THE 3RD ID-TS

GRADUATE EVENT FOR

DOCTORAL STUDENTS

The Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies

Boğaziçi University, Istanbul

(HI)STORIES OF
TRANSLATION AND
TRANSLATORS: PAST,
PRESENT AND FUTURE
 INTRODUCTION

Anthony Pym has suggested that translation history has three main arteries: “translation
archeology” (discourses on the questions of who translated what, how, where, when, for whom
and with what effect?); “historical criticism” (discourses assessing the ways translations help or
hinder progress); and “explanation” (tackling the question “why?”) (1998, p. 5-6). Pym’s
conception of translation history undoubtedly opens up a systematic method of dealing with
extensive and detailed data from either a macro- or micro-historical perspective. The invaluable
findings of traditional macro-historical studies have certainly triggered new approaches, such as
the focus on agents of translation and the examination of extratextual sources that help us
(re)construct the history of translation and translators.

There is no doubt that the past two decades have marked a substantial shift of focus in the
field of Translation Studies from the translated text to the actors involved in the translation
process, leading to the birth of the new branch of (what Andrew Chesterman calls) “Translator
Studies” (2009). In line with this shift of focus, historical research investigating the role and
position of translational and cultural agents has gained increasing attention. As a result, the
method of micro-history has become instrumental in uncovering the voices of these agents in
social and cultural history, thereby enriching the literature on translation history, which
previously tended to concentrate on macro dimensions of translation. The micro-historical
approach has motivated researchers to examine primary sources such as personal papers,
manuscripts, post-hoc accounts and interviews. By looking into these previously neglected
archival documents, researchers aim to shed light on “the translator’s decision-making process”
(Munday, 2013), on “the collaboration in the production of translations” (Paloposki, 2017) and
on “the place of literary translators and their social situatedness and agency” (Constanza
Guzmán, 2013). In doing so, they have initiated new discussions, which promise to broaden the
horizons of Translation Studies as a discipline.

2
 Lieven D’hulst and Yves Gambier argue that “histories of translation knowledge may be
written about all periods, all areas and all domains of translational communication” (2018, p. 10).
In that spirit, we, as Ph.D. candidates in the Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies,
Boğaziçi University, are organizing a conference that takes a look at the past, present and future
of macro- and micro-histories of translation. In collaboration with the ID-TS, doctoral students
will present their research at this graduate event, which will be held online due to the restrictions
imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The book of abstracts is available on the conference
website (www.transint.boun.edu.tr/id-ts-2020). We also hope to include the papers presented in a
special journal issue dedicated to the event.

Topics to be addressed in the conference include, but are not limited to, the following:

●Translation and history

●Macro-/Micro-history & translation

●Archival research in the digital age

●Retranslation

●Translation sociology

●Translator & Interpreter Studies

●Interpreting Studies & history

●Gender and translation

●Interdisciplinarity in TS

●Ethical aspects of historical research in TS

3
Organizing Committee

Deniz Malaymar, Ph.D. Candidate & Research Assistant, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul

Erdem Hürer, Ph.D. Student & Research Assistant, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul

Nesrin Conker, Ph.D. Candidate & Research Assistant, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul

N. Zeynep Kürük-Erçetin, Ph.D. Candidate & Research Assistant, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul

References

Chesterman, A. (2009). The name and nature of translator studies. Journal of language and
communication studies. 42. 13-22.

D’hulst, L. & Yves Gambier. (2018) A History of Modern Translation Knowledge: Sources,
concepts, effects. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Guzmán, M. C. (2013). Translation North and South: Composing the Translator’s Archive. TTR,
26 (2). 171–191. Available at <https://doi.org/10.7202/1037136ar> [consulted July 1,
2020].

Munday, J. (2013). The role of archival and manuscript research in the investigation of translator
decision-making. Target, 25(1). 125-139.

Paloposki, O. (2017). “In Search of an Ordinary Translator: Translator Histories, Working

Practices and Translator-Publisher Relations in the light of Archival Documents.” The
Translator, 23, 1. 31-48.

Pym, A. (1998). Method in Translation History. Manchester, UK: St. Jerome.

4
 Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................ 2
The Translaboration in Sutra Translation: Collaboration of Translators in Medieval China
Tianran Wang ................................................................................................................................... 7
What Can Ottoman Parliamentary Records Tell Us About the History of Translation?
Fatih Aşan ........................................................................................................................................ 8
Iakov Retsker: the Pioneer of the Linguistic Approach in Soviet Translation Studies?
Suzanne Eade Roberts ...................................................................................................................... 9
Passing Through the Retranslation Hypothesis: The Roles Assumed by the Romanian
Retranslator Of Dubliners
Andra-Iulia Ursa ............................................................................................................................. 10
A Bourdieuian Method for Investigating the History of a Translation Concept
Erlend Wichne ................................................................................................................................ 13
A Sociological Analysis on the Reception of Zhao Yuanren’s Chinese Translation of Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland
Li Wanyu ........................................................................................................................................ 15
The Marxist Translator of Darwin's Works: An Analysis on Öner Ünalan from a Bourdieuian
Perspective
Nesrin Conker ................................................................................................................................ 16
Slovak Publishing Editor in the 20th Century
Matej Martinkovič .......................................................................................................................... 18
Translation in Serial Novels: Vâlâ Nureddin as an Adaptor-Translator of Popular Serials
Devrim Ulaş Arslan ........................................................................................................................ 19
Exploring Otherness: Translations of Non-binary Gender in Science Fiction
Anna Merikallio ............................................................................................................................. 21
A Literary Genre Transferred Through Translation: Bir Haftada Devriâlem as an Early Example
of Science Fiction in the Ottoman Literary Polysystem
N. Zeynep Kürük-Erçetin & Esra Demirkoparan ........................................................................... 23
Bridging Chinese and Western Drama Traditions: Yu Shangyuan’s Translation of Brander
Matthews’ Works Under the Evolutionary View of Drama
Barbara Li Jiawei............................................................................................................................ 24
The Complex Network of Agents and Texts Behind a Translation: A Case Study
Laura Ivaska ................................................................................................................................... 25
Exploring the Personal History of the Translator: An Inquiry on Orhan Suda’s Intellectual and
Political Agenda
Deniz Malaymar ............................................................................................................................. 26

