Interpreters’ Lack of Agency in Postcolonial Environments: A Postmodern Perspective

Abstract

This work investigates the task of the translator in a postcolonial setting. The short story, “Sizin Memlekette Eşek Yok Mu?” [Don't You Have Any Donkeys in Your Country?] by the Turkish satirist, Aziz Nesin, is selected to throw light on the social and political status quo of translators in nonwestern cultures and the impact of imperialism. Using the politics of postmodernism and postcolonial theory, the paper shows how the marginalization of a Turkish interpreter working in the service of an ethnocentric oriental-rug merchant is representative of power relations between the ‘developing world’ and imperialistic states. Some pertinent notions from postcolonial theory including mimicry and hegemony are summoned to illustrate the sharply polarized binary author/ translator. The study also discusses how the extensively studied issue of the invisibility of translators is linked to the essentialist principles of faithfulness, equivalence, and symmetry in translation.