Nihal Yeginobali as an Accidental Feminist: the Case of Turkish Translation of Erica Jong's Fear of Fifty

Abstract

Focusing on the prolific Turkish translator Nihal Yeginobali, this study seeks to establish whether she can be considered a feminist translator. In doing so, her Turkish translation of the feminist author Erica Jong's Fear of Fiftyis elaborated on as a case study. Drawing on von Flotow's and Massardier-Kenney's feminist translation strategies and Allan and Burridge's (2007) work on sexual taboo, the study homes in on (1) translator's notes to explore Yeginobali's visibility as a feminist translator, and the translation of (2) sexual language/swearing and (3) neologisms, which are both used as feminist strategies by Jong in the aforementioned book. The study reveals that Yeginobali's translator's notes are merely of explanatory nature and she is not consistent in her use of neologistic translation. Furthermore, she seems to have toned down the explicitness and offensivenessof sexual language used by Jong in the target text she produces. These all imply that Yeginobali's translation strategies derive from a neutral stance rather than a feminist one. Nevertheless, Yeginobali-intentionally or unintentionally-uses the recovery strategy by translating and enabling the publication of a feminist author's personal recount of her own experiences. In this way, she widens the canon of the women's literature through translation. In this sense, the study argues that Yeginobali can be accepted as an accidental feminist translator who ends up serving for the feminist agenda