Translation as a Transformation Process: Transplanting Yusuf Atılgan’s Story “Left on

the Shelf” into Turkish

“The text cannot be considered as a static specimen of languages (an idea still dominant in
practical translation classes), but essentially as the verbalized expression of an author’s
intention as understood by the translator as a reader, who then recreates this whole for another
readership in another culture” (Snell-Hornby 1982:2).

As Snell-Hornby mentions in the excerpt given above, translation is a process in which

translators reconstruct the elements of source texts in another language, formulating and
adopting different strategies and methods. In other words, translation can be considered an
“act of transformation that adapts a new metaphor to the original metaphor” (Biguet and
Shulte 1989:8). In this process of transformation, translators are likely to make various
changes in order to preserve the intention of the source text author. Taking this fact into
consideration, this paper aims to present a descriptive analysis of the strategies that have been
adopted while re-creating the content and style of the story in English. My analysis will
attempt to answer how the equivalence (on or above word level) has been established between
the semantic and cultural differences of two languages, focusing not only linguistic, but also
contextual and stylistic features of both texts. In defining micro-level choices, I will benefit
from some of the methods and procedures offered by Jean-Paul Vinay and Jean Darbalnet in
their study titled “A Methodology for Translation” (1995). For the stylistic analysis, on the
other hand, I will refer to conceptual frameworks suggested by some scholars such as Susan
Sontag and Jean Boaise-Beier that have made significant contributions to integrating the study
of style (stylistics) into the translation studies.

1. Yusuf Atılgan and His Literary Style

The motive behind my decision to translate a story by Yusuf Atılgan results from the fact that
translators have not been so much interested in translating some of the stories in his latest
collection, including the most famous one titled “Evdeki”, though he is considered one of
pioneers of the Turkish novel. For this reason, I have aimed at making a contribution to
representing Atılgan’s style and content in a foreign language and shed light on some of the
potential challenges to be observed in the translation process.
Born in 1921 in Manisa, Yusuf Atılgan was a Turkish novelist and dramatist who was
best known for his novels rather than stories. After studying Turkish Language and Literature
in İstanbul University, he began to work in Maltepe Askeri Lisesi in 1945 as a literature
teacher. In this year, he was arrested for having links to the Communist Party. Upon his

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release in 1946, he started to live in a village in Manisa and worked as a farmer. In 1976,
however, he returned to İstanbul and worked as a translator and redactor in Milliyet and Can
Publishing Houses. Although he did not produce a lot of literary works, his novels (Aylak
Adam 1959; Anayurt Oteli 1973, Canistan 2000) and stories (Bodur Minareden Öte 1960;
Eylemci 1992; Ekmek Elden Süt Memeden 1981) enabled him to gain an influential place in
the Turkish Literature. Before completing his last novel, Canistan, he died from heart attack
in 1989.
Atılgan’s writing career started in 1950’s when the Turkish novel was characterized by
socialist realisms that focused mainly on producing stories taking place in villages or small
towns. Affected by the literary conventions of time and a number of thinkers such as Kafka,
Nietzsche, Andre Gide, Kierkegaard, Marcel Proust, Atılgan showed a tendency to include
some modernist and existentialist traits in his works where he treated the issues of “loneliness,
alienation, pessimism, the relationship between woman and man, love, erotism” etc.
(Karabulut 2012: 1376). His stories and novels foreground the psychology of the characters
and their conflict with the society. They live in a monotonous and boring atmosphere, which
causes them to complain about everything related to life. While we observe the conflict of
traditions and modernity in stories taking place in a village, the others deal with the dilemma
of characters to get used to the changing lifestyles. However, all of them emphasize the
negative effect of society on the individual development of characters.
With regard to the narration techniques shaping Atılgan’s literary style, the first thing
that captures our attention is the use of clear and specific language throughout the story,
which can be associated with the “white style” of Hemingway. He mostly uses direct syntax
and constructs his sentences without using almost any transitions. He does not enrich his
diction through descriptive passages, but instead prefers to reflect the inner world of his
characters with expressive statements, benefiting from the technique of stream of
consciousness and interior monologue. While the first technique presents the inner world of
the characters in a transparent way with ungrammatical sentences that are not required to have
logical connections with the others, the latter includes more colloquial statements expressed in
a grammatically and semantically accurate manner. In addition, Atılgan often uses some
central motives in his stories and novels that are repeated at different parts of the same literary
work, making a contribution to the symbolic richness of the content.

