Abstract:

This study aims to examine the role of retranslation and translation criticism through Turkish translations of August Bebel’s work entitled Die Frau und der Sozialismus (1879/1985). Due to the fact that Bebel’s Woman and Socialism regards salvation of woman as the most significant step for the salvation of humanity and scrutinizes the position of women in the patriarchal structure, it attracted a great deal of attention and was translated into many languages in a short period of time. When it comes to the Turkish translations of the work, which is accepted as a classic in the struggle of women liberation at the present time, we see that it was translated at different times, simplified and reprinted together with an additional text of another author and lastly retranslated with an emphasis of the “full text”. The first target text has a translator’s preface comprising explanations on the translator’s purpose and on the text used as the source text. It was simplified and reprinted at various times and also published as two books. The last target text is a retranslation and includes a translation criticism before the main body of the text. It is entitled as publisher’s note and involves a criticism regarding the belief that the previous translation was the first target text in Turkish. Within this context, this study will first try to describe what sort of a relation is established between the first translation and retranslation analyzing from paratexts (Genette, 1997) such as the book cover, the translator’s preface and the publisher’s note. Additionally, the last target text embodies a paratext that explains the publisher’s purpose in retranslation, brings the claim of the “full text” to forefront and criticizes the first translator and her translation by comparing translations. Thus, this study will also try to develop a meta-criticism by focusing on this translation criticism.

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