"Türkçe Söyleyen" Can Yücel: The "Rewriter" par excellence

Abstract

This thesis problematizes the poet-translator Can Yücel’s unique translation approach designated as “Türkçe Söyleyen” in the Turkish literary system by analyzing four of his translations in three genres: poetry, drama, and prose fiction. In order to resolve the definitional ambivalence as to whether Yücel’s free translations can be categorized under “translation proper” or under some other label, the study takes up the four key terms used in the discourse on translational output: “imitation,” “adaptation,” “version,” and “rewriting.” The study demonstrates that André Lefevere and Susan Bassnett’s notion of “rewriting” accounts for Yücel’s specific translation approach in the most thorough way, making him, in fact, the finest practitioner of the designation the “‘rewriter’ par excellence.” The four descriptive translation analyses demonstrate that Yücel’s works are “translation proper” and none of the first three terms above can fully define them, because the translator “rewrote” his source texts with his idiosyncratic translation poetics, especially characterized by vocabulary and usages specific to the Turkish language and culture. This poetics of the “Turkish rewriter,” which is sometimes referred to as “Can Babaca” (Canese), is based upon a leftist ideology aimed at “colonizing” his source texts. The textual analyses indicate that while his free strategies help Yücel create “metapoems” in his translations of “Sonnet 66” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” they hinder literary excellence to a considerable extent in his translations of The Glass Menagerie and The Great Gatsby because of a drastic shift of register from colloquial to slang. Whereas Yücel’s heavily “appropriating” macro-strategy fo