Pr. Şehnaz Tahir Gürçağlar
Boğaziçi University
Visiting Researcher at Glendon College, 2014-2015
My talk will explore the potential offered by the periodical press for historical translation research. I will discuss the ways in which the field of periodical studies and the methodologies it has been building may help enrich the framework for historical studies on translation. In turn, I will argue that translation studies can also fill a major gap in periodical studies by lending the field some of its concepts and tools, as translation, as a specific text type and a production strategy, is largely ignored by periodical scholars.
A focus on the periodical magazine, or the newspaper, provides ample evidence about the way translation was used as a textual production strategy, both in explicit and implicit forms. Furthermore, the uses of translation in the periodical press offer valuable clues about the different disguises translations have and their different manifestations. The focus on translation will also help reveal tensions present in the periodical press such as those between authorship and anonymity, and fact and fiction. After mentioning the methodological challenges and benefits of a convergence between periodical studies and translation studies, I will present a micro case study on a single issue of a Turkish newspaper from the 1930s and provide a close look at how translation features in the newspaper and the potential conclusions which can be drawn from it.
