Reading Works of Tanpınar and Pamuk on İstanbul as Intersemiotic City Translations

Özet

Intersemiotic approaches in different fields of social sciences reveal resourcefulinsights on different fields of study, enabling an interdisciplinary approach.In this vein, it is a recent and innovative approach in Translation Studiesto elaborate on the city as a source text, where the depictions of the authorare read as a form of translation. In this framework, the texts written on aparticular city are analyzed as intersemiotic translations of the relevant spatialsite. The translation process includes the rendering of the visual elementsinto verbal depictions, and each depiction and narration is claimed to providea new perspective and translation of the city. Within this framework, I willprovide a translation-oriented analysis of four literary works, Huzur and BeşŞehir- İstanbul by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar and İstanbul, Hatıralar ve Şehirand Kafamda Bir Tuhaflık by Orhan Pamuk, all of which and both of whomare defined as narrations of Istanbul and authors of Istanbul respectively. I claim that each of these literary works provides a different representation ofIstanbul with respect to the spatial and temporal loci of focus, and accordingly,provide differing translations of the same city. The focus of the study willbe on the representations of Istanbul, differences and similarities between theimages used, the common and differing paradigms, revealing the particularconcentrations of each author. Also, the social and political trajectories,and thematic concentrations, governing the narrations within the relevantliterary works, will be elaborated within the complex network of relations ofTranslation Studies.