Back and Forth: The Curious Case of the Translations of Halide Edib Adıvar’s The Clown and His Daughter

Öz

This study explores the intertwined processes of translation that the novel The Clown and His Daughter (1935) by renown Turkish writer Halide Edib Adıvar (1882–1964) went through. The first version of the work, a story set in Turkey but written in English, will be reflected upon with Hongyin Wang’s concept of ‘foreign language creation’ (Tu and Li 2017). Halide Edib wrote Sinekli Bakkal (The fly-plagued grocer), the Turkish version of the work, in 1936 and this, in turn, will be tackled as a ‘textless back self-translation’ drawing on Wang’s ‘textless back translation’ (ibid.). The last translation process that the work went through was from its Turkish version back into English by W. D. Halsey with the title Sinekli Bakkal, or the Clown and His Daughter in two volumes, and this second English version will be problematized as a retranslation in English and an instance of ‘foreign language re-creation’ produced by the back translation of the textless back self-translation. This study aims to present a case study of a textless back self-translation to expand the concept of foreign language creation with foreign language re-creation and to unveil the tools used in the translation processes of the three versions in question comparatively. The study concludes that the reasons for the differences between the foreign language creation and re-creation of the work may be due to differences in translating oneself and translating others and to the intermediary Sinekli Bakkal that possesses the features of both self-translation and textless back translation.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• textless back translation
• textless back self-translation
• foreign language creation
• foreign language re-creation
• Halide Edib

Kaynakça

1. Adak, Hülya. 2016. Halide Edib ve Siyasal Şiddet: Ermeni Kırımı, Diktatörlük ve Şiddetsizlik [Halide Edib and political violence: Armenian massacre, dictatorship, and nonviolence]. Istanbul: Bilgi Üniversitesi Yayınları.
2. Adıvar, Halide Edib. 1935. The Clown and His Daughter. London: George Allen & Unwin.
3. Adıvar, Halide Edib. 1939. “Klasikler ve Tercüme – Neşriyat Kongresi Münasebetiyle.” [Classics and translation – In connection with the Publishing Congress.] Akşam, May 4.
4. Adıvar, Halide Edib. 1942. “Tenkidi Tenkid.” [Criticism to criticism.] Tercüme 3 (14): 138–141.
5. Adıvar, Halide Edib. 1944. Edebiyatta Tercümenin Rolü [The role of translation in literature]. Offprint from 1942–1943 university conferences. Istanbul: Kenan Matbaası.
6. Adıvar, Halide Edib. 2003. Sinekli Bakkal [The fly-plagued grocer]. Istanbul: Özgür.
7. Adıvar, Halide Edib. 2012a. Sinekli Bakkal, or the Clown and His Daughter, Part I. Translated by W. D. Halsey. n.p.: CreateSpace.
8. Adıvar, Halide Edib. 2012b. Sinekli Bakkal, or the Clown and His Daughter, Part II. Translated by W. D. Halsey. n.p.: CreateSpace.

