Rewriting Taste in Translation: The Cultural Politics of Tercüme’s Anglophone Poetry
Abstract
The present article examines the manner in which the mid-century translation magazine Tercüme contributed to the “rewriting of taste” in Turkish poetry through its curation, framing, and naturalisation of an Anglophone canon by means of translation. In this study, a comprehensive compilation of English poems translated into Turkish in Tercüme, accompanied by a parallel corpus and catalogue, was meticulously constructed. The following data were collated for each poem: poet, movement, translator, issue/date, paratext, and basic prosodic features. The subsequent phase of the analysis entailed the amalgamation of the descriptive statistics. The study demonstrates that editorial choices and a small cohort of highly central translators privileged a limited segment of the Anglophone tradition, while paratexts directed interpretation towards themes and styles that were nationally legible. The analysis of movement and chronology patterns indicates a preference for more assimilable idioms, with modernist edges moderated by explanatory framing and domestication strategies. It is suggested that the magazine’s selections underscore the role of translation periodicals as gatekeeping institutions in the literary field. The article proposes an approach to the study of translation that posits it not merely as a linguistic phenomenon, but as a cultural policy enacted through periodical publishing. This method enables the linkage of corpus evidence to the formation of the canon, thereby providing a historically grounded account of the shaping of imported poetic traditions for Turkish readerships.