2. Synopsis of the Story and Content Analysis

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 The story is told by an intradiegetic narrator who is an unmarried woman at the age of
thirty. She lives with his mother in a small town that is presented with a negative perspective,
referring to its backward social structure and narrow-minded people. Graduating from a high
school, the narrator cannot continue her education because of the conservative understanding
dominant in this suffocating town. As her mother is like the rest of the women living there,
the narrator does not get along well with her. She always urges her to marry someone. But she
doesn’t want to marry because she finds this town’s men unbearable and disgusting.
The story starts with a descriptive paragraph where the narrator watches the land
through her window. This land represents monotony, boredom and underdevelopment of the
town (Oğuz 2011: 695). The planks on it are removed, which makes her feel hopeful for the
future as it may regain its previous joy with the boys that will probably come to play football
there. Even such a small change can be a source of excitement for the narrator who is tired of
the backwardness of that town. The narrator is always in conflict with the rest of the society
because it does not fit the world that the books offer. As Oğuz suggests, the narrator’s
education level which is higher than the others has an effect on this conflict (p.692). Reading
different kinds of books has enabled her to gain some awareness, but it also caused her to
suffer, making her concentrate more on the negative aspects of the place. She also complains
about the women of the town, most of whom do nothing, but gossip unfavorably about the
others. For these reasons, she prefers to isolate herself from them, spending most of her time
in her room by watching the town from a distance. Some scholars interpret her window as a
kind of symbol representing a transition point between past and present (p.694), which makes
sense because it is the place where she compares the past with the present and tries to cope
with the depressing realities of the modern age.
Though almost the whole story displays the narrator’s questionings in the form of
interior dialogues, we also observe some real dialogues established between the characters.
For instance, while the narrator is helping her cousin, Necati, with his English homework, a
conversation that is also very simple in content and language takes place between them. As is
understood from the story, the relationship between the narrator and Necati is the only one
that she has with a person of the opposite sex. While she is teaching him, he reveals his sexual
desire with his ogling eyes. But nothing happens between them as the narrator finds him very
ugly and disgusting. Towards the end of the story, she begins to hear some sounds such as a
baby cry and shouting of a drunk, which makes her remember a troublesome past and
unpromising future. As such sounds coming from her near environment disturb her terribly,

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she wants to save herself by escaping from there. Though it seems impossible in real life, she
tries to manage it in her dreams.

3. A Descriptive Analysis of Translation Process

3.1. Rendering Lexical and Semantic Elements
There exist various factors that complicate the translator’s task, resulting mainly from the
differences in source and target languages. According to Popovic, these differences in
languages are unavoidable due to the “disparity and asymmetry in the development of two
linguistic traditions. Therefore, any changes in the target text should not be interpreted as
something negative resulting from the translator’s desire to change the “semantic appeal” of
the source text. On the contrary, the translator sometimes resorts to shifts in their translations
in order to “preserve the norm of the original” (1970: 79-81).
Among other potential areas that will create challenges for the translators, translation
of lexical items may sometimes be very problematic when the source and target culture share
very little in common. As words cannot be considered just the descriptions of the objects or
circumstances entailed, but a reflection of a larger cultural context, translators usually need to
transplant them into a new environment. When different literary texts are examined, it is seen
that some words go beyond their lexical boundaries in specific contexts (1989: 10). For this
reason, it is of high importance to take into account the total image and associations conveyed
by the lexical items, to which I have tried to pay attention during my translation process. Even
though Atılgan uses simple and short sentences, his words do not generally refer to their
referential, but expressive meaning suggesting the narrator’s feelings and emotions. As a
result, even a very short sentence can evoke very strong feelings on the reader’s part. In order
to recreate this emotional discourse in my translation, I have focused on transferring the
communicative effect of the source text by adopting a “thought-by-thought approach”
(Landers 2001: 54). The following examples are chosen to define some of the strategies
adopted so as to deal with the challenges on the lexical level.
In the first paragraph, the narrator gives a description of a flat of lanf where young
boys used to play football. After a while, this land is occupied by a lot of planks that make it
impossible for them to play it there. In order to define this negative change, the narrator uses a
metaphorical statement and says “Arsa sesini yitirmişti” (p.11). While rendering this sentence,
I have wanted to preserve the word “voice” in my translation so that I could transfer the
symbolic importance of the word and hence ended up with something like “The land lost its

