Abstract
According to the results of the retranslation project – “A Descriptive and Critical Look at Retranslation: Retranslated Works in the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Turkey” (2013–2016) carried out at Boğaziçi University, two big waves of retranslations in non-fiction leftist works were identified: a boom in the late 1960s and early 1970s and another wave, a rejuvenation period, since the late 1990s until 2016. The Communist Manifesto occupied a central position in the corpus as it tops the list with 37 retranslations. The ideological and commercial tension between recent direct retranslations and the former indirect ones, which are accused of out-of-date terminology and self-censorship, are investigated in this study. This study aims a textual and paratextual scrutinization of two indirect and two direct retranslations of the book, namely by Ege, Erdost, Satlıgan, and Kavas, in the framework of an adapted version of Antoine Berman’s translation criticism model. The abundance of translations indicates retranslation’s potential to trigger a value-creating process in the receiving culture, because thanks to the retranslations, the previous translations, their historical circumstances and their translators’ agencies have become visible. This specific case also gives us food for thought in comprehending the indicative role of retranslation in the transformation of Turkish leftist discourse. Moreover, it illustrates the interdependence between retranslation and canon formation, because the abundance of retranslations from the original source language in such a short time span and adoption of conservative translation strategies signal that the work is being canonized in the receiving system.
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Notes
- 1.
For further information, see Hanne Jansen and Anna Wegener’s article entitled “Multiple Translatorship” (2013) where they distinguish between intra-textual, extra-textual, and intertextual voices.
- 2.
Indirect translation and relay translation will be used interchangeably in this study.
- 3.
There are no separate sections devoted to the forms of analysis and the foundation of evaluation, but they are studied under this heading.
- 4.
Confrontation basically means the comparison of selected passages from the translations to the original and the other translations.
- 5.
The articles were by Paul Sweezy, Ellen Meiksins Wood, Anwar Shaikh, Prakash Karat, Prabhat Patnaik, İrfan Habib, Aijaz Ahmad, and David Harvey, and the review were by three Turkish Marxists: Metin Çulhaoğlu, Ertuğrul Kürkçü, and Sungur Savran.
- 6.
These are some commemorations; namely, Capital’s 150th anniversary in autumn 2017, the 150th, the 160th, and the 170th anniversaries of The Communist Manifesto in 1998, 2008, and 2018 respectively, the 200th birthday of Karl Marx in 2018, the 100th anniversary of the February and October revolutions in Russia 1917 and the revolution in 1918 in Germany, and the 50th anniversary of the global upheaval in 1968.
- 7.
The National Democratic Revolution Movement, which originated from the TKP (Turkish Communist Party), was a rising force starting from the late 1960s, supported by university students and aimed at a national democratic revolution against the imperialist powers and comprador bourgeoisie (Ulus 2011).
- 8.
It should also be kept in mind that Süleyman Ege used the pen names Gaybi Köylü and Süleyman Arslan in the first prints and in some other translations.
- 9.
He used the pen name E. Tüfekçi.
- 10.
These were Devlet ve İhtilal (State and Revolution) by Vladimir I. Lenin, Bütün Ülkelerin İşçileri Birleşiniz (All the Workers of the World Unite) by Joseph Stalin, Bolşevik Partisi Tarihi (The History of Bolshevik Party) by Joseph Stalin, and Komunist Manifesto (The Communist Manifesto) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
- 11.
The English version for Satlıgan’s translation is retrieved from http://marxist.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/preface.htm#preface-1893
- 12.
https://m.bianet.org/bianet/yasam/146412-bir-degerli-adam-geldi-gecti-bu-topraklardan. Accessed 3 Oct 2018.
- 13.
For further information, please visit https://odatv.com/stalin-anmasi-solda-kriz-yaratti-1103161200.html
- 14.
For further information, please visit http://www.radikal.com.tr/kultur/ceviride-ne-yapmali-tartismasi-1010605/
- 15.
The Left Opposition was led by Trotsky himself from 1923 to 1927 and criticized the Stalinist dictatorship, advocating permanent revolution rather than stagnation in the regime and producing a theoretically different ideological viewpoint. Whereas Stalin advocated socialism in one country as a possibility, Trotsky found this view contrary to the Marxist ideal of socialism throughout the world. The theory of permanent revolution, developed by Trotsky, is the idea that clarifies how a Socialist Revolution can occur in a backward country rather than in a country where capitalism was in an advanced state (Daniels 1991).
- 16.
A direct translation of the word “manifesto”; “bildirge”, which is pure and modern Turkish is not used by any of the translators. However, I should also state that “bildirge” is middle Turkish dating back to the fourteenth century and can be considered even older than “beyanname” which is a combination of the Arabic verb root “beyan”; meaning to show clearly or declare and the Persian “name”, which means letter or writing.
- 17.
In the preface of Satlıgan version, Rasih Nuri İleri claimed that Ege version was translated by Mete Tunçay and censured by Mihri Belli (İleri 2010, 16). Süleyman Ege defended his translation in the end note of his translation against the accusations of Rasih Nuri İleri and described Nuri’s claim as a “slander” (Ege 2009a, b, 178).
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Uslu, M. (2019). The Indicative Role of Retranslations for the Turkish Leftist Discourse: Using Berman’s Translation Criticism Path to Analyze Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei as a Case. In: Berk Albachten, Ö., Tahir Gürçağlar, Ş. (eds) Studies from a Retranslation Culture. New Frontiers in Translation Studies. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7314-5_7
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