Reading Works of Tanpınar and Pamuk on İstanbul as Intersemiotic City Translations

Intersemiotic approaches in different fields of social sciences reveal resourceful

insights on different fields of study, enabling an interdisciplinary approach.

In this vein, it is a recent and innovative approach in Translation Studies

to elaborate on the city as a source text, where the depictions of the author

are read as a form of translation. In this framework, the texts written on a

particular city are analyzed as intersemiotic translations of the relevant spatial

site. The translation process includes the rendering of the visual elements

into verbal depictions, and each depiction and narration is claimed to provide

a new perspective and translation of the city. Within this framework, I will

provide a translation-oriented analysis of four literary works, Huzur and Beş

Şehir- İstanbul by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar and İstanbul, Hatıralar ve Şehir

and Kafamda Bir Tuhaflık by Orhan Pamuk, all of which and both of whom

are defined as narrations of Istanbul and authors of Istanbul respectively. I claim that each of these literary works provides a different representation of

Istanbul with respect to the spatial and temporal loci of focus, and accordingly,

provide differing translations of the same city. The focus of the study will

be on the representations of Istanbul, differences and similarities between the

images used, the common and differing paradigms, revealing the particular

concentrations of each author. Also, the social and political trajectories,

and thematic concentrations, governing the narrations within the relevant

literary works, will be elaborated within the complex network of relations of

Translation Studies.