An Examination of Bharati Mukherjee's Voice in Turkish within a Postcolonial Context

Postcolonial literature provided a platform for authors who were seriously affected by colonialism to make themselves visible and to make their voices heard through the style as well as the content of their works. Bharati Mukherjee, one of the prominent female postcolonial authors, represents the diaspora in South Asia both through her works and her persona. Just like other post-colonial authors, Mukherjee addresses themes such as migration, identity, hybridity, and the negotiation of meaning in her works. Born in India and later migrating first to Canada and then to America, the author can be considered a ‘cultural translator’. The protagonist of her novel Jasmine, who is searching for her identity throughout the novel, is also a migrant female character living in a ‘third space.’ While the voice of Mukherjee is heard through this novel by English-speaking people, through its Turkish translation, her voice, as a postcolonial subject, can also be heard by Turkish- speaking people. Thus, the role of translation in this context is important. In line with these points, the aim of this article is threefold: 1) To consider the role of Bharati Mukherjee a ‘cultural translator,’ 2) To position the protagonist, along with the author, and the novel itself in a ‘third space,’ and 3) To demonstrate the contribution of the Turkish translation of the novel to creating a space where the author's voice is heard. To this end, the source and target texts are examined comparatively, with special emphasis on realia. As a result, both metaphorical and interlingual translation processes are expected to function as transformative acts that reconstruct identity across languages and cultures, thus enabling the postcolonial subject’s voice to be heard in different sociocultural contexts.