The Bounds of Translatorial Perspective in the Turkish Translation of Rita Mae Brown’s Rubyfruit Jungle

Queer translation brings new possibilities for expanding the definitions of gender identities and sexual orientations in the contexts of language. By adding alternative meanings to sexual expressions outside the heterosexual matrix, this type of translation has the potential to deconstruct the given categories of gender and sexuality in patriarchal culture. This is further enhanced by the collective ventures of literary agents publishing literary texts with queering perspectives in defiance of the aggression, stigmatization, and discrimination against sexually marginalized identities in society. This study aims to find answers to the question of how translatorial decisions affect the outlook of queerness in Yakut Orman, Dılşa Ritsa Eşli’s 2021 Turkish translation of Rita Mae Brown’s (1973) Rubyfruit Jungle, which is considered a reference book for queer literature in the Western world. This study is comprised of three parts. The first part provides an outline of the queer translation approach as a novel critique of the reflections of heteronormativity within translation practices in the target language, literature, and culture system. The second part presents a brief analysis of the implicit and explicit references to queerness in Rubyfruit Jungle, while the third part focuses on how the notion of queerness has been recreated in its Turkish translation Yakut Orman within the context of Démont’s (2018) conceptualization of queer translation. Ultimately, Eşli is revealed to have given accurate depictions of the queer identity in some areas, but Eşli’s queering perspective failed to reach its full potential due to the intense use of Démont’s misrecognizing translation with the implication of the hegemonic heterosexual and/or male gaze in the Turkish version, resulting in a limited representation of queerness in the target context. © 2023, Istanbul University Press. All rights reserved.