Cumhuriyet Üniversitesi Fen-Edebiyat Fakültesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi

Öz

This article aims to analyze the place and significance Fatma Âliye Hanım holds as a woman translator in our translated literary history in the context of the novel translation titled Merâm (Volonté), which she rendered from French into Ottoman Turkish. Fatma Âliye Hanım made this translation with the nickname “Bir Kadın (A Woman)” from the renown French author George Ohnet (1848-1918) and also wrote a preface as well as an epilogue for this translation of her. The preface titled “Dîbâce” which was finalized with the nickname “Bir Kadın” and the epilogue titled “Tabsıra” which was finalized with the nickname “Mütercime-i Merâm” will be considered and investigated in the context of the translator‟s visibility/invisibility and in terms of the social gender norms of the period in question. The article will also involve remarks made by Ahmed Midhat Efendi who was one of the authorities in the realm of literary publishing and also witnessed at first hand the reflections of the gender perception in the Ottoman society of the era in Fatma Âliye Hanım‟s identity as a woman translator. The article will focus on the crucial issue of the translators‟s visibility/invisibility and thus its theoretical framework will be mainly based upon the article titled “The Visible Translator”, which was written by Susan Bassnett, who is an English researcher in the field of translation studies.