TRANSLATING POE IN DIFFERENT CENTURIES: A CRITICAL APPROACH TO TWO TURKISH TRANSLATIONS OF ANNABEL LEE

This study analyses two Turkish translations of the famous poem Annabel Lee written by Edgar Allan Poe by using Raymond van den Broeck’s translation criticism approach. Translations selected for the corpus of the study are the first Turkish translation of Annabel Lee by Melih Cevdet Anday and a recent one by Osman Tuğlu. Within the framework of the analysis, the study aims to determine the translational decisions taken by both translators from a comparative and descriptive point of view according to the model in question. Bearing in mind the analytic functions of the translations, it also aims to make an objective translation criticism. The article consists of three parts. The first part introduces the translation criticism model suggested by van den Broeck as the method of the current study. The model bases itself on a systemic description of translational shifts, as suggested by Anton Popovič, to reveal the norms of the target culture in translating poetry. The second part provides background information on the source and the target texts. First, it introduces the source text and its poet along with his style. Secondly, it provides information about the translators of both target texts along with their sense of poetry and translating poetry. The third part analyses the examples selected for the corpus of the study in their respective categories. By doing so, this part aims to reveal recurrent translational decisions taken along with their reasons. The results of the analysis suggest that the translators’ approaches differ from one another in terms of source and target-orientedness, proving that translation traditions have changed considerably in the target culture.