5
Friedrich Engel’s “Translation Workshop”: Retracing the Creation of the English Translation the
Capital in 1888
Stefanie Kremmel ........................................................................................................................... 27
The History of the Nineteenth-Century Literary Translators in Poland
Karolina Siwek ............................................................................................................................... 28
Translation in Namibia During the German Colonial Times
Elizaveta Getta ............................................................................................................................... 29
Translation as Activism: Yan FU’s Translation of “Evolution and Ethics” and the “Prolegomena”
in Late Qing China
Xiaorui Wang ................................................................................................................................. 30
Systemic View of Translation in Cyprus: Mehmet and Neşe Yaşın as Active Cultural
Entrepreneurs Against Nationalism
Erdem Hürer ................................................................................................................................... 31
Translators and the Establishment of Hubei Police System in Late Imperial China
Yu Zhang ........................................................................................................................................ 33

6
 The Translaboration in Sutra Translation: Collaboration of Translators in
Medieval China
Tianran Wang, LMU Munich University

Collaboration in the process of translation is a trending topic in recent Translation Studies.

Unlike prototypical translation, the concept of translaboration accentuates on creating a “hybrid
space”. This holds true to the sutra translation process, where multiple participants, who
endeavored to the rendering of Buddhist sacred texts together, integrate figuratively and
constitute an image that tallies with the description and definition of a modern “translator”. It is
intriguing to grope the mysteries of the compartmentalization of a “singular” character to “plural”
ones.

Even though historical records and first-hand materials (inter alia, those that relate with
translation process in Medieval China) on the astounding collaboration of individual contributors
are claimed to be vague and blur, there could still be much to be told of, if we, as suggested by
Zwischenberger, fixate on the “hybrid space” instead of singling out who did what.

In my presentation, I would probe into the question: what exactly happens in the process
of sutra translation in early China? I would try to approach this question by examining the modus
operandi of a specific figure named Lokaṣema (支楼迦谶)，a major-league monk translator,
being the center of several “translaborative” groups that have engendered far-reaching influence
on later translation modes and repertoires. I would mainly focus on multifarious contextual
materials, i.e. bibliographical records such as Eminent Monks (高 僧传) and catalog of sutras
such as Collected Records concerning the Tripitaka (出三藏记集) to recast the typical
translaboration of agents, who under the leadership of Lokaṣema worked jointly and strongly
entangled with one another.

7
 What Can Ottoman Parliamentary Records Tell Us About the History of
Translation?

Fatih Aşan, Boğaziçi University

Translator’s rights can be fully implemented only when legally recognized, and as the primary
witness of the lawmaking process, parliamentary records provide a glimpse into the intersection
between the theory of translation, its practice, and intellectual property law. Ottoman
parliamentary records are no different, yet they have been neglected so far in terms of translation
historiography. Among these records, those that pertain to the drafting process of the Copyright
Act (1910) stand out as particularly important for translation studies. While the act in question
was general in its content, it also included clauses specifically about translator’s rights that
sparked lively discussions on both Parliament and Senate floors. Among the most striking
questions were originality, defining translation, the hierarchy between the original and the
translation, faithfulness, retranslation, and the translation’s role in education and progress. The
careful distinction between the limits of the translator’s rights based on the source text’s country
of origin is also noteworthy. At the same time, the records also serve to showcase the translator’s
political agency in action as two established translators of the time, Hüseyin Cahit [Yalçın] and
Recaizade Mahmut Ekrem, were involved in the process as an MP and a senator, respectively.
During the parliamentary sessions, they were among the foremost advocates of the proposed
legislation as they often blurred the lines between author, translator, businessman, and politician.

I argue that an examination of these documents can offer valuable insight into
considerations that went into the making of translator’s rights in Turkey, as well as the
conception of the translator figure and the act of translation in the early 20th Century Ottoman
Empire. Therefore, I propose a review of the parliamentary debates regarding translation during
the drafting of the Copyright Act of 1910.

8
 Iakov Retsker: the Pioneer of the Linguistic Approach in Soviet Translation
Studies?
Suzanne Eade Roberts, University of Bristol

Iakov Retsker (1897-1984) is considered one of the main figures in the development of a
linguistic approach in Soviet translation studies (Baer & Tyulenev 2019, Dmitrienko 2015). From
1934 until the 1950s, the official doctrine in the world of Soviet translation was ‘realist
translation’, an ideologically-driven approach which applied Socialist Realism to translation.
Retsker’s 1950 article on regular correspondences when translating into Russian had a very
different focus. It presented a typology of translation solutions: direct, word-for-word
equivalence; analogy (cases when there are a number of near synonyms to be chosen between);
and various categories of ‘translational transformations’, similar to those later proposed in
Canada by Vinay and Darbelnet (1958). Retsker was thus an early proponent of an alternative to
the orthodoxy of ‘realist translation’. However, he has been overshadowed by Andrei Fedorov,
even though the latter’s major work was not published until 1953. This presentation will attempt
to disentangle the role played by Retsker in the ‘changing of the guard’ which initiated a new,
linguistics-based orthodoxy in Soviet translation studies which would continue for the rest of the
Soviet period. As a phraseological lexicographer and university lecturer, Retsker defined
translation solutions as a new area of study. His work was subsequently built on by Fedorov, and,
in the 1970s, Aleksandr Shveitser.

