Kim Bu: A Study of Joan Kim Erkan’s Novel Lady Who as a Watermark Translation and its Retro-translation into Turkish
Sinem Sancaktaroğlu Bozkurt, Yeşim Sönmez DinçkanThe study focuses on the novel Lady Who by Joan Kim Erkan, a Welsh woman who narrates the last sixty years of Turkey by blending her personal experiences with the cities of Istanbul and Aydın in the background, and Kim Bu, its Turkish translation by Zeynep Avcı. Lady Who, which is produced as an original work in English, is analysed as a product produced as a result of a mental translation process, referring to the concept of “watermark translation” coined by Sündüz Öztürk Kasar, while its Turkish translation is examined referring to the concept of "retro-translation" under the headings of proper names, forms of address, idioms, phrases, historical features, religious features, cultural features related to food, social life, traditions and customs. How the author conveys these Turkish cultural features to the English reader and thus how the English work and its Turkish retro-translation are positioned as translations are examined with a descriptive approach. After briefly describing the author and the translator, the concepts of watermark translation and retro-translation are explained. The cultural features are then comparatively examined under subcategories, and the findings are presented. Finally, a general conclusion is presented by evaluating the data through representative examples.
Kim Bu: Bir Özde Çeviri Örneği Olarak Joan Kim Erkan’ın Lady Who Başlıklı Eserinin ve Aslına Çevirisinin İncelenmesi
Sinem Sancaktaroğlu Bozkurt, Yeşim Sönmez DinçkanÇalışmanın veri bütüncesini Türkiye’nin son altmış yıllık geçmişini arka plana İstanbul ve Aydın şehirlerini alıp kişisel deneyimleri ve hikayeleriyle harmanlayarak anlatan Galli Joan Kim Erkan’ın kitabı Lady Who ile eserin Zeynep Avcı tarafından Türkçeye yapılan çevirisi Kim Bu oluşturmaktadır. Kitabın yayımlandığı dil (İngilizce) bağlamında özgün bir yapıt olarak üretilen eser, Sündüz Öztürk Kasar’ın tanımladığı ve Türkçede “özde çeviri” olarak ifade ettiği kavram bağlamında ele alınmakta ve özünde zihinsel bir çeviri işleminin yer aldığı bir ürün olarak incelenmektedir. Yapıtın Türkçeye yapılan çevirisi de yine Öztürk Kasar’ın önerdiği “aslına çeviri” kavramı doğrultusunda ele alınmakta, özel adlar, hitap biçimleri, deyim, deyiş ve kalıplaşmış sözcük birliktelikleri, tarihi ögeler, dini ögeler, yemek kültürüne ilişkin ögeler, toplumsal yaşam, gelenek ve göreneklere ilişkin ögeler başlıkları altında karşılaştırmalı olarak incelenmektedir. Yazarın Türk kültürüne ait ve İngilizlere uzak olan bu ögeleri İngiliz okuruna nasıl aktardığı ve dolayısıyla yapıtın nasıl bir çeviri etkisi yarattığı, bu metnin aslına dönerken nasıl şekillendiği betimleyici bir yaklaşımla irdelenmektedir. İncelemede, yazar ve çevirmen hakkında kısa bir bilginin ardından özde çeviri ve aslına çeviri kavramlarına değinilmekte daha sonra da kültürel ögeler, alt kategorilere ayrılarak karşılıklı olarak incelenip, bulgular ortaya konmaktadır. Sonuç bölümünde ise incelenen temsili örnekler bağlamında veri değerlendirmesi yapılarak genel sonuca yer verilmektedir.
This study focuses on the novel Lady Who by Joan Kim Erkan and its Turkish translation of Kim Bu by Zeynep Avcı. Joan Kim Erkan is a Welsh woman who narrates the last sixty years of Turkey in her novel by blending her personal experiences and stories with the cities of Istanbul and Aydın as background settings. Zeynep Avcı is a well-known translator and author herself, having translated different works.
What is interesting about the corpus is that the same publisher published both Turkish and English versions of the work at the same time. Although Lady Who (the English version) was produced as an original work in English, it was analysed as a translation referring to the concept of “watermark translation” launched by Sündüz Öztürk Kasar. The concept refers to a product produced as a result of a mental translation process. The work can be an original text written directly in the native language of the context in which it was published; however, this language is not actually the original language of the context presented in the work. Erkan, a British who came to Turkey after marrying a Turkish man, has actually translated Turkish culture into her native language, English. Thus, her novel goes from the context of abroad to the context of home, where she wants to recount the realities of a foreign culture to those sharing the same language and culture as herself. In addition, the translation of this work into Turkish by Zeynep Avcı is much more interesting, and its process is different from other literary translations, since this Turkish translation can be analysed as a return to its original culture. Thus, Kim Bu, the Turkish version, was examined in line with the concept of "retro-translation" again proposed by Öztürk Kasar.
Considering the characteristics of watermark translation, the cultural features inherent in source and target texts have been comparatively analysed under the headings of proper names, forms of address, idioms and phrases, historical features, religious features, and cultural features related to food, social life, traditions, and customs. How the author (the watermark translator) conveys these elements of Turkish culture to the English reader, and thus how the work is positioned as a translation, as well as the characteristics of its Turkish retro-translation, are examined with a descriptive approach.
In the analysis, after briefly describing the author (watermark translator) and the translator, the concepts of watermark translation and retro-translation are explained in detail in order to contextualise the study. The studies in which these concepts are discussed are briefly listed, and reflections on these concepts in our corpus are provided.
Secondly, the cultural features are categorised, referring to other research focused on watermark translation. These sub-categories include proper names, forms of address, idioms and phrases, historical features, religious features and cultural features related to food, social life, traditions and customs. These are comparatively examined in the English and Turkish versions of the novel. Because of space constraints, the study selected the most representative examples out of the entire corpus.
After this comparative analysis, the findings related to the concept of watermark translation and retro-translation are presented. Finally, a general conclusion is presented by evaluating the findings. Ultimately, it is concluded that the author-translator’s mental translation can be observed in the Turkish version of the novel in terms of borrowed Turkish words, their explanations, additions, and footnotes, while deletions of these features in the English version underline the characteristics of a retro-translation. Thus, once more, it becomes clear that the enlarged meaning of translation encompasses numerous distinct facets.
