AN OVERVIEW OF THE EFFECTS OF POSTMODERNISM ON TRANSLATION STUDIES

Abstract

Along with the "cultural turn" in 1990s, translation studies have begun to go beyond the essentialist approaches to which it was subjected for a long time, and, in view of the reflections of postmodernism on the field, it entered a new era by evading the effects of traditionalist point of view. The discussions which focused on concepts such as "equivalence", "loyalty", and "originality" in line with the linguistic theories that previously dominated the field gained another dimension with the influence of cultural studies. From now on, instead of examining the hierarchical relationship between the original and translation, translation studies centers on power relations, ideology, ethics, and gender-based views, and translation theories are also shaped in this direction. Rather than being a copy of the original text, translation begins to be accepted as rewriting, reformulation, or the "afterlife" of the original. Translation, which is regarded as "mediation" by nature, for it brings about the interaction between two languages and two cultures, is in close relation with postmodernism which intrinsically emphasizes the juxtaposition of opposite poles. In this framework, the concepts of intertextuality, hybridity, identity, and otherness come to the fore. In addition, the dichotomy between the source and the target text as well as the relationship between author and translator are questioned. This study explores the reflections of postmodernism on translation studies by leaning on the views of various theorists and different approaches such as Benjamin's pure language, Derrida's deconstruction theory, and Bhabha's cultural translation. In particular, the effects of postcolonialism and gender studies on the field are discussed from a broad perspective