TranscUlturAl (Journal)
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The Discourse on the Praxis and Pragmatics of the Qur’an Retranslations in Turkish
No full textRetranslations of the Qur’an constitute an intriguing site of research with particular premises governing their production, dissemination and/or reception in Turkey. Its inherently religion-oriented context is accompanied by discussions on the sacred status of the source text, arguments on its untranslatability, translatorial human agency vis-à-vis the Holy creator, acknowledged Arabicity of the source text, etc. In this regard, each new translation of the Qur’an in Turkish is released with a motivation to justify its necessity amid abundant retranslations available in the target repertoire. Various approaches towards the conceptualization and instrumentalization of these Qur’anic translations create a meta-narrative on its own right. This study aims at exploring this particular discourse on the retranslations of the Qur’an with a bi-faceted study design composed of quantitative and qualitative analyses. The quantitative analysis focuses on the numeric changes of Qur’anic retranslations in respective decades, whereas the qualitative analysis concentrates on the statements of the translatorial agents on the motives behind their translational production. By shedding light on the discursive narrative postulated upon these retranslations, it is claimed that social, political, cultural and financial concerns have prevailingly governed the reproductions of this canonical work in Turkey.
Keywords: Qur’an translation, religious-text translation, retranslation, discourse analysis.
 
Discourses on Hamlet\u27s Journey in Turkey
No full textThis study seeks to scrutinize extratextual discourses which frame the Turkish translations and post-translation rewritings of Hamlet as an instrument of national self-imagining and projecting Turkey’s self-image in different socio-political and historical contexts. The study points out that various discourses see image construction as the major motive behind the different versions of Hamlet in Turkey. It also underlines that the extratextual material surrounding the retranslations and rewritings focus on various contextual dynamics that reveal how Turkey is torn between dualities that frame its image in line with the narratives of modernity and tradition, secularism and religion, easternness and westernness. In this context, the study emphasizes that theatre translation, and particularly the translations of Hamlet, formed significant part of the late Ottoman Empire’s and modern Turkey’s westernization efforts. Ultimately, the study concludes that discourses on the Hamlet renderings have foregrounded what is and what is not part of Turkey’s historically constructed self-image by bringing the West alongside the East, centering on how the retranslations and rewritings promote Turkey’s Western (secular and modern) identity against a largely negative representation of its eastern cultural identity.
Key words: Hamlet, Turkey, retranslation, post-translation rewriting, imag
From Social Reform to Knowledge Dissemination: A Case Study of the Chinese (Re)translations of the Science Text Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays
No full textThe translation of non-literary texts, especially science texts, compared to that of literary texts, tends to receive less attention not only from general readers in public, but also from scholars. One phenomenon of such tendency is that non-literary texts are far less retranslated. Different from literary texts, which could have as many as dozens of retranslations, such as the English novel Jane Eyre, which has more than thirty Chinese retranslations, non-literary texts in general have much fewer retranslations, with many of them never retranslated. The reasons for retranslation of non-literary texts differ from those for literary texts. Literary texts are retranslated, as investigated by many researchers, often because of particular consideration of new target reader groups, language, style, aesthetics, commercial interest, and the like; while non-literary texts tend not to be retranslated for that many different purposes, it is commonly agreed that knowledge dissemination is the major motive behind their retranslations
Ideology in the Translation of Political Speeches during the Arab-Israeli Conflict: A Critical Discourse Analysis
No full textIdeology plays a central role in people’s lives and thus in shaping politicians’ decisions and translators’ choices. This role becomes clearer and more active in the context of the Middle East political domain, due to the constant ideological conflict in the region. This paper aims to analyse the translations of political speeches delivered by the Hamas and Hezbollah leaders during two Arab-Israeli conflicts: Lebanon War 2006 and Gaza War 2008/9. These translations often took the form of news reports that included translated excerpts from the speeches. The study suggests that there was a degree of distortion in the translation and editing processes by key English-speaking media outlets. Certain ideological strategies and devices were used by news outlets to manipulate the translation of the messages embedded in the speeches. The study investigates the role of the translator as well as the patron in deciding the outcome of the translation process.
 
Balzac Retranslated
No full textLiterary translation is tricky. Hardly ever do you hear a critic say that the translation of a book is “good”. In the best of cases, people pretend that, even though they have been reading a translation, they were in fact reading Balzac, or Dostoevsky, or any other author of universal renown. For those who are able to read the original text, the translation is more often than not rejected as “inaccurate”, “stylistically inadequate”, “loose”, “overly free”, “not doing justice to the original”, or simply “bad”. James Payn even claimed that Balzac “is not translatable, or when translated is not readable” (67). Yet Balzac was translated and retranslated many times in a variety of languages and in many ways. In this paper, the word retranslation will be used for the realisation of a new translation from the original source language into a target language in which a translation already exists, and relay translation for translations done from a translated source. As for the term translation, it will be extended, in the sense that Patrick O\u27Neill gives this term (6), to include adaptations such as movies, TV series, or even graphic novels, in any language, because adaptations, whatever the medium, are subjected to the same constraints as translations, creating effectively a new “language” to transfer the author’s story and message. Thus this paper will focus on how Balzac\u27s novels have been extended when translated and/or adapted to other media, taking in consideration Roulet’s Discourse Analysis parameters (2001 44), that is, the hierarchical constraints related to the text structure; the linguistic constraints related to the syntactic or lexical norms of the language or linguistic variety that is being considered; and the situational constraints of the receiving culture. To do so, an analysis of the hierarchical constraints of translating, retranslating or adapting Balzac’s La Cousine Bette will be carried out, as well as of the linguistic constraints related to the translation of gender in Balzac’s short story Sarrasine, or to the translation of accents and other oral features in various novels; and finally of the situational constraints related to translating Balzac into English in the Victorian era, and into Chinese at the turn of the 20th century. From these parameters a new, prismatic view of Balzac’s creations will emerge, embodying the dialogue that translators and retranslators enable between cultures