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Article published In: Translation and the cultural Cold War
Edited by Esmaeil Haddadian-Moghaddam and Giles Scott-Smith
[Translation and Interpreting Studies 15:3] 2020
► pp. 419–440

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Interpreting during the Cold War era in Turkey

An exercise in gatekeeping

ORCiD logo with link | Istanbul Atlas University
Published online: 19 October 2020
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/tis.20084.arz
Abstract
This article examines the way the Cold War shaped the field of interpreting in Turkey. Turkey became part of the anti-communist bloc, and one outcome of this Turkish-American partnership was the influence that a constellation of American and Turkish organizations exerted on the nascent field of interpreting. Through open-ended interviews with selected interpreters, the article seeks to shed light on the way the Cold War impacted the practice of interpreting. By drawing on Lewin, Kurt. 1947. “Frontiers in group dynamics: II. Channels of group life; Social planning and action research.” Human Relations 1 (2): 143–153. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar concept of gatekeeping, it is suggested that the US-led anti-communist campaign of the Cold War affected the topics that were interpreted, the common language pairs, and interpreters’ lexical choices. The Cold War, thus, became a “gate” through which the interpreted topics, languages, lexical choices, and even the interpreters – all of which were instruments of the regime – had to pass through.
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Turkey and the Cold War: An overview
  • Emergence and evolution of SI in Turkey: An overview
  • Methodology
  • SI in Turkey: An exercise of gatekeeping
    • Languages
    • Subject matters
    • Lexical choices
  • Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Huo, Yujia & Yang Li
2024. Missionary as gatekeeper in translation: exploring motivations based on the cases of two missionaries in the late Chinese Ming dynasty (1580s-1640s). The Translator 30:3 ► pp. 371 ff. DOI logo

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