Nihal Yeginobalı's Pseudo-Translations: Female Authorship and Emancipation

Abstract:

A pseudo-translation is a text that is presented by its creator as the translation of a non-existing, foreign work. This essay discusses the case of the Turkish woman writer Nihal Yeginobalı, who presented in the 1950s and 1960s two of her own novels, Genç Kızlar [Young Girls] and Eflâtun Kız [The Violet Girl] as the Turkish translations of original works by the (imaginary) American writer Vincent Ewing. Both works were highly successful and entered the popular cultural sphere. The analysis of these novels in their historical, social and cultural context brings to light the reasons for Yeginobalı's strategic choice of pseudo-translation as well as its effects on the readers: the hybrid voice of Ewing/Yeginobalı made an essential contribution to the transformation of Turkish literature and even social habits, especially women's views of the relationships with the other sex.

SvD, May 2009

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• Publications > Volumes WomenWriters > Crossroads of Languages > Öztürk Kasar