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Article published In:
Babel
Vol. 67:6 (2021) ► pp.683–706

Reframing an author’s image through the style of translation

The case of Latife Tekin’s Swords of Ice

| Hacettepe University

This paper seeks to explore how the style of translation reframes an author’s changing image. In light of the transformation of Latife Tekin from being considered an author of the poor and dispossessed with whom she identifies to being acknowledged as a translator who channels the marginal world of the dispossessed people into the mainstream, as evidenced in various paratextual and metatextual discourses in Turkey, the study focuses on the style of the English translation of Tekin’s Buzdan Kılıçlar (Swords of Ice). The study underlines that an author’s ontological narrative, which feeds into his or her image, may impact the style of the translation of his or her work. Noting that the style of translation may serve as a way of responding to an author’s ontological narrative, the study highlights that the stylistic features (i.e., italics and quotation marks) added to the translation of Buzdan Kılıçlar appear to be in interplay with the narratives that prepared the ground for Tekin’s self-identification as a translator. Ultimately, the study points out that those stylistic features foreground not only the cultural other against Turkey’s modern and secular establishment but also the Oriental other against Western modernity.

Keywords: style, translation, ontological narrative, image, Latife Tekin, Turkey
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The image(s) of Latife Tekin
    • 2.1Tekin’s authorial image
    • 2.2Tekin’s translatorial image
  • 3.The role of style in reframing Tekin’s translatorial image in translation
    • 3.1Theoretical background
    • 3.2The effect of Latife Tekin’s ontological narrative on the style of the English translation
      • 3.2.1Foregrounding the social alienation of the other
      • 3.2.2Foregrounding the inner voice of the dispossessed
      • 3.2.3Foregrounding culture-specific items
      • 3.2.4Foregrounding the code-switching events
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 22 December 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.00246.dur
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