Different times, different themes in Lady Chatterley's Lover: a diachronic critical discourse analysis of translator's prefaces

Abstract

The present study pleads for the idea that translator prefaces offer concrete directions along which these texts can construct and contest authority, highlight cultural values and differences, underline self-identity, influence readers' perception, and unveil related changes of a historical, social and political nature. In other words, prefaces offer a readily available and reliable source of research to bring ideology to the surface and to explore social and political conditions in a given society at a given time. This assumption yields the basic argument of critical discourse analysis that a text offers a mediated interpretation (or a variable version) of objective reality and changes in language use are linked to wider social and cultural processes in a dialogical relation. Concerning both internally and externally imposed pressure, the primary aim of this study is to analyze two prefaces written by two different translators of Lady Chatterley's Lover, the scandalous novel of D.H. Lawrence in Turkish, for its two translated versions published in 1942 and 1981, respectively. Trying to highlight the discourse-ideology relationship, we aimed to explore the social and cognitive factors determining the translators' stance towards constructing the discourse in their prefaces as a manifestation of self-legitimization for the translation of a stigmatized novel, and also to indicate the diachronic shifts in two discourses in accordance with the changing sociocultural/political conditions in Turkey in the span of forty years. Accordingly, while the first preface published in 1942 was woven around legitimization of sexuality in the form of a public self-defence of a translator who had dared to translate Lady Chatterley's Lover within the 40s of Turkey under the strict single-party regime, the second one is in the form of an exculpation of a stigmatized literary novel by highlighting its universal artistic value and by defocusing its sexually stigmatized nature within strongly liberalized post-military coup period.