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voice.” Though it might still denote the joy created by the voice of boys playing there, I have
wanted to change the word “voice” with a more poetic and expressive word “soul”.
In the second paragraph, the narrator watches the people passing by her window and
feels anxious because of the impression they leave on her. In order to express her fear, she
uses the verb “büzülmek”, which includes both a physical and emotional aspect. For this
reason, I have tried to render both of these connotations with the verb “cringe”, meaning to
shrink or flinch especially in the state of fear. Then I have had difficulty in transferring the
lexical element of the following sentence, where the narrator describes the town with a
specific adjective: “Neden bu daracık kasabadayız biz” (p.12). Here the adjective “daracık”
has a very negative connotation and refers both to the town and people living there. Therefore,
my solution should imply both the boredom, dullness, monotony of the town as well as the
disturbing slow change observed with regard to people’s mentality. As alternative solutions, I
could qualify the town as “provincial”, “parochial”, “backwater”. Upon the suggestion of my
instructor, I have resorted to modulation and turned the word “town” into “backwater”,
meaning a stagnant place, and managed to create a negative context for it. Besides suggesting
the slow change in this place, I have also preferred to foreground reference made to the people
living there by personifying the noun as follows: “Why are we living in this narrow-minded
backwater”.
My concern to reflect expressive strength of words in my choices also manifests itself
in translating the adjectival phrase “bulaşık bakış” (p.14). While the narrator is helping Necati
to do his homework, he is not listening to her, but looking over her body. The narrator realizes
it and defines his looks as “bulaşık”. If we look up its referential meaning, the adjective is
generally used to describe an “importunate” or “intrusive” person. However, I have changed
the point of view a bit and aimed to emphasize the sexual desire in his eyes by translating it
with a verb “ogle”, as it enables the reader to visualize the way he looks in a more successful
way. As a result, I have carried out some modulations and transpositions at the same time and
produced a more explicitative version like “He was ogling at me.” Finally, I would like to
mention another problem that I have encountered in rendering the lexical elements of the
following part: “Ben gözlerine bakıyorum. Yeşil, yeşil ya, çipil bir yeşil bu. Tatsız. Nasıl
denir? İşte kurbağa yeşili, soğuk” (p.14). Here the narrator likens Necati’s eyes to a frog in
terms of both its color and the way they look. In fact, the narrator benefits from an allusion to
the tale where the frog changes into a prince, but presents it by deforming the images as it is
not expected from Necati to experience such a change (2011: 693). As the narrator does not
feel anything towards this boy, she tends to imply it with the adjectives she has chosen in

