Alev Bulut
Professor
Department of Translation Studies
Faculty of Letters
Istanbul University, Turkey

Abstract

Interdisciplinary ties between Feminist Studies and Translation Studies encompass a wide axis of research from reader-based theories to discursive and semiotic frames. As a literary translator and translation researcher with a specific interest in text-linguistics and discourse analysis, I would like to focus, here, on translating feminist non-fiction (essays and academic material) with respect to gender aspects (e.g. person deixis, gender markers) and linguistic constraints (e.g. wordplay and neologism). Gender structures of the language pairs in translation (English-Turkish, in my case) might require operational decisions such as back-translation and foot-noting especially when the translator is dealing with the source texts’ translation-based examples from other language pairs. My researcher-self observes that I display my translator- function somewhere between preserving the theoretical perspective of the source material and making the discussion accessible for the target reader with the help of paratexts. I will give and discuss (personal pronoun, gender marker, wordplay and neologism) examples from two recent translations of mine; a collection of feminist essays (in press) and a book on feminist Translation Studies (in progress).

Bio

Alev Bulut is Professor in the Department of Translation Studies, at the Faculty of Letters, Istanbul University, Turkey.
She has been Department Head and Division Head at Istanbul University 1996-2018; Board Member of Çeviri Derneği (Association of Translation and Interpreting-Turkey) and member of ÇEVBİR (Literary Translators’ Society-Turkey); member and trainer of ARÇ (Emergency and Disaster Interpreting Volunteers); coordinator and member of the National committee responsible for writing Translators’ Vocational Qualifications for the Ministry of Labour and Social Security since 2012; English Literature editör for Koridor Pub. Alev has published extensively on translating female literary discourse, text-analysis for translation, community interpreting (emergency and disaster interpreting), and news translation. Among her publications are the following books: Çeviride Dil ve Metin (Language and Text in Translation) 2003, Çeviride İdeoloji, İdeolojik Çeviri (Ideology in Translation and Ideological Translation) 2008/ 2018 2nd ed. Tercüme Hatası!? (Translation Mistake!?) 2015/ 2022, 2nd. ed., Türkiye’de Futbol Çevirmenliği (Football Interpreting in Turkey) 2018. She has also translated around 50 titles since 1989: novels, short story anthologies of American and English literature, non-fiction [works on art history, archaelogy, tourism (commissioned by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism), philosophy (Vernon Press)], and various articles for academic journals.