9
 Passing Through the Retranslation Hypothesis: The Roles Assumed by the
Romanian Retranslator Of Dubliners
Andra-Iulia Ursa, University of Alba-Iulia

The purpose of this paper is to spur a full discussion on the topic of retranslation, by taking into
account the roles assumed nowadays by the translators of those literary works which have already
been translated into the same target language. By “roles” we understand the types of approaches
and the strategies employed in tackling linguistic or cultural issues. In this regard, the case study
that provides a critical and reflective analysis develops around the second Romanian translation
of Dubliners, accomplished in 2012. With a 47-year time gap from the first Romanian translation
of the Joycean work, we expect to find significant changes in the way the retranslator reaches the
style of James Joyce. The author is highly praised for his contribution to the method of
experimenting with language. This collection of twelve stories is one of the first of his works that
got to be published and it represents a forerunner for his consecrated style. The rather
conventional style employed in the narrative of the stories creates an ambiguous atmosphere of
the paralysed city of Dublin. Because of the myriad of culture-related challenges, any translator
would face challenges in attempting to render the work into a different language. According to
the retranslation hypothesis, the subsequent translations of a text should provide a closer
resemblance to the original. The methodology consists of gathering quantitative and qualitative
data from the source text and the two target texts, in an attempt of measuring the degrees of
closeness and discrepancy, and mapping the change in the roles of the Romanian translators
adopted over time.

References
Baker, M. (2000). Towards a methodology for investigating the style of literary translator.
Target, 12, 241-266. DOI: 10.1075/target.12.2.04bak

Bensimon, P. (1990). Presentation. Palimpsestes, 4, ix-xiii.

Berman, A. (1990). La retraduction comme espace de traduction. Pal- impsestes, 13, 1-7.

10
Brownlie, S. (2006). Narrative theory and retranslation theory. Across Languages and
Culture, 7, 140-170. DOI:10.1556/Acr.7.2006.2.1

Chesterman, A. (2000). A casual model for translation studies. In M. Olohan (Ed.),

Intercultural Faultlines, 15-27. Manchester: St. Jerome.

Gambier, Y. (1994). La Retraduction, re Tour et de Tour. Meta, 39, 413-417. DOI:

10.7202/002799ar.

Joyce, J. (2007). Dubliners. New York: Signet Classics.

Joyce, J. (2018). Oameni din Dublin (F. Papadache, Trans.). București: Editura Litera.

Joyce. J. (2018). Oameni din Dublin (R. Paraschivescu, Trans.) București: Humanitas. (Original
work published 2012).

Paloposki, O., & Koskinen, K. (2004). A thousand and one translations: Revisiting retranslation.
Claims, Changes and Challenges in Translation Studies Selected contributions from the EST
Congress, Copenhagen 2001, 50(1). 27–38. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing
Company.

Parks, T. (2014). Translating style: A literary approach to translation – A translation approach

to literature (2nd ed.). London/New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. (Original work
published 2007).

Vanderschelden, I. (2000). Why retranslate the French classics? The impact of retranslation on
quality. In: M. Salma-Carr (Ed.), On Translating French Literature and Film II.
Amsterdam/Atlanta: Rodopi.

Vándor, J. (2010). Adaptation and retranslation. Ph.D. Thesis, Buda- pest: Eötvös Lorand
University. Retrieved from: http://www.doktori.btk.elt.hu/lingv/vandorjudit/thesis.pdf

11
Venuti, L. (1998). The scandals of translation: Towards and ethics of difference. London:
Routledge.

Venuti, L. (2013). Translation changes everything: Theory and practice. London/New York:
Routledge.

12
A Bourdieuian Method for Investigating the History of a Translation Concept
Erlend Wichne, University of Agder

The translation concept of gjendikting occupies an important position in the political regulation
of literature in Norway. The concept has been institutionalised since 1965 through the schemes
for acquisition of books for public libraries in the country. The definition used by the Norwegian
Arts Council, which administrates the schemes, states that translations of poetry are to be
regarded as as gjendiktninger and that they are distinctly separated from other translations
(“oversettelser”). The etymology of the word “gjendikting” may be used to highlight a temporal
focus, where “gjen-” is parallelled with the English prefix “re-”. The term -dikting might be
translated into “the creation of fiction”.

In my doctoral project, I ask how the concept of gjendikting and its position has evolved
in Norway between 1872‒2012. My research questions are: How has the concept of gjendikting
been used during this period? What has been its position at precise moments? How have the
gjendikterne (“the translators”) related to the concept? To answer the questions, I will analyse
collected quantitative and qualitative data to develop a new understanding of these issues.

In the proposal for the conference, I will present a research method derived from concepts
of Pierre Bourdieu's reflexive sociology. Primarily based on Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992)
along with Grenfell (2014) and important contributions from the sociology of translation (such as
Blakesley, 2019; Inghilleri, 2005; Meylaerts, 2010; Simeoni, 2007; Vorderobermeier, 2014), I
hope to demonstrate how the application of Bourdieu's seemingly complex toolkit of analytical
concepts might be useful in analysing the position of one translation concept in shifting historical
contexts, and how the notion of “assumed translations” (Halverson, 2008; Toury, 2012) offers a
fruitful point of departure for explorative studies such as this.

References

Blakesley, J. (Ed.) (2019). Sociologies of poetry translation. Emerging perspectives. London /

New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

Bourdieu, P., & Wacquant, L. J. D. (1992). An invitation to reflexive sociology. Cambridge:

Polity Press.

