google scholar
Bayrı, M. H. (1939). Türkiye seyahatnameleri. Yeni eserlere dair düşünceler. Yeni Türk, 74, 65-68. google scholar
Beller, M. & Leerssen, J. (Eds.). (2007). Imagology: the cultural construction and literary representation of national characters: A critical survey. Rodopi. google scholar
Berk, Ö. (2006). Translating the “West”: The position of translated Western literature within the Turkish literary polysystem. RiLUnE, 4, 1-18. google scholar
Craven, E. (1789). A journey through the Crimea to Constantinople in a series of letters from the right honorable Elizabeth Lady Craven, to his serene highness the margrave of Brandebourg, Anspach and Bareith. Written in the Year MDCCLXXXVI. Chamberlaine, R. Moncrieffe, W. Colles, G. Burnet, W. Wilson [and 7 others in Dublin]. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/ecco/004838538.0001.000?view=toc. google scholar
---. (1939). 1786’da Türkiye. (R. E. Koçu, Çev.) Serteller Matbaası, Çığır Kitabevi. google scholar
Demirkol Ertürk, Ş. (2013). Images of Istanbul in translation: A case study in Slovenia. Across Languages and Cultures, 4(2), 199-220. google scholar
Erkazancı Durmuş, H. (2021a). Constructing images through the Ottoman translation practices of the late nineteenth century: The case of Ahmet Midhat’s Diplomalı Kız. In. A. Ö. Tarakcıoğlu & E. Ersözlü (Eds.), Synergy III: Challenges into translation (pp. 51-66). Peter Lang. google scholar
---. (2021b). Ahmet Midhat’ın Fenni bir roman yahut Amerika doktorları adlı eserine çeviribilim ve imgebilim ilişkisi bağlamında bir bakış. In Ş. Okyayuz (Ed.), Çeviri(bilim)de yeni açılımlar (pp. 83-108). Siyasal Kitabevi. google scholar
Flynn, P., Leerssen, J. & van Doorslaer, L. (2016). On translated images, stereotypes and disciplines. In P. Flynn, J. Leerssen and L. van Doorslaer (Eds.), Interconnecting translation studies and imagology (pp. 1-18). John Benjamins. google scholar
Gentile, P., Kovacs, F. & van der Watt, M. (Eds.). (2021). Transnational image building: Linking up translation studies, reception studies and imagology. Special issue of Translation Spaces, 10(1). pp.1-4. google scholar
Gheorghio, O.-C. (2018). Imagology and Translation: Rendering the Other’s perspective on Romanianness. Translation studies: Retrospective and prospective views, 21, 67-79. google scholar
Kuran-Burçoğlu, N. (2000). At the crossroads of translation studies and imagology. In A. Chesterman, N. G. San Salvador & Y. Gambier (Eds.), Translation in context (pp. 143-150). John Benjamins. google scholar
---. (2007). Turkey. In M. Beller & J. Leerssen (Eds.), Imagology: The cultural construction and literary representation of national characters: A critical survey (pp.254-258). Radopi. google scholar
---. (2009). Reflections on the image of the Turk in Europe. Isis. google scholar
Laurusaite, L. (2018). Imagology as image geology. In L. Laurusaite (Ed.), Imagology profiles: The dynamics of national imagery in literature (pp. 8-27). Cambridge Scholars Publishing. google scholar
Leerssen, J. (2007). Imagology: History and method. In M. Beller & J. Leerssen (Eds.), Imagology: The cultural construction and literary representation of national character: A critical survey (pp. 17-32). Rodopi. google scholar
Lefevere, A. (1992). Translation, rewriting and the manipulation of literary fame. Routledge. google scholar
Mitsi, E. (2008). Lady Elizabeth Craven’s letters from Athens and the female picturesque. In V. Kolocotroni & E. google scholar
Mitsi (Eds.), Women writing Greece: Hellenism, orientalism and travel (19-37). Rodopi. google scholar
Montagu, L. M. W. (1994). The Turkish embassy letters. Virago Press. google scholar
Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. Pantheon Books. google scholar
Tahir Gürçağlar, Ş. (2008). The politics and poetics of translation in Turkey, 1923-1960. Rodopi. google scholar
Taş, S. (2019). Bir yazar-çevirmenin çeviri seyahati. In S. Taş (Ed.), Çeviri üzerine gözlemler (Observations on translation) (pp. 57-89). Hiperlink Yayınları. google scholar
Toury, G. (1995). Descriptive translation studies and beyond. John Benjamins Publishing Company. google scholar
van Doorslaer, L. (2013). Translating, narrating and constructing images in journalism with a test case on representation in Flemish TV news. Meta, 57(4), 1046-1059. google scholar
---. (2019). Embedding imagology in translation studies (among others). Slovo.ru: baltijskij accent, 10(3), 56-68. google scholar
van Doorslaer, L., Flynn, P. & Leerssen, J. (Eds), (2016). Interconnecting translation studies and imagology. John Benjamins. google scholar
Winch, A. (2019). If female envy did not spoil everything in the world of women. Lies, rivalry, and reputation in Lady Elizabeth Craven’s travelogues. In C. B. Saunders (Ed.), Women, travel writing, and truth (pp. 91-108). Routledge. google scholar