Who is to blame for the Withdrawal of Roger Ackroyd Cinayeti from Circulation? The Critic or the Translator?

Abstract

Translation criticism has been a controversial area in the field of Translation Studies in Turkey, as it has been throughout the rest of the world. Many, if not most, translation criticisms that have appeared so far have been little more than a list of errors, the result of a strict comparison between the source text(s) and target text(s). These comparisons often fail to take into consideration the external factors that translators pay attention to in their translation processes, such as the composition, knowledge, expectations and requirements, etc. of the target culture and the target audience. In this paper, I will analyze, within the framework of Critical Discourse Analysis, the discourse of two criticisms of Gönül Suveren’s translation of Agatha Christie’s novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. One is by the translator and editor Celal Üster, and the other – a response to Üster’s – is by Çağlar Tanyeri, a translator and scholar of Translation Studies. This particular incident may actually be considered a singular case as Celal Üster’s criticism ultimately led to the withdrawal of Gönül Suveren’s translation from circulation by the publishers, Altın Kitaplar. This paper attempts to show how their discourses differ in various aspects and also draws attention to how the power some agents may possess in and over discourse may have catastrophic results, such as the one in this case.