13
Grenfell, M. (Ed.) (2014). Pierre Bourdieu. Key concepts (2 ed.). Oxfordshire, England ;,New
York, New York: Routledge.

Halverson, S. (2008). Translations as institutional facts*. An ontology for “assumed translation”.

In M. Shlesinger, D. Simeoni, G. Toury, & A. Pym (Eds.). Y. Gambier (Series Ed.), Benjamins
translation library. Beyond Descriptive Translation Studies: Investigations in Homage to Gideon
Toury (Vol. 75, pp. 343-361). Retrieved from https://bibsys-
almaprimo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/f/1imu1ht/TN_cdi_askewsholts_vlebooks_97890
27291677

Inghilleri, M. (2005). The Sociology of Bourdieu and the Construction of the ‘Object’ in
Translation and Interpreting Studies. The Translator, 11(2), 125-145.
doi:10.1080/13556509.2005.10799195

Meylaerts, R. (2010). Habitus and self-image of native literary author-translators in diglossic

societies. Translation and Interpreting Studies, 5(1), 1-19. doi:10.1075/tis.5.1.01mey

Simeoni, D. (2007). Between sociology and history*. In A. Fukari & M. Wolf (Eds.). Y.
Gambier, M. Shlesinger, & G. Toury (Series Eds.), Benjamins Translation Library (BTL); EST
Subseries. Constructing a Sociology of Translation (Vol. 74, pp. 187-204). Retrieved from
https://bibsys-
almaprimo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/f/1imu1ht/TN_cdi_askewsholts_vlebooks_97890
27292063

Toury, G. (2012). Descriptive translation studies - and beyond(2 ed., Vol. 100). Retrieved from
https://bibsys-
almaprimo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/f/1imu1ht/TN_cdi_askewsholts_vlebooks_97890
27274595 (1995).

Vorderobermeier, G. M. (Ed.) (2014). Remapping Habitus in translation studies (Vol. 40).

Amsterdam / New York: Rodopi.

14
 A Sociological Analysis on the Reception of Zhao Yuanren’s Chinese
Translation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Li Wanyu, Beijing Normal University

The reception of translation is embedded in certain social contexts. This paper, with a
sociological approach, analyzed the reception of Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland translated by
Zhao Yuanren in 1922 from three levels: social and cultural environment at the macro level, the
agents involved in the reception process at the meso level, and the guidelines during translation
process and analysis of translated texts at the micro level. It’s found that the popularization of
vernacular Chinese and children-oriented literary concept provided a favorable social context; the
recommendation of well-known scholars in literature field extended the reception of Zhao's
translation; and the translated texts, keeping the original flavor as well as expressed in vernacular
Chinese naturally, served as the foundation for the reception of the translation. This case study
representatively shows the social background of China at that time.

15
 The Marxist Translator of Darwin's Works: An Analysis on Öner Ünalan
from a Bourdieuian Perspective
Nesrin Conker, Boğaziçi University

The social contextualization of translation that started in the late 1990s has offered translation
scholars new tools to elaborate on the individual and/or collective social factors that shape the
production and dissemination of translations. In this regard, scholars such as Simeoni (1998) and
Wolf (2002, 2006) have introduced new models to study translations and translators, by
incorporating Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic forms and his conceptual framework into
translation studies. From a similar perspective, this paper concentrates on Öner Ünalan (1935-
2011), a translator, author, essayist, and agricultural engineer, among others, who introduced
Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of the Species into Turkish in 1970, 111 years after its first
publication. Ünalan translated Darwin’s major works into Turkish in the 1970s. He also produced
several Marxist translations in addition to publishing a number of essays and books that
addressed various socio-political issues, including but not limited to, Marxism, Turkish language
policies, and the theory of evolution. My research, in this regard, studies Ünalan as a social agent
by using the Bourdieuian (1986, 1991) concepts of habitus and capital and identifies Ünalan’s
network of relations that made the translation of Darwin’s works into Turkish possible. The
findings of the study show that Ünalan’s habitus and cultural capital, especially his educational
background and his Marxist inclinations, as well as his social capital, in the form of his close
friendship with Muzaffer Erdost (1932-2020), who was the owner of Sol (Leftist) Publishing, had
an evident influence in shaping his career as a translator, author, and essayist. I also argue that
both Ünalan and his publisher, Erdost, contributed to their symbolic capitals and gained an expert
status on the subject matter as an outcome of their efforts to translate and publish Darwin’s works
in Turkey. In addition, I suggest that the content of Ünalan’s essays and his book on Darwin bear
the traces of his Darwinist and Marxist readings and translations, a phenomenon which illustrates
that “as social agents, we are continually transformed by social experiences but we are not
transformed randomly” (Bourdieu, 1991, p. 32).

References

Bourdieu, P. (1986). The Forms of Capital. In J. Richardson (Eds.) Handbook of Theory and

16
Research for the Sociology of Education (pp. 241-258). Westport, CT: Greenwood.

Bourdieu, P. (1991). Question of Method. In E. Ibsch, D. H. Schram, and G. Steen (Eds.) Studies
of Literature: Proceedings of the Second IGEL Conference Amsterdam 1989 (pp. 19-36).
Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi

Simeoni, D. (1998). The Pivotal Status of the Translator’s Habitus. Target, 10(1), 1–39.

Wolf, M. (2002). Translation Activity between Culture, Cociety and the Individual: Towards a
Sociology of Translation. In K. Harvey (Eds.) CTIS Occasional Papers Volume 2 (pp. 33-43).
Manchester: UMIST.

