Modernization by Translation, Modernization in Translation: From Hace-i Evvel to Bot Poet – An INTRA Case

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to discuss the poetry of Deniz Yılmaz, the bot poet, within the framework of translation studies (TS). Yılmaz’s poetry was modeled on the corpus consisting of 12,000 Turkish poems compiled by Bager Akbay, the commissioner. In this study, Yılmaz is taken not only as a poet but also as a poet-translator and her/his poetry as intralingual translation (INTRA) as Yılmaz produces Turkish poems by learning from and modeling existing Turkish poems. The aim in embarking on a study that ‘dares to’ compare a robot which ‘dares to’ become a poet, in the field of TS under the title of INTRA, is to set the ground for future discussions on to what extent ‘we’—those who have a say in the literary system in general and in the field of TS in specific, in the world in general and in the Turkish culture in specific—can buy in what modernization in translation brings. The article argues that such conceptualization might lead to new perspectives on the relationship between translation and cultural change, ownership of artworks, the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the way writing is conceived, and the emergence of robots as agents of literature that shape cultural and literary repertoires.

Keywords

• bot poet
• poet-translator
• intralingual translation
• modernization
• deniz yılmaz