Translation Criticism: From Popular To Scholarly

This study examines Umberto Eco's Opera Aperta within the framework of its Turkish translations and popular and common critiques of these translations, by taking the theoretical and ethical approaches that translation studies has attempted to bring to bear on translation criticism into account. The research examines translations translated by three different translators; publisher, editor, and translator relationships; target system norms, and the context of translated literary systems. The study reveals that translation is not merely the linguistic transfer of the source text; it is a cross-cultural process shaped by the interaction of actors such as the translator, editor, publisher, critic, and reader. It emphasizes that all stages of the translation process play a role in the emergence of the translation product as a final work and, therefore, that the criteria for reception and evaluation must be determined accordingly. It aims to examine the nature of the translation product, its existence in the target system, its temporality and spatiality in the target system, as well as the author, translator, editor and critic from a translation studies perspective. It is possible to observe that popular critiques are generally based on the perception of “precise and literal translation,” and that theoretical perspectives offer a relative, ethical, and systemic approaches in contrast to the normative and traditional structure that prioritizes the source text based on the former perception. Consequently, the relative and criterion-based approach of translation criticism discusses the uniqueness of the translation phenomenon and visibility of the translator, as well as the ethical dimension of the translation process. This study can also be read as a meta-critique of common and popular translation criticism from a translation studies perspective.