Retranslations of Faulkner’s Sanctuary in Turkish Literature

Abstract

This study is based on a comparative analysis of Turkish translations of Sanctuary (1931) by William Faulkner and aims to review the assumptions of literary translation by Antoine Berman’s “retranslation hypothesis” and “deforming tendencies”. The novel was exposed to an obligatory rewriting process by the editor and was reworded by Faulkner who acted as a self-translator to make the original version acceptable. The rewritten version, which can be regarded as an intralingual translation, became the source text for interlingual translations. The novel was first translated by Ender Gürol as Kutsal Sığınak (1961); then by Özar Sunar as Lekeli Günler (1967) and finally by Necla Aytür as Tapınak (2007). Among Faulkner’s fifteen books which have been translated into Turkish thus far, Sanctuary is the only one with three translations in total. The translational process will be described to understand the rationale behind translators’ decisions within the context of translation studies.