Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Shaping the Field of Translation In Japanese ↔ Turkish Contexts I, , Editör, Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., Bern, ss.65-83, 2019
World literature owes its existence to translation. So much so that, in the context of world literature, one is tempted to say, “In the beginning was The Translation.” All the trans-nationally appreciated texts that modified the Euro-centric world literature canon from The Epic of Gilgamesh to Ossian’s/Macpherson’s Fingal, from Cervantes’ Don Quixote de la Mancha to Mishima’s Confessions of a Mask, are not only works that were created or discovered in their original tongues, but also texts that have continuously been re-created and re-discovered in other languages. Nonetheless, world literature’s development and expansion through translation has always been shadowed by the problem of Euro-centrism. World literature canon consists predominantly of works written in, or translated into met- ropolitan languages such as English, French, Spanish and Portuguese, which are also used in most of the ex-colonial countries. Furthermore, scholars and translators of metropolitan centres tend to interact with non-European literatures in an “indirect” manner. Namely, translators select works that are written or share discursive homogeneity with European languages. Whereas scholars and critics are prone to read texts that are written, reviewed in, or translated into the languages of metropolitan centres instead of mastering the indigenous language and culture in which the text is written. They also have propensity to “homoge- nize” and domesticate source cultures by adapting them to the context of the target cultures that actually belong to “heterogeneous” linguistic and cultural backgrounds. This centrip- etal canonization must be decentralized through alternative models of direct “translational” interactions between centre and periphery, and much more ideally between periphery and periphery. We designated three preliminary alternative models: a) the formation process of “Third World Literature” in Euro-American literary and academic worlds, b) the post- World War Two massive movement of “Japanese literature in English translation” that occurred chiefly in the USA, and c) recent and on-going “Japanese literature in ‘direct’ Turkish translation” experience (2003–2019). We will clarify how and to what degree “cen- trifugal” alternative models such as “Third World Literature,” “Japanese literature in English translation” and especially “Japanese literature in Turkish translation” could serve as valid models in deconstructing the “centripetal” structure of world literature canon.