9. Akbatur, Arzu. 2010. “Writing/Translating in/to English: The ‘Ambivalent’ Case of Elif Şafak.” PhD diss., Boğaziçi University.
10. Araboğlu, Aslı. 2015. “İki Ayrı Dilde İki Aynı/Ayrı Otobiyografik Yapıt Üzerine Etnometodoloji-Çeviribilim Odaklı Bir İnceleme: Yazar/Çevirmen Halide Edib.” [An ethnomethodology-translation oriented analysis on two same/separate autobiographical works in two separate languages: Author/translator Halide Edib.] PhD diss., Yıldız Technical University.
11. Arslan, Mustafa Ali. 2006. “A Comparative Study on Halide Edip Adıvar’s The Clown and His Daughter as a Rewrite.” Master’s thesis, Dokuz Eylül University.
12. Avşaroğlu, Merve, and Ayşe Banu Karadağ. 2019. “‘Foreign Language Creation’ and ‘Textless Back Translation’: A Case Study on Turkish Translations of Jason Goodwin’s Ottoman-Themed Works Written in English.” Advances in Language and Literary Studies 10 (5): 107–119. doi:10.7575/aiac.alls.v.10n.5p.107.
13. Baydere, Muhammed. 2018. “Geri Çevirilerde Çevirmenin İzini Sürmek.” [Following the translator’s trace in back translations.] In Çeviribilimde Güncel Tartışmalardan Kavramsal Sorgulamalara [From recent discussions to conceptual reflections in Translation Studies], edited by Seda Taş, 317–346. Istanbul: Hiperyayın.
14. Berk Albachten, Özlem. 2013. “Intralingual Translation as ‘Modernization’ of the Language: The Turkish Case.” Perspectives 21 (2): 257–271. doi:10.1080/0907676X.2012.702395.
15. Canlı, Gülsüm. 2019. “William Faulkner’ın Sanctuary Adlı Romanının Kaynak ve Erek Dizgedeki Çeviri Serüveni: Diliçi Çeviri, Öz-Çeviri, Yeniden Çeviri ve Dolaylı Çeviri Kavramları Işığında Bir İnceleme.” [The translational adventure of William Faulkner’s Sanctuary in source and target systems: An analysis in the light of intralingual translation, self-translation, retranslation and indirect translation.] PhD diss., Yıldız Technical University.
16. Castro, Olga, Sergi Mainer, and Svetlana Page. 2017. “Introduction: Self-Translating, from Minorisation to Empowerment.” In Self-Translation and Power: Negotiating Identities in European Multilingual Contexts, edited by Olga Castro, Sergi Mainer, and Svetlana Page, 1–22. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
17. Demirkol Ertürk, Şule. 2019. “Retranslating and Repackaging a Literary Masterpiece from a Peripheral Language: The Functions of Paratexts in Recontextualizing Literary Translations.” In Studies from a Retranslation Culture: The Turkish Context, edited by Özlem Berk Albachten and Şehnaz Tahir Gürçağlar, 137–154. Singapore: Springer.
18. Enginün, İnci. 2007. Halide Edib Adıvar’ın Eserlerinde Doğu ve Batı Meselesi [East and west problem in Halide Edib Adıvar’s works]. Istanbul: Dergâh.
19. Enginün, İnci. 2019. Halide Edib Adıvar. Istanbul: Dergâh.
20. Gökduman, Umut Can. 2018. “‘Yabancı Dil Yaratımı’ ve ‘Kökensiz Geri Çeviri’ Kavramları Üzerinden Bir Çeviriyi Okumak.” [Reading a translation through the concepts of “foreign language creation” and “rootless back translation.”] In Çeviribilimde Güncel Tartışmalardan Kavramsal Sorgulamalara [From recent discussions to conceptual reflections in Translation Studies], edited by Seda Taş, 347–376. Istanbul: Hiperyayın.
21. Grutman, Rainier. 2011. “Self-Translation.” In Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, edited by Mona Baker and Gabriela Saldanha, 257–260. London: Routledge.
22. Guo, Ting. 2017. “On Foreign Language Creation and Rootless Back Translation—A Case Study of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan.” Journal of Literature and Art Studies 7 (10): 1354–1364. doi:10.17265/2159-5836/2017.10.017.
23. Karadağ, Ayşe Banu. 2013. “Tanzimat Dönemi’nden İkinci Meşrutiyet Dönemi’ne Kadın Çevirmenlerin Çeviri Tarihimizdeki ‘Dişil’ İzleri.” [The traces of “feminity” of woman translators from the Tanzimat to the Second Constitution in our translated literary history.] Humanitas 1 (2): 105–126. https://dergipark.org.tr/en/download/article-file/87007.
24. Karadağ, Ayşe Banu. 2019. “Çeviri Yoluyla Geçmiş, Şimdi ve Gelecek Arasında Köprüler Kurmak.” [Building bridges between the past, present and future through translation.] In Çeviribilimde Araştırmalar [Research in Translation Studies], edited by Seda Taş, 31–58. Istanbul: Hiperyayın.
25. Kürük, Nur Zeynep. 2017. “The Turkish Ordeal: Written in ‘Voluntary’ Exile, Self-Translated under Ideological Embargo.” Master’s thesis, Boğaziçi University.
26. Lefevere, André. 1992. Translation, Rewriting, and the Manipulation of Literary Fame. London: Routledge.
27. Özdemir, Mehtap. 2017. “Self-Translation as Testimony: Halide Edib Rewrites The Turkish Ordeal.” In Self-Translation and Power: Negotiating Identities in European Multilingual Contexts, edited by Olga Castro, Sergi Mainer, and Svetlana Page, 71–92. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
28. Shuttleworth, Mark, and Moira Cowie. 1997. Dictionary of Translation Studies. London: Routledge.
29. Tahir Gürçağlar, Şehnaz. 2008. The Politics and Poetics of Translation in Turkey, 1923-1960. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
30. Thiong’o, Ngũgĩ wa. 2009. “Translated by the Author: My Life in between Languages.” In “The Translational Turn,” edited by Doris Bachmann Medick. Special Issue, Translation Studies 2 (1): 17–20. doi:10.1080/14781700802496134.
31. Toury, Gideon. 1995. Descriptive Translation Studies — and Beyond. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
32. Tu, Qingyin, and Changbao Li. 2017. “A Review on Textless Back Translation of China-Themed Works Written in English.” Studies in Literature and Language 14 (1): 1–7. doi:10.3968/9177.