Introduction: Mutability in Retranslation

Abstract

The volume you are about to read focuses on retranslation in a specific culture; the authors explore different aspects of retranslation as they have surfaced in the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkish society. However, their descriptions of their contexts and their analysis of the position and implications of retranslation offer a set of conclusions that can be associated with practices in a wider set of cultures. In that sense, the articles should not be seen as confined to the Ottoman-Turkish context, since the issues that they bring to the spotlight are varied and have implications for the theories and methodologies of (re)translation. In this introduction we will offer an account of some common patterns that emerge from the studies that make up the present volume. While the findings of these studies reveal a set of characteristics that mark the history of (re)translation in Turkey, their findings are significant contributions to recent fields of inquiry in translation studies. In a recent article, Koskinen and Paloposki (2019) draw attention to the importance of the larger cultural context for a fuller understanding of individual case studies. The need to complement quantitative and qualitative approaches in research in (re)translation history and the advantages of such a combined effort is already evident (Berk Albachten and Tahir Gürçağlar 2019a). Once such studies reach a critical threshold, whereby a macro view complete with sufficient detail and analysis has emerged in a specific culture, the door opens for larger comparative studies. Koskinen and Paloposki suggest, “the next step for retranslation research will, we believe, consist of studies asking new questions on the basis of such macro level empirical evidence (tested on new, targeted data sets or case studies) and comparisons between these studies completed in different cultural, historical and literary contexts” (2019, 23). Having spent nearly 20 years researching the Finnish retranslation landscape, these two researchers have already started engaging in a cultural comparative method and compared their results with those from a study on retranslation in the field of children’s literature in Slovene by Pokorn published in 2012 (Koskinen and Paloposki 2019, 36–38). With this volume, and the more quantitative and macro methodology we have implemented elsewhere (Berk Albachten and Tahir Gürçağlar 2019b), we hope to make headway to create a better understanding of Ottoman-Turkish retranslation history and its current state. We believe that this will make a contribution to identifying larger diachronic and synchronic patterns of retranslation, and the findings from this volume will help increase the capacity for cultural comparative studies in the field.