Wolf, M. (2006). The Female State of the Art: Women in the “Translation Field”. In A. Pym, M.
Shlesinger and Z. Jettmarová (Eds.) Sociocultural Aspects of Translating and Interpreting (pp.
129-141). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

17
 Slovak Publishing Editor in the 20th Century
Matej Martinkovič, Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra

Published translation of a literary work goes through the hands of multiple people. Chief among
them stands the translator, on whose work translation studies naturally tend to focus. However,
there is another whose contributions can and often have major impact on the quality of the
finished product and whose work is often overlooked – the translation’s editor. The proposed
paper aims to explore the profile of a publishing editor in Slovakia in the 20 th century with
particular attention being paid to sociological aspects of such an editor. Among the surveyed
aspects are the gender ratio among publishing editors, age structure, education (e.g. achieved
level of education, studied field, university attended) or how many editors worked for various
publishing houses of the time. The paper provides results not only for the 20 th century as a whole,
but it also divides editors into two groups based on whether they began their career in the first or
second half of the century and evaluates each group separately. Theses results are then
complemented by first-hand testimonies by several editors who began their work in the last
century.

18
 Translation in Serial Novels: Vâlâ Nureddin as an Adaptor-Translator of
Popular Serials
Devrim Ulaş Arslan, Dokuz Eylül University

Serial novels, unlike today, were once an inextricable part of both the print media and literature.
They were taken for granted by the readers buying a newspaper or a magazine, frequently being
the sole reason why readers follow a particular periodical over an amount of time. While
periodicals and their content has been widely utilised as a resource in general historical research,
translation history principally depends upon sources in book form, relatively overlooking the
enormous amount of translation-related material in periodicals as pointed out by a few translation
scholars after the 2000s (e.g. Lambert, 2006; van Doorslaer, 2010; 2011; Erkul Yağcı, 2017;
Özmen, 2019). This ongoing doctoral research aims at contributing to bridge the current gap in
historiography of translation by problematizing the characteristics of translated serial novels and
examining the translation practices, agents, and debates revolving around the serial novels in
Turkey. Within the scope of this presentation, as one of the case studies from my research
project, adaptations/translations by Vâlâ Nureddin, alias Vâ-Nû (1901-1967), a highly prolific yet
overlooked translator of nearly a hundred “popular” novels and of thousands of short stories
serialized in the daily press starting from the early 1920s to the late 1960s, are examined to
question the prevalence of marginal translation practices in serial novels. Apart from his huge
oeuvre of serialized popular novels, Vâ-Nû as a columnist, writing day by day for various daily
newspapers, explained his translation/adaptation choices and defended his approach against
critics, providing conspicuous details about the production and reception of translated serial
novels in the early republican period of Turkey. Based on findings from the “textual and
extratextual materials” (Toury, 1995) produced by Vâ-Nû, this paper argues that the production
and reception of translated serial novels in Turkish “culture repertoire” (Even-Zohar, 2010)
display distinctive operational and structural features in comparison to translations published in
book form.

References

Erkul-Yağcı, A. S. (2017). Creating Reading Habits Through Translation in Turkey (1840–1940).

Mémoires du livre / Studies in Book Culture, 9 (1): 1-26.

19
Even-Zohar, I. (2010). Papers in culture research. Tel Aviv: Unit of Culture Research, Tel Aviv
University.

Lambert, J. (2006). In quest of literary world maps. Functional Approaches to Culture and
Translation: Selected Papers by José Lambert (pp. 63-75). Dirk Delabastita, Lieven D’hulst,
Reine Meylaerts (eds.). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Özmen, C. (2019). Beyond the Book: The Periodical as an ‘Excavation Site’ for Translation
Studies. TranscUlturAl 11.1: 3-21.

Toury, G. (1995). Descriptive Translation Studies - and beyond. Amsterdam & Philadelphia:
John Benjamins Publishing Company.

van Doorslaer, L. (2010). Source-nation- or source-language-based censorship? The (non-)

translation of serial stories in Flemish newspapers (1844-1899). The power of the pen: translation
and censorship in nineteenth-century Europe (pp. 55−76). Editors Denise Merkle, Carol
O’Sullivan, Luc van Doorslaer, Michaela Wolf. Vienna / Münster: LIT.

van Doorslaer, L. (2011). The relative neglect of newspapers in translation studies research.
Between cultures and texts: itineraries in translation history (pp. 45-54). Antoine Luc, Anne
Lange, Daniele Monticelli (eds.). Frankfurt: Peter Lang.

20
 Exploring Otherness: Translations of Non-binary Gender in Science Fiction
Anna Merikallio, University of Turku

In this paper, I will explore the idea of destabilizing binary gender from within a language (Butler
2006) in the context of translation. Representation offered by translations can affect the access to
subversive discourses in the target culture, thereby contributing to the visibility or invisibility of
marginalized identities (e.g. Santaemilia 2005; Federici and Leonardi 2015). I will also consider
translation as a site for either reinforcing or subverting gender stereotyping or glossing over
gender issues altogether.

I will examine three texts by Ursula K. Le Guin and their translations from English into
Finnish. I will focus on the novel The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), the short stories “Winter’s
King” (1969/1975) and “Coming of Age in Karhide” (1995), and their respective translations,
Pimeyden vasen käsi (1976), “Talven kuningas” (2005) and “Täysikäistyminen
Karhidessa”(2019). These science fiction stories share the setting of a planet inhabited by
androgynous aliens and explore themes of otherness, gender, and sexuality.