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order to describe the color of his eyes. In rendering the adjectives written in bold above, I
have paid attention to draw a picture in which all of them are in harmony with each other on
semantic level. When we look at the dictionary meaning of “çipil”, we see that it refers to a
blurred or dimmed eye because of lack of sleep or weariness. As she defines how his eyes
look like, the solutions that I have found must be related to the feature of his glance. After
deciding on the adjective “bleary”, I have said something like “And I was looking into his
eyes. They are green, bleary green.” However, the usage of “bleary green” has not satisfied
me and I have wanted to shift the emphasis to glance rather than the color and hence preferred
to render it in the following sentence together with the adjective “glassy” used to render the
second adjective “tatsız”: And I was looking into his eyes. They are green. Bleary and Glassy.
How can I say? Like the color of a frog, very cold.” In my opinion, the adjectives “bleary”,
“glassy” and “cold” complement each other to express the dullness in his eye and provide a
cadenced solution.
In rendering semantic units of the story, I have also carried out transpositions and
modulations, most of which can be attributed to the inability to transfer culture-specific
collocations with literal translation or the desire to enhance the communicative effect of the
statements in the target language. As Baker mentions, if the cultural settings of source and
target culture are significantly different, the source text will contain “collocations which
convey what to the target reader would be unfamiliar associations of ideas” (1992: 59). As a
representative example, I can discuss the challenge of translating the culture-specific
expression in the following sentence: “Yarın Fatmahanımlar gelecekmiş seni görmeğe”
(p.12), implying a specific tradition carried out in Turkish culture, which can also be defined
as “görücüye gelmek”. As English does not have an equivalent counterpart for it, I have
modulated the semantic unit by introducing an explicitative approach in my version and said
“[they] will come to see you”. Another problem has been encountered in translating the
sentence “Kusur bağışlayacak göz yok bunlarda” (p.11). In this sentence, the narrator wants to
emphasize that the people passing by her window has so much self-confidence that don’t
seem to tolerate any mistakes. As I have not been able to find an equivalent idiomatic
expression in the target language, I have preferred to preserve the content with the following
version: “They won’t be tolerant for any mistakes”. Here the modal verb “will” has been used
with its present tense meaning, suggesting a certainty regarding the occurrence of the
mentioned situation. The next modulation is observed when translating the sentence “İçim
bulanıyor” (p.12), uttered by the narrator after she has reported the statements of one the
women complaining about his husband. Though this sentence is associated with the other

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coming right before it, which talks about the bad smell of her husband’s feet, I have
modulated the point of view and generalized it to describe her dislike of men living there,
saying “They make me really sick.” Then comes another challenging expression, where the
narrator tells that she teaches Necati what she has learned from his father, saying “Babasından
öğrendiğimi oğluna satıyorum” (p.13). This sentence involves a colloquial statement, which is
generally seen as “birinden öğrendiğini birine satmak”. Firstly, I have tried to translate it by
explaining the message and said something like “I am teaching him what I learnt from his
father”. But it has not satisfied me and I have contemplated over other alternatives. I could
say “I am passing on to him what I learnt from his father” or “I am palming what I have learnt
from his father on him”. While the phrase “pass on to somebody” is much more related to the
transfer of an object to someone after the death of a person, “palming something on
somebody” has a more negative connotation. Therefore, my instructor’s alternative “I am
parroting to him what I learnt from his father” has seemed the best solution for me because it
also manages to imply that the narrator teaches something to the boy without thinking much
about it.

3.2 Rendering Stylistic Elements

The notion of “representing style of the source text author” has recently started to gain
importance in translation practice. As Margherita Ulrych points out, a fundamental aspect of
the translator’s task in mediating between a source and target culture is to identify stylistic
features adopted by the source text writer in order to intermingle form and content and
recreate the “overall communicative effect” in the target language. (1996: 885). This effect,
actually, implies the impression remaining for a long while in the reader’s mind after reading
a particular type of writing. The translator resorts to examining linguistic elements and
structures to understand how they contribute to the whole meaning in the source text. In this
way, he/she can both capture the ST author’s intended meaning and even recreate the ST’s
stylistic constituents in the target text as effectively as possible. For this reason, stylistic
analysis is an important component of the translation activity, especially when the translation
of literary texts are concerned. When the formulation of literary texts is considered, it is easy
to realize that writers use various stylistic features to produce a particular message.
Sometimes it becomes extremely hard for a translator to render every stylistic features of ST
in a target language due to various reasons. Though I have attempted to capture the tone of the
original, characterized by the simple sentence structure, colloquial language, usage of

