Self-Translation as Testimony: Halide Edib Rewrites The Turkish Ordeal

Abstract

This chapter looks at the phenomenon of self-translation not just as a case of textual migration of works between cultures, but also as a case of lingual migration of author-translator. The comparative examination of the memoirs of Halide Edib in the English version The Turkish Ordeal (1928) and in its self-translated Turkish edition published as Türk’ün Ateşle İmtihanı [Turk’s Ordeal With Fire] in 1962 shows how and why a Turkish woman writer decides to write and rewrite the national history and the self-narration when addressing two different audiences. Reframing self-translation as rewriting, the study reads Halide Edib’s process of self-translation as a case of strategic self-censorship that entails partial and multilateral ideological and linguistic alignments. For Edib’s initial choice of English as her narrative space emerges an example of self-translation as a means to promote the positive development of the self, while the Turkish translation of the memoir is carried out to pre-empt the charges of political, cultural and literary treason from its Turkish audience. Read together with the Turkish version, the English memoir acquires the status of testimonial writing, merging self-narration with national history. This act of self-translation, therefore, explores one of the most profound relationships with national history, authorial identity and language.

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Professor Maria Tymoczko, who generously helped me during the multiple revisions of this chapter.