The multiple-case study (Susam-Sarajeva 2009) will combine the textual analysis with
corpus methods by compiling parallel corpora, one in English and the other in Finnish. I will use
the resulting statistics to support my qualitative analysis of the translations. In my analysis, I will
concentrate on the depiction of non-binary gender through binary language. I will also examine
if and how gender ambiguity can be translated (Federici and Leonardi 2013) taking into
consideration the hidden gendered features of the Finnish language (Engelberg 2018).

I will present preliminary findings on how the use of binary language in discussing non-binary
gender in the source texts is changed in the target texts. I will also consider the historical context
of each text to see how changing ideas of gender affect the textual representation of androgynous
characters.

References

Butler, Judith. 2006. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge
Classics. Florence: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203824979.

21
Engelberg, Mila. 2018. ‘Miehiä ja naisihmisiä: suomen kielen seksismi ja sen purkaminen’.
TANE-julkaisuja, (2018)18. Helsinki: Tasa-arvoasiain neuvottelukunta TANE.

Federici, Eleonora, and Vanessa Leonardi. 2013. Bridging the Gap between Theory and Practice
in Translation and Gender Studies. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ——
—. 2015. ‘Writing or Translating Otherness?’ Altre Modernità, no. 13 (May): 136–51.
https://doi.org/10.13130/2035-7680/4837.

Santaemilia, Jose. 2005. Gender, Sex and Translation: The Manipulation of Identities.
Manchester: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315760261.

Susam-Sarajeva, Şebnem. 2009. ‘The Case Study Research Method in Translation Studies’. The
Interpreter and Translator Trainer 3 (1): 37–56.
https://doi.org/10.1080/1750399x.2009.10798780.

22
A Literary Genre Transferred Through Translation: Bir Haftada Devriâlem as
an Early Example of Science Fiction in the Ottoman Literary Polysystem
N. Zeynep Kürük-Erçetin & Esra Demirkoparan, Boğaziçi University

In the 19th century, new literary genres were ‘transferred’ from the West to the Ottoman literary
polysystem through translation, and science fiction, as a subgenre of the novel gained a
considerable amount of attention from the Ottoman publishers, translators, and readers. “The
father of science fiction” (Roberts, 2000: 28) Jules Verne (1828-1905) and the Turkish
translations of his works played a crucial role in shaping the reading habits of the Ottoman
readers and inspiring other authors of the era as well. First, Le Tour du Monde en Quatre Vingt
Jours [Around the World in Eighty Days] was translated into Turkish and published in 1875. In
the following years, other works of the French author were translated and retranslated into
Turkish one after another by several different translators. Faik Sabri Duran (1882-1943) comes to
the fore among these translators as an author/translator who both translated from Jules Verne and
wrote the very early examples of science fiction in Turkish inspired by him (Duran, 1932: 83).
Following Verne’s footsteps but also challenging the adventure of Phileas Fogg, in Bir Haftada
Devriâlem [Around the World in One Week] (1906), Duran writes about the journey of a ship
and its passengers, around the world in seven days. In this regard, by tracing the resemblances
and differences between Duran’s novel and Verne’s works, this paper aims to present a close
reading of Bir Haftada Devriâlem as an early example of science fiction in the Ottoman literary
polysystem and discuss how this novel can be read as an indication that the “imported” genre,
science fiction was successfully “transferred” to the Turkish context by means of translation
(Even-Zohar, 2002: 169).

References

Duran, F. S. (1932). Jül Vern Hayatı ve Eserleri. İstanbul: Sanayii Nefise Matbaası.

Even-Zohar, Itamar. (2002). The Making of Culture Repertoire and the Role of Transfer.
Translations: (Re)shaping of Literature and Culture, (ed.) Saliha Paker. Istanbul: Boğaziçi
University Press, 166-174.

Roberts, Adam. (2000). Science Fiction. London and New York: Routledge.

23
 Bridging Chinese and Western Drama Traditions: Yu Shangyuan’s
Translation of Brander Matthews’ Works Under the Evolutionary View of
Drama
Barbara Li Jiawei, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

In early modern China, the eminent American drama theorist Brander Matthews was often cited
by Chinese intellectuals for his in-depth inspection of Western drama. In 1922, the Chinese
dramatist Yu Shangyuan first translated into Chinese two of Matthew’s works, The Principles of
Playmaking and Chief European Dramatists, providing Chinese readers with serviceable guides
for playwriting and archetypal plays for imitation. This paper provides a detailed study of Yu
Shangyuan’s translation of Brander Matthew’s works, covering the choice of texts, translation
strategies, and the reasons for these strategies. It discloses the New Chinese Dramatic Association
as the impetus for Yu Shangyuan’s translation, presents Yu Shangyuan’s packaging of traditional
Chinese opera and Western music drama, and displays his correlations of Chinese operatic terms
and key notions in Western drama. Under the evolutionary view of drama, Yu Shangyuan sees
the modern drama that breaks the fourth wall as the zenith of drama evolution, prompting him to
position the traditional Chinese opera and Western drama in the past on the same axis. With Yu
Shangyuan’s translation of Brander Matthews’ works as a case in point, this study illuminates the
importance of detailed textual analysis and comparative drama studies in exploring the dialogue
between Chinese and Western drama.

24
 The Complex Network of Agents and Texts Behind a Translation: A Case
Study
Laura Ivaska, University of Turku

One might be inclined to think that the process of translation includes one translator who
translates using one source text. The reality, however, may be more complex: sometimes there
are more than one translator and/or source text involved in the translation process. The
complexities behind translations can be uncovered using a microhistorical approach, in which
translations' geneses are studied by analyzing translators' archival materials.

In this presentation, I discuss the complex genesis of the Finnish translation, Ikuinen
aurinko, of the novel Ο ήλιος του θανάτου ('The sun of death') by the Greek author Pandelis
Prevelakis, to reveal the network of texts and people contributing to the birth of the Finnish
translation.

