Revisiting Self-Translation and Indirect Translation in Intralingual Context

Abstract

This study aims to provide a descriptive account of the translational aspects of Reşat Nuri Güntekin’s (1889–1956) Gizli El (The secret hand) (1924/1954). Given its publication history from the Ottoman Turkish alphabet into the Latin alphabet and the claims on it in the Turkish cultural and literary system, the study is set to explore what Gizli El could offer new regarding the concepts of self-translation and indirect translation in intralingual context, which it encompasses altogether. Employing a descriptive target-oriented, historical approach to the translational phenomena in question, the study uses “textual” and “extratextual sources” (Toury 2012, 87–88). While the textual analysis involves intralingual comparison of the Ottoman Turkish and the Latin-alphabet versions of Gizli El published in book form in 1924 and 1954, respectively, the extratextual analysis mainly covers Reşat Nuri’s prefaces. Through such analyses, Reşat Nuri’s “assumed” (Toury 2012) intralingual translations of Gizli El yield a new conceptualization of self-translation in terms of the source and (in)directness of self-translation: ‘direct self-translation’ and ‘indirect self-translation.’ Reframing many aspects of self-translation and indirect translation in terms of their natures, scopes, categorizations, motives, and functions, as well as the longtime debates on ‘authority’ and closeness to ‘original,’ the study concludes by highlighting the historicity and relativity of any work, phenomenon, and concept in nature and scope, reiterating the call “to possess the problematic facts but to disown the problematic definitions” (Bengi 1990, 230).

Keywords

• self-translation
• indirect translation
• intralingual translation
• history of translation
• reşat nuri güntekin
• gizli el