The Presentation of Orientalist Discourse in Translation: Turkish Translations of Alexander William Kinglake’s Eothen

Alexander William Kinglake’s Eothen or Traces of Travel Brought Home from the East (1844) reflects the vision of a British traveler visiting the Ottoman lands. However, Kinglake’s depiction of the East and the Eastern people in Eothen has been highly criticized on the common ground that it presents the East from an Orientalist point of view and creates the Other (Bilici, 2011; Salahshour and Salahshour, 2012; Karaduman, 2013; Erdoğan, 2014). Edward Said’s influential book Orientalism (1978) may be regarded as a milestone that provides critical tools for studies such as Eothen and parallelly, the harshest criticisms for Kinglake and his travelogue has been articulated by Said. This highly debated travel book has been translated into Turkish twice: first in 1982 by Ahmet Edip Uysal, published by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism Publishing and in 2004 by Adem Fidan, published by İlkbiz Publishing. Based on this, the aim of this study is to discuss the presentation of Eothen's Turkish translations to Turkish readers and to problematize how paratextual elements can affect the presentation of a travelogue written with an othering tone by an orientalist writer. The discussions are conducted within the conceptual framework of Said’s Orientalism, utilizing Gerard Genette’s ‘paratexts’ as the methodological framework of the study. The study has revealed that two Turkish translations of Eothen presented the orientalist discourse differently and paratextual elements were used effectively while creating the new presentation of the book for the target reader.