Representations of translators in popular culture

Abstract

The “fictional turn” in translation studies has acknowledged the fact that translators/interpreters have been moved from behind the curtain to center stage. Whether this is a result of poststructuralist or postcolonial scholarship, the fact remains that translators/interpreters now figure as protagonists in film, theater, and especially popular literature. Does this “promotion” reflect a change of status? How are translators portrayed? How is their habitus portrayed? What function do they serve? Has there been a change in their portrayal/function in the last thirty years? Does the change reflect the different approach/es to the “hybrid” in this period? Has the “death of the author” theory and the promotion of translators/interpreters to the status of “authorship” changed their self-image? This essay is an attempt at answering these questions, diachronically and synchronically, with the help of various literary texts from the 1970s on.

The novel Mütercim as a site of transfiction: A case of translation in life and the translation of life in the transformational republican era in Turkey

“…2-3). The term includes various text types such as "texts whose mimetic object is the act of translation, the translator, and his or her social and historical contexts"; "texts that overtly claim to be translations, though no original exists"; "texts that make standard language strange to itself" and "texts that mime language reality such that the medium does not match the object depicted" (Beebee, 2012). In this framework, Şehnaz Tahir Gürçağlar (2017) posits that the notion of transmesis constitutes a productive subject of analysis placing the concentration on the plurivocal and heteroglossic nature of the act of translation (p. 638).…”

“…In this study, I intend to take a relatively new perspective focusing more on the conceptualization of translation as a figurative/metaphorical act and the translator as an agent simultaneously shaping and shaped by a translated text. To this end, I would like to contextualize the instrumentalization of translation by a literary author with references to transmesis (Beebee, 2012) and transfiction.…”

“…All translations provided within square brackets are mine, unless stated otherwise.3 Referring to Giorgio Agamben, ThomasBeebee (2012) defines Homo sacer as "primal form of "outlaw," where the term means "outside the law," not from the point of view of the doer, but from the point of view of the punisher. The law neither punishes nor protects the sacred man or woman, who can be killed by anyone without consequences, meaning both that s/he is outside the law and that this very exteriority constitutes the law's functioning" (p. 54).4 For a few examples of the articles on mistranslation SeeValente (2019);Fishkin (2016), andBrickhouse (2013).…”

The interpreter as traitor: Multilingualism in Guizi lai le (Devils on the Doorstep)

“…Interpreters in movies and fiction are often depicted as unreliable, manipulative, hybrid beings with double loyalties (e.g., Ben-Ari, 2010;Cronin, 2009;Kaindl, 2012;O'Sullivan, 2011). Dong Hanchen, the Chinese interpreter in Guizi lai le, may also fit into such a characterization.…”

The interpreter as traitor: Multilingualism in Guizi lai le (Devils on the Doorstep)

“…Interpreters in movies and fiction are often depicted as unreliable, manipulative, hybrid beings with double loyalties (e.g., Ben-Ari, 2010;Cronin, 2009;Kaindl, 2012;O'Sullivan, 2011). Dong Hanchen, the Chinese interpreter in Guizi lai le, may also fit into such a characterization.…”