Abstract:

Halide Edib Adıvar, one of the most prominent authors of Turkish literature, wrote her book The Clown and His Daughter in English, in 1935, when she was in voluntary exile in England. The Clown and His Daughter tells the story of a hafiz girl living in the last years of Ottoman Empire. Therefore, it is full of signs about the daily life, social structure, traditions and customs of the period; in short, Ottoman and Turkish culture. It can be said that the language and culture in which the book was created is different from the language and culture it reflects. Although it was published as an original work in the British literary system, it is assumed that the signs of Ottoman and Turkish culture that are far from British were subjected to a mental translation process while being transferred. With this approach, in this study, The Clown and His Daughter is treated as a translation product and analyzed within the concept of “watermark translation” introduced by Sündüz Öztürk Kasar. The traces of Adıvar's mental translation are sought within the translation product with a descriptive approach. Adıvar translated the book into Turkish herself in the same year and the book was published first as a serial novel and then as a book with the title of Sinekli Bakkal. In this article The Clown and His Daughter, which is considered as “watermark translation”, is read in comparison with Sinekli Bakkal, which is discussed within the concepts of “self-translation” and Öztürk Kasar’s concept of “retro-translation”. How Edib conveys the signs of her own culture to the English reader, how the signs are shaped while the text returns to its original culture and how different types of translation and different readers directed Adıvar are examined with a descriptive approach.

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