The institutional translator's image in Turkey: a comparative analysis from the Ottoman Empire to the Modern Republic

Abstract

The present study aims to focus on the institutional translator's image from a historical perspective and examine this professional group's image in the eyes of the state from the fifteenth century Ottoman Empire to today's modern Republic of Turkey. This study argues that the institutional translator's high status in the Ottoman Empire did not continue in the Republican period because of the leading state officials' policy shift towards promoting literary translation. In order to explore the institutional translator's image, this study looked at the different ways in which the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Turkey treated its institutional translators, and at whether they offered the institutional translator special rights and benefits or not. In this respect, we examined the institutional translator's salaries, paths to promotion, rights and privileges. The detailed analysis of historical data on these categories demonstrated that although the institutional translator built up a positive image due to the fact that the Ottoman Empire attached much importance to them, their image started to drop substantially in the early Republican period because of a reverse in the state policy.