Woman Issues from the Perspective of Feminist Translation: Sylvia Plath and ‘‘Mothers’’ / Feminist Çeviri Bakış Açısıyla Kadın Sorunları: Sylvia Plath ve “Anneler”

Abstract

Sylvia Plath, who is known for her poems and proses in American Literature, has been being translated into Turkish literature and culture system for many years. Having contributed to Turkish literature, some of her works embody female characters who strive at gaining a place in society. Being a woman and a mother of two, Plath had difficulties in her life and had to stand out against psychological problems stemming from the death of her father and pressure from her husband. Taken all together, it is within the bounds of possibility that Plath’s life redounded on her works and translated narrations. To illustrate and investigate this view, one of Plath’s short stories, Mothers is analyzed and discourses which indicate woman issues (motherhood/womanhood, social belonging, sorority and patriarchy) are identified and compared to the Turkish translation to comprehend how they are produced in the target language by a woman translator. In this respect, the translator is interviewed through e-mail and gives information on her translation process. Regarding the analysis of the translation, the Turkish target text is analyzed through the terms of initial norms, preliminary norms and operational norms posited by Gideon Toury. The first two are presented in the scope of adequacy/acceptability and translation policy/ directness of translation. As for the operational norms, feminist translation scholar Luise von Flotow’s (1991) categorization of translation strategies and other strategies by Vinay & Darbelnet (1995) and Delabastita (1993) are utilized to sort out the translator’s strategies. At the end of the analysis, it is concluded that the translator mostly utilizes literal translation and transposition in line with equivalence and modulation. It is also noteworthy to mention that the translation of a word does not match with the strategies presented. Accordingly, as none of the translation strategies served the purpose, a new translation strategy coined obscuring, has been suggested.

Keywords

• feminist translation
• luise von flotow
• descriptive translation studies
• sylvia plath