From translation to originals … is it just a short step?

Abstract

Even today, many examples of contemporary books for children in Turkey are translations. On the other hand, Turkish authors have been writing books for children for some time now and recently different genres of books have also appeared on the Turkish market. One of these genres is biographies about famous people for primary school students. The scope of this study entails translated biographies about famous people for child readers and current Turkish originals in this genre available today. The central questions are: Are the Turkish versions written in this genre imitations of the translations into Turkish, or are there differences between the translations and originals? What was, in a sense, created through the translation of a genre into a local repertoire? The findings of the study reveal how translations affected the formulation and creation of the genre in Turkish, but also reveal that local literary norms were effective in the appropriation of the genre.