Publishing magazine through translation: 1001 roman magazine

Abstract

With the gain of interdisciplinary approaches, translation studies play a crucial role in the fields including but not limited to culture, history, literature, linguistics, and sociology studies. As Lieven D'hulst suggests history is enlightening for translation studies, which enables scholars to have wider standpoints and insight into history helps develop a "culture of translation" (2001, p. 31). In this respect, translation bears witness to history, which enables a deeper understanding and analysis of the period in which the translation practices were carried out. The Turkish Republic was declared on October 29, 1923, which was followed by many reforms. The young Republic adopted Westernization as a modernization tool in social, economic, and political aspects. As Itamar Even-Zohar maintains that the chosen sources to be translated are directly related to the polysystem and emphasizes that if the literature is "young, weak and there are crises" (1990a, p. 47). In this respect, translation played an intermediary role in the Westernization process in the Early Republic Era of Turkish Republic, so the source texts were chosen from the West to develop a canon. Translation can also be used to import culture and to form a cultural repertoire. In the Early Republic, cultural import and adaptation were subject to proper supervision, which occasionally resulted in manipulation and censorship. All in all, translation practice took a crucial part in the construction of a new nation. The present chapter focuses on translation practices in a magazine, 1001 Roman, which was published during the Early Republic Era of the Turkish Republic. The first issue was published on July 10, 1939. Although the magazine continues to be published in the 1950s and as a comic book thereafter, the scope of this study is from the 1st issue to the 50th issue. This chapter aims to uptrace translations in a youth and children's magazine and find footprints of the building of a cultural repertoire employing a descriptive method. As for the practical argumentation translated comics were analyzed through a multimodal approach. While analyzing comics, focusing just on texts would be degrading, as comics is more than words and pictures due to their "hybrid" channel, which is formed by the combination of the text and the visual. For this very reason, a multimodal approach was employed in analyzing the translated comics. © Peter Lang GmbH.