Reframing an author’s image through the style of translation

Abstract

Abstract 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.