Abstract
We aim to examine Ebussüreyya Sami’s Relentless Avni, the Turkish Sherlock Holmes, the first Turkish crime fiction series in the Turkish literary system published in the late Ottoman Era, with a focus on allegory translation in crime fiction. Despite being considered as original in the Turkish literary system, the series under investigation raises the issue of whether it is “original” due to its similarities to western crime novels. Studies on crime fiction translation show that the genre is an important tool for creating national allegories which can be transformed into other allegories through translation. We argue that the series, albeit having been considered “original” in the Turkish literary system, constitutes an example of allegory translation produced through creative mediation due to the absence of an established crime fiction tradition in the Turkish literature at the time. The comparative analysis of the series and their western counterparts reveals that Ebussüreyya Sami, the author-translator, transformed a Western-oriented allegory into a new national allegory for the readers to create a culture repertoire with a specific emphasis on Turkishness in line with the National Literature Movement and nationalist modernization in the Turkish target culture and the protagonist Relentless Avni, the Turkish Sherlock Holmes functioned as a contributor to “culture planning” by providing a role model of a nationalist modern Turkish citizen.
Article highlights
• Allegory in crime fiction is not static but can be transformed into an allegory of another culture through translation, which can be called allegory translation.
• The first Turkish crime fiction series is in fact an allegory translation produced through “creative mediation.”
• “Creative mediation” can be considered as a translation technique used to create a new national allegory for a target society.
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Notes
English translations of the titles of Turkish crime novels are ours, unless otherwise indicated.
Série Noire is a series of crime novels published under the editorship of Marcel Duhamel after the Second World War in France. Initially, it consisted of French translations of Anglo-American hard-boiled detective thrillers. More recently, it has been discussed in terms of translation techniques, since it was revealed that the series did not convey the Anglo-American source texts into French, but was rewritten during the translation process to construct a French allegory. For more detailed information, see Rolls (2016b, pp. 434–448).
Young Turks was the name given to the Ottoman intellectuals who mostly studied in France and had the aim of replacing the absolute monarchy of Abdul Hamid II with a constitutional system. They later led the revolutionary movement against the autocratic regime and played a significant role in overthrowing Abdul Hamid II and ushering in the Second Constitutional Period in 1908. For more detailed information see Zürcher. (2019, pp. 481–498).
Italics in the excerpts and gloss translations for the Turkish TT are ours, unless otherwise indicated.
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We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the reviewer and editor in-chief for their comments and recommendations that have enriched this article.
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Altıntaş, Ö., Karadağ, A.B. Creating a national crime fiction through allegory translation: from Sherlock Holmes, the western detective to Relentless Avni, the turkish Sherlock Holmes. Neohelicon 49, 765–788 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-022-00644-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-022-00644-y