Tercüme and individual thought: |conflict and consensus over concepts and norms of translation

Abstract

Any comprehensive research on translation history will need to juxtapose theory and practice and not confine itself to either of them. Through the textual and extratextual material present in Tercüme, this study examines the theoretical and practical discourses of the contributors to Tercüme, a translation journal which was launched by the Ministry of Education in a period when translation gained a significant importance in the cultural life of the Republican Turkey. The study offers an overview of the political and cultural climate of Turkey covering the publication life of the journal. It provides a quantitative analysis to provide a concrete basis for the critical discourse analysis and translation description which constitute the core of this thesis. The study holds the discourse formed around translation under special focus and explores whether there was some variety in the discourse of the journal and whether a degree of accordance was created among the writer-translators in Tercüme. The critical discourse analysis is complemented by a descriptive study of a series of poems and investigates the matricial norms (not) observed by the translators. The findings of the study suggest that there was no uniform way of defining translation and translation-related concepts or carrying out translations in Tercüme and help us to reposition it from being a journal operating under state patronage with a strictly defined mission to being an open forum which contributed to the making of a translation repertoire in Turkey through the various options produced and maintained by the agents who took part in Tercüme.