Representation of India in English Version and Turkish Self-Translation of Halide Edib’s Inside India


Abdal G.

the 2nd LOTUS International Language and Translation Studies, Konya, Türkiye, 3 - 04 Kasım 2022, ss.1

  • Yayın Türü: Bildiri / Özet Bildiri
  • Basıldığı Şehir: Konya
  • Basıldığı Ülke: Türkiye
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.1
  • Erzincan Binali Yıldırım Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

Halide Edib (Adıvar), an exiled Turkish writer, lived a turbulent life as of her ideological stance and authorial career extending from the last years of Ottoman Empire to the early days of Turkish Republic. As a woman, Edib dared to raise her opposing voice in a crowd of men during mundane resistance to imperialist aggression, while keeping her ‘curriculum vitae’ as a woman, writer, traveller and lecturer. In her books, mostly written in English and translated into Turkish by herself, Edib presents a panoramic view of her human experiences as an outsider to her own life, which can be clearly traced back in her Inside India, published by Delhi’s K.N. Book House in 1937 for the first time. This study aims to unveil how Indian culture and identity are represented in the English version and Turkish self-translation of Edib’s Inside India, which is deemed to be an account of her journey around India in 1935. The first part of this study offers a biographical account of Halide Edib, while the second part is a survey into her positioning as a self-translating author in the Turkish literary system. The third part, however, is divided to comparative analysis of English and Turkish versions of Edib’s Inside India, with an emphasis on her critical reflections regarding Indian culture (ethnicity, language, religion, social customs, spatial context, material culture) during the process of self-translation. Finally, it has been concluded that Halide Edib alternated between the positions of translator, writer and traveller in the translatorial rewriting process of Inside India.

 

Key words: Halide Edib, Turkish literature, Inside India, self-translation, cultural representation.