Düşmanın Dilini Konuşmak: Kırımlı'da Çok Dillilik ve Çeviri Temsilleri

Abstract

This article examines the depictions of multilingualism and translation in Crimean (Kırımlı, 2014), which recounts the story of a Crimean Turk called Sadık Turan, who was taken hostage as a prisoner of war during the Second World War. Adapted from Cengiz Dağcı’s 1956 memoir-novel entitled Horrible Years (Korkunç Yıllar), the film presents a multilingual narrative through its incorporation of Turkish, German, Russian and Polish. The study aims to identify the role of multilingual interaction and linguistic mediation in narrating this story of war and conflict on screen. Chris Wahl’s (2005) characterisation and categorisation of polyglot films based on the role of multilingualism in character and plot development will serve as a reference point for discussing the functions of multilingualism in the movie. In doing so, the analysis will explore how each language is represented in the story, and, if applicable, how language representation is complementary to the portrayal of a character speaking a particular language. The second part of the article focuses on the identification of the purposes of translation, and more specifically diegetic interpreting, that is, “any act of (oral) interpreting which takes place within the story world through the agency of a character in the narrative” (O’Sullivan 2011, p. 80). This will facilitate the identification of any tacit connection between being multilingual and/or acting as an interpreter and having the upper hand in a particular situation. The article thus demonstrates how the conflict finds expression on the linguistic level in the film in conveying a character’s engagement with the language that s/he uses as well as with the enemy on the battle zone.