MÜNTEHABAT-I TERACIM-I MEŞAHIR: AN EXPLORATION OF ITS PARATEXT FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF CULTURAL MEMORY

Year 2012, Volume: 3 Issue: 6, 15 - 43, 27.08.2014

Cemal Demircioğlu

Abstract

This paper will briefly look at one of the key works that has not been studied formerly from the late Ottoman tradition of translation: Müntehabat-ı Teracim-i Meşahir (The Collection of Famous Translations), edited by İbrahim Fehim and İsmail Hakkı, and published in 1889/90. This work appears as the second collection of translations from the west approximately thirty years after
Ibrahim Şinasi’s Terceme-i Manzume (Translation of Verse), which was the first collection of Turkish translations of Western poetry in 1859. This paper does not only bring to the fore an Ottoman work that remained in the margin, introducing it to scholarly circles with a special focus on the paratextual data. It also intends to draw attention to translation history in the Turkish context, as a powerful way to recover the hidden or erased past of translation, especially when looked at from the perspective of forgetting and remembering in the course of the Turkish transition from empire to nation-state.

Keywords

Ottoman translation history, translation archaeology, cultural memory, forgetting and remembering, Müntehabat-ı Teracim-i Meşahir [The Collection of Famous Translations]

MÜNTEHABAT-I TERACIM-I MEŞAHIR: AN EXPLORATION OF ITS PARATEXT FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF CULTURAL MEMORY

Abstract

Bu makale, Osmanlı çeviri geleneğine ait daha önce hiç çalışılmamış
önemli eserlerden birini kısaca ele almaktadır: Müntehabat-ı Teracim-i
Meşahir (Meşhur Tercümeler Seçkisi). İbrahim Fehim and İsmail Hakkı tarafından
hazırlanan ve 1889/90 yılında yayımlanan bu eser, İbrahim Şinasi’nin
Batı şiirinden Türkçeye yapılan ilk çevirilerini içeren seçkisi Tercüme-i
Manzume’den yaklaşık otuz yıl sonra Batı’dan yapılan çevirileri içeren ikinci
çeviri seçkisi olarak yayımlanmıştır. Makale, bir taraftan kenarda kalmış bu
Osmanlıca eseri, metinyanı öğelere odaklanarak araştırmacıların dikkatine
sunmayı amaçlamakta; öte yandan, Türkiye bağlamında imparatorluktan
ulus-devlete geçiş sürecinde hatırlama ve unutma perspektifinden bakıldı-
ğında çeviri tarihinin çevirinin unutulan ya da silinen geçmişini görmemize
yarayan güçlü bir araç olduğuna dikkat çekmektedir.

Keywords

Osmanlı çeviri tarihi, çeviri arkeolojisi, kültürel bellek, unutuş-hatırlayış ilişkileri, Müntehabat-ı Teracim-i Meşahir [Meşhur Çeviriler Seçkisi]

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