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expressive words, I have often needed to introduce some changes, which might be evaluated
by some as distortions on stylistic representation of the story.
For instance, it is possible to encounter some shifts in terms of additions that I have
made in order to reflect the colloquial aspect of the language used in the story. Though it is
easy to capture the colloquial flow in the Turkish text, the sentences sometimes fail to recreate
the same effect when translated just by sticking to the lexical elements of the source text. In
order to represent the colloquial language, for example, I have added some tag questions for
different purposes like the one seen in the following sentence: I have translated the sentence
“Ceketi yamalı bir adama kemikli yerinden yarım kilo eti onlar yutturur şimdi” (p.11) as
“They can also palm off some bone-in meat on a patched-jacket man, can’t they?”. Here the
added tag question has served to reflect the ironic tone in the narrator’s speech. Similar tag
question has been used in another sentence where I have aimed to create an effect as if the
narrator is speaking to somebody, saying “All bad things happened that year, didn’t they?”
Apart from these examples, I have also benefited from indirect question forms for rendering
affirmative statements like “Neler söylüyorlar onun için komşu kadınlar, ne kötü şeyler”
(p.12) as “Do you know how our women neighbors speak ill of her”.
In addition, some transitions have been introduced into the translation though Atılgan
almost never use them. The reason why I have added them results again from my desire to
reflect the colloquial aspect of the story as much as possible in the target language. Now let
me give same examples so that you would understand their contribution to the presentation of
the content. In rendering the part talking about Necati, saying “Ara sıra gelir. İngilizce
ödevlerini yaptırır. Kapıyı açtım. Oymuş.” (p.13), I have added an adverb so as to signal the
transition to the current action and said “He sometimes comes and makes me do his English
homework. Anyway, I opened the door. Yes, it was him.” Similarly, I have used another
transition word “so” while translating the following part: “Öğle yemeğine geliyor olmalı.
Kime bırakmış dükkanı”(p.11) rendered as “He must be coming for dinner. So who deals with
the store now?” As is clear, additions of “so” at the beginning of the second sentence has
enabled me to recreate the mode of colloquial discourse in the target language. Finally, I have
made some changes in the syntactic structure of the target text, resulting from my tendency to
connect some of the independent sentences within one sentence with the aim e of avoiding
unnecessary repetitions as is apparent in the following examples: “İnanmıyorum onlara. Hep
birini çekiştirirler. Gözleri ışıldar anlatırken.” (p.12) rendered as “I don’t believe their words;
they always kick about someone, their eyes sparkling.” or “Yüzleri asık, adımları sert. Bir

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yerden kavgadan geliyorlar.” (p.11) as “These sulky people are taking firm steps, as if they
were coming from a fight.”
In conclusion, this paper has attempted to describe some of the challenges that have
been encountered in translating one of Atılgan’s awarded stories. The analysis of the
translation process has shed some light on various reasons that have had an effect on shaping
the translation strategies and methods. In addition to defining them in accordance with one of
the most comprehensive linguistic models offered by Vinay and Darbalnet, situational and
contextual concerns have also been taken into account.

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Karabulut, Mustafa. 2012. “Yusuf Atılgan’ın Aylak Adam Romanında Anlatım Teknikleri”,
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Turkish or Turkic. 7:1. Winter 2012, p. 137-138.

Landers, Clifford E. 2001. Literary Translation: A Practical Guide. Bristol: Multilingual

Matters.

Rabassa, Gregory. 1989. “No Two Snowflakes are Alike: Translation as Metaphor”, in The
Craft of Translation (ed.) Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press.

Popovic, Anton. 1981. “Shifts of Expression in Translation Analysis”. The Nature of

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Snell-Hornby. 1988. Translation Studies: an Integrated Approach. Amsterdam and

Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Oğuz, Orhan. 2011. “Yusuf Atılgan’ın Hikayelerinde Kasaba”, in International Periodical for
The Languages, Literature and History of Turkish or Turkic. 6:2, pp. 689-702.

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