First, the corrispondence between the Finnish translator and the Greek author is analyzed
to gain insights into the translator decision-making. The paratextual evidence reveals the
strategies used by the translator: she collaborated and used three source text (in German, Danish
and Greek). Therefore, the Finnish translation can be labeled indirect, compilative and
collaborative.

Then, the analysis is complemented with a comparison of the translation, the original, and
the source texts. The genetic approach makes it possible to verify the use of the three source
texts.

The paratextual and genetic analysis suggest that the translator is not a passive figure who
simply renders the meaning of the source text into another language; rather, she actively uses
different strategies to convey the message of the source text as accurately as possible. In addition,
this study challenges the myths of the lonely translator and that of the singular source text,
suggesting that rather than just exposing details on individual translations, microhistorical studies
may also yield results that are relevat for translation studies in general.

25
 Exploring the Personal History of the Translator: An Inquiry on Orhan
Suda’s Intellectual and Political Agenda
Deniz Malaymar, Boğaziçi University

Orhan Suda (1929-2014) was one of the prominent translators of the second half of the twentieth
century in Turkey. His translations largely covered socialist, Marxist and Trotskyist works,
including those by Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Ernest Mandel and Leon Trotsky. In 1973, he
established the left-leaning publishing press Suda Publishing House, which became the focal
point of Trotskyist publications in Turkey in the 1970s. In addition, Suda was the owner and
editorial director of Yeni Adımlar (New Steps) magazine, a political periodical with particularly
translated content published monthly between 1973 and 1975. Bearing in mind his personal
commitment to leftist ideas, this study explores Suda’s intellectual and political agenda as a
translator. Considering the fact that archival materials enable us to “explore translators’ agency
and form a bigger picture of translation history” (Paloposki, 2017, p. 32), this paper examines the
archive of Orhan Suda and traces his views on his own practice in particular and on translation in
general. As María Constanza Guzmán (2013) suggests, the translator’s archive as a concept is a
complex composition that is not limited to the translator’s written statements, but which also
includes translators’ biographies and their practices (p. 179). In this respect, the present study
analyzes not only Suda’s biographical data and translation-related practices but also his written
statements such as memoirs, interviews and prefaces. By means of the archival data, this article
discusses his role as a translator, and cultural and political agent, and his contribution to the
formation of a “socialist canon” through his translational, editorial and publishing practices in
Turkey in the 1960s and 1970s.

References

Guzmán, María Constanza (2013). “Translation North and South: Composing the Translator’s
Archive.” TTR, 26, 2, p. 171-191.

Paloposki, Outi (2017). “In Search of an Ordinary Translator: Translator Histories, Working
Practices and Translator-Publisher Relations in the light of Archival Documents.” The
Translator, 23, 1, p. 31-48.

26
 Friedrich Engel’s “Translation Workshop”: Retracing the Creation of the
English Translation the Capital in 1888
Stefanie Kremmel, University of Vienna

This contribution presents a micro history of the authorized English translation of Karl Marx’
seminal work Das Kapital (volume 1) in 1888. Works such as the Capital or the Communist
Manifesto have had global political and societal impact and exhibit a rich history of translation.
Researchers studying the events pertaining to this translation history can profit from the far-
reaching efforts of the communist and Marxist movements to document and archive what Marx,
Engels and their comrades wrote, said and read. This contribution is therefore based on a variety
of sources, including (personal) correspondence discussing this specific translation project, public
statements (by Marx and Engels) revealing their understanding of translation and paratexts of the
published translation. The first aim is to give insight into the micro history of a specific
translation event through the lens of these sources. I will describe the composition of the five-
member translation ‘team’, the timeline of the project and the distribution of tasks. These tasks
include: improving language skills, close reading, preparation of ‘raw’ translations and drafts,
corrections, verification of quotations, standardization of terminology, usage of parallel texts.
The second aim is to discuss the aspect of collaborative translation through the lens of micro
history. Translations have been created collectively or in collaboration for ages, however, while
currently collaboration is discussed as a result of technical development, the historical
background is often times neglected. Additionally, the collaborative aspect of the creation of
translation has often been deliberately hidden and is therefore hard to trace. I argue that historical
translation events (of political and scientific texts) like the one surrounding The Capital can serve
as valuable reference points to discuss the phenomenon of collaborative translation. What makes
it outstanding is that the collaborative aspects are well documented and that it is a case of overt
collaborative translation, carried out by a group with a high level of awareness for translation.

This contribution is tied to my dissertation project “The Communist Manifesto. A Transcultural

History of Translation”.

27
 The History of the Nineteenth-Century Literary Translators in Poland
Karolina Siwek, University of Jan Dlugosz in Czestochowa
A literary translator is embedded and influenced by the background in which he or she works.
This issue became possible to investigate thanks to the research tools proposed by sociology of
translation and biographical studies. By means of them I will present the social, cultural and
historical aspects influencing the literary translators’ work in Poland in the nineteenth century.
On the basis of Shakespeare’s and Goethe’s translators it will be depicted that the literary
translation and the literary translator’s profession were developed despite the unfavourable
political and historical situation in which my country was at that time. In the nineteenth century
Poland did not exist on the European maps and was an object of Germanisation and Russification
which in turn affected cultural issues, and Polish society was divided into three partitions. Faced
with these difficulties, in the first half of the nineteenth century, poets and writers were criticised
for their translation work, but over time (especially last twenty years of 19th century) the activity
of literary translators became, paradoxically, the effective way to rebuild the Polish culture and
language.

