TRANSLATION AS A TOOL OF CONSTRUCTING INTERCULTURAL RELATIONS: A CASE STUDY ON THE RELATION BETWEEN TURKISH AND CUBAN CULTURES

Abstract

With the cultural turn in Translation Studies, it has been accepted that translation is not just a linguistic but also a cultural activity. This cultural activity can appear in various forms such as a positive and constructive interaction or an asymmetrical power relation including assimilation, conquest and/or colonial activities between cultures. Literature, translation and translated literature can be used as a tool or strategy in this spectrum of complicated relations. The agents/actors carrying an active role in these relations have become an object of study in Translation Studies as well as all fields of Social Sciences. Using his agent role as an ambassador, Ernesto Gomez Abascal wrote a fictional novel named Havana’da Türk Tutkusu 1898 (Turkish Passion in Havana 1898) inspiring from historical facts to construct a positive Turkish image in Spanish and Cuban literature and culture. Abascal was inspired by its future translator Mehmet Necati Kutlu to write this book. Kutlu, who is an academician and an agent fostering the relations between Turkey and Latin American countries, reported his findings to Abascal about the Ottoman Empire and Cuban relations. Inspired by this information, Abascal wrote a fiction based on these historical realities. This article will try to analyze the role of literature, translation and agents in the process of constructing cultural images through this example.

Keywords

• translation
• cultural image
• the image of Turks
• Cuban Culture
• intercultural relations.

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