مرکز منطقه ای اطلاع رساني علوم و فناوري - FORMING A CULTURE REPERTOIRE IN OUR TRANSLATED LITERARY HISTORY BY MEANS OF SCIENTIFIC NOVELS

Abstract :

The novel genre which had appeared during the Tanzimat (Reformation) Period in Turkish literature through translations carried out from the Western languages, soon turned out to be an accepted genre and hence hundreds of original and translated works of this genre were published. These original and translated works played an important role in shaping the repertoire” with a special emphasis on “ethics” and “science”. It can be suggested that translation of novels from the Western languages-especially from French-fulfilled a significant function in the Turkish modernisation process. In the process of “culture repertoire” formation, the famous names of the era either acted as “experts of translation” in order to fulfill the “translational act” according to different “skopoi” or undertook the “commissioner” role in the “translation commission”. From the Tanzimat (Reorganization) Period to the II. Meşrutiyet (IInd Constitutional) Era different kinds of novels with different purposes -science- fiction novels; historical novels, detective fiction novels and so on- were translated from Western languages into Ottoman Turkish. Therefore, this period could be called “the era of translated novels movement”. In the present essay, the translations of Ahmed İhsan who was one of the most productive translators of this era will be analysed in terms of “translator’s prefaces” within the framework of modern translation theories of translation studies, namely, Itamar Even-Zohar’s “polysystem theory” and “culture repertoire” concept and Hans J. Vermeer’s “skopos theory”. At the end of the article, in the witness of the prefaces, the role of translator as an “expert” in “intercultural communication” and the contributions of translations in the formation of a new “culture repertoire” within the Ottoman Turkish literary and cultural polysystem will be clarified.