28
 Translation in Namibia During the German Colonial Times
Elizaveta Getta, Charles University

Although mostly remaining invisible, translators played a crucial role throughout the whole
history, especially during the periods characterized by contacts between different languages and
cultures. 1884 the territory of today’s Namibia became a German colony named German South
West Africa. One of the main and longest-lasting goals was the Germanization of the local pop-
ulation, involving the re-education to the Christian values. These had to be explained and then
translated into indigenous languages considering various translation procedures, strategies and
methods.

The paper focuses on the translation practice in the German South West Africa. It
overviews the most significant challenges the translators faced on the textual as well as pragmatic
level and describes the competences and work conditions of the translators, who strongly
influenced the understanding of Christian Texts among the local population in various aspects.
Since there had been no written forms of indigenous languages prior to the arrival of Europeans,
the translation efforts had also a significant impact on the nature of the local languages.

The case of the German South West Africa also opens new perspectives in the research on
translation history. The paper addresses the methods of the archival research chosen for this
research project, in particular the approaches to the selection, localization and interpretation of
the archival records as well as contrasting the authentic findings with the information gained
from the critical discourse analysis of relevant printed sources.

29
Translation as Activism: Yan FU’s Translation of “Evolution and Ethics” and
the “Prolegomena” in Late Qing China
Xiaorui Wang, University of Leeds

The research aims to examine translation as activism through a case study on Yan Fu’s
translation of Thomas Huxley’s 1893 Romanes Lecture “Evolution and Ethics” and his
“Prolegomena” in late Qing China. The study contends that Yan’s translation is not in line with
the xin-da-ya principles that he set out in the “General Remarks on Translation”, with which he
prefaced the translation, and this inconsistency can be partly explained by his activist agendas.
The aim of this study is twofold: to investigate how Yan’s activist agendas are manifested in
political views presented in his translation, and to examine what strategies Yan Fu uses to
promote political views through translation intra-textually and extra-textually. The concept of
activism provides valuable insights into studies on translators and their translation practices in
late Qing China. The study also offers a new interpretation on the inconsistency between Yan’s
translation philosophy and practice from the activist perspective.

30
 Systemic View of Translation in Cyprus: Mehmet and Neşe Yaşın as Active
Cultural Entrepreneurs Against Nationalism
Erdem Hürer, Boğaziçi University

One of the most influential ideologies formed in history was nationalism, as it created new
territories in the world, and it was the backbone for most of the new countries created. Itamar
Even-Zohar, the pioneering figure for systematic research in Translation Studies, puts forward
the idea that nations can be formed as a consequence of culture planning activities in his article
where he speaks of the phenomenon called "new unit" (2002: 46), in this case, the unit being a
nation. This formation according to Even-Zohar, takes place time and time again as polysystems
are in constant motion and are ever-changing. This constant change can be seen in the context of
Cyprus between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, and at last to Cypriots.

Since the Turkish invasion of the island in the 16th century, two different identities
coexist in Cyprus; Greek-Cypriots are linked with the Greek origin which was traced back to the
Helen roots by Mehmet Yaşın (2005: 15), while the Turkish Cypriots took force on the island
after the Ottomans invaded Cyprus in 1571. The ongoing interaction between these two nations
became much more complex with the “nationalist” views being formed in the 19th century, and
with the Turkish Republic being born in the 20th century.

In this research, the aim is to show through the analysis of the translatory history of this
region, that the formation of the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot identities first created
activities that can be defined as “cultural resistance” (Even-Zohar, ibid.) against one another, and
afterward as “active culture planning” (Even-Zohar, ibid.) against this nationalist conflict, for the
formation of the common Cypriot identity. To do so, the historical background of Cyprus will be
analyzed descriptively, followed by the analysis of the journal Sanat Emeği (1979) which makes
a case to prove Mehmet and Neşe Yaşın as “active cultural entrepreneurs” who fight for the
common Cypriot identity to be formed and being free from the debate of to whom does Cyprus
belong.

References

31
 Even-Zohar, I. (2002). Culture Planning And Cultural Resistance in the Making and
Maintaining Of Entities. Sun Yat-sen Journal of Humanities. 14. pp. 45-52.

Fişekçi, A. T. (edt.) (1979). Sanat Emeği. 3(15).

Yaşın, M. (2005) Kıbrıs Şiiri Antolojisi. Istanbul: Adam Publishing.

32
 Translators and the Establishment of Hubei Police System in Late Imperial
China
Yu Zhang, Central China Normal University

Studies on the history of Chinese police system have indicated that the establishment of police
system of Late Imperial China was inspired by foreign police system through translation. Yet,
how translators of different identities with disparate translation motivations contributed to it
remains an under-inquired topic of research. The current paper addresses this issue through
examining translators in Hubei Province as a case under the overall context nationwide and
worldwide. Focusing on the roles and strategies of both officially authorized translators and
unofficially authorized translators who were facilitated by the modern media, this paper shows:
(1) how they interacted with the ruling class and institutional structures to make
recommendations and suggestions on the setting of police institutions, police education, and the
limitation of police power, and so on based on their translation; (2) how they localized and
transmitted the main elements of foreign police system to the public, such as the nature,
necessity, functions of it through specific translation practice; (3) what they learnt from the
forerunners who founded Hunan Security Bureau and their contemporaries to promote translation
quality and acceptability; and how their translation and criticism influenced the building of police
system in the Republic of China. It can be concluded that within the complex social-political-
diplomatic power relationship, various translators had relative freedom and independence in
building what they understood as police system with the spirit of innovation, reformation and
even revolution. Although, for the most part, the officially authorized translators served as the
major power, with the unofficially authorized ones playing a supplementary role, the latter could
function as occasional collaborators, in translation for promoting the standardization,
systematization and popularization of the newly-built police system.

33