From translation to originals … is it just a short step?

Abstract

Even today, many examples of contemporary books for children in Turkey are translations. On the other hand, Turkish authors have been writing books for children for some time now and recently different genres of books have also appeared on the Turkish market. One of these genres is biographies about famous people for primary school students. The scope of this study entails translated biographies about famous people for child readers and current Turkish originals in this genre available today. The central questions are: Are the Turkish versions written in this genre imitations of the translations into Turkish, or are there differences between the translations and originals? What was, in a sense, created through the translation of a genre into a local repertoire? The findings of the study reveal how translations affected the formulation and creation of the genre in Turkish, but also reveal that local literary norms were effective in the appropriation of the genre.

Translation and language and cultural policies: The importance of political cognizance in audiovisual translator training

“…Translation has long served as a tool and means for certain political and social realities in many countries and the example of Turkey is no different. The translation of foreign legal codes in drafting of the initial laws of the Republic of Turkey (Altay, 2002); foreign AV products dubbed and adapted between 1920-1970 to establish a local cinema (Scognamillo, 2014); the translation of foreign AV products for the TRT (Turkish National Radio and Television) from the late 1960's onwards (Çankaya, 1992); the translation and appropriation of literary genres and specific works for the enrichment of the local literary repertoire (Anamur, 1997;Paker, 2002); translations leading to the birth of certain genres like children's literature (Neydim, 2003, Okyayuz, 2017 and many other such examples may be provided to exemplify the extent of this practice.…”