Reflection+Report+1+by+ERAY+AKTAŞ

Presentation 1 by Ezgi Hazal Kök
Title: The Practice of Translation in Turkey

My comments on her presentation.

====In her presentation, Hazal talked about who a translator is, whether the translators in Turkey are well-qualified and why or why not and is it a good profession to make money. By asking these questions I think she also created a smoth transition to the topic she'd like to present. Then she got us to watch two related videos about the presentation, in these presentations showed us who can be a translator and what stages / education a translator should go through before being a professional translator. In her presentation she mentioned the qualifications a translator should have in order to be a professionalist in his/her job. What I have been informed about her presentation, and which I agree completely, is that a translator should know both of the languages as his native one. He should be into reading anything and he should love art and books. Furthermore, he definetelty needs to have a field in which he needs to specialize himself. Apart from these, she also direceted the question "Do you ever pay attention to the translator of a work, such as a book" And the answer to this was a "no" unfortunately, I think this explains how much people pay attention to the translators of the works they read. According to me "feeling that the work you come up with means more than who you actually are to the readers" must feel really bad. On the other hand, Hazal also discussed the income of these people. Again, the results are very heart-breaking. Then she concluded her presentation. We concluded that being a translator should be like a second job or a to make pocket money. However, I do not agree with this. If I were a translator who has gone to a 4 year- program at a university level, I would be so pissed. What if none of the translators would be translating any works? Who would be doing this job? I think the governments should be paying attention to this issue more.====

(Ezgi ULUER) Eray, i also made my comments on Hazal's presentation. It was the one i have remembered the most of the details, maybe because it was the first presentation. I have learnt what translator and how it should be with this presentation. However with your comments on it i have seen another perspective. I did not think about how annoying it is to a translator to be pushed to have other jobs because of the difficulties that are faced in this area. I am agree with you. The authorities should do some measurements to support translators.

Title: İYİ KÖTÜ BAKIMSIZ
 * PRESENTATION 2 by SELMA GENÇ **

My comments on Selma's presentation

====In her presentation, Selma discusses the quality of a translator's works. She directs the question "How do you decide if a translator a good or a bad one". But before that she shares a short story which is about deciding on what a good movie and a bad movie is depending on different views. What I infer from this is that as well as deciding on which movie is a good one, it can also depend on different people's opinions when deciding on a good translation. According to me this happens when people find something related to their own personal ideas or lives. For example, if the translation was done in the way I would translate something, I would defienetly say "Yes" and approve the work. However, as an English language teacher it would really annoy me to see a movie's title being translated very inappropriately, therefore I'd defienetly say that the translation was bad. What I want to emphasize, in other words, is that as well as Selma suggested in her presentation, deciding on what is a good and a bad translation can be very personal. Throughout her presentation, she kept giving examples from Darwin's theories in order to support her ideas and the acticle's as well giving us examples from idioms and sayings which are used daily in the culture. Towards the end of her presentation, she concluded that there should be a critism to measure the quality of a translator's work with which I totally agree, but rather than asking random people who has no clue about translation but still can make comments about it, I would be asking the people who are in this kind of bussiness world to put forward their ideas about the work being translated in order to be able to decide what is a good work and what is not.====

====** Most people give importance to differentiate good things from bad ones. So it is mostly true for translation. We need to decide whether a translator is a good or a bad one. I agree with you that people tend to like something, which is related to them, their lives, thoughts and experiences. Otherwise, you don't even look at translated work. So, as you have told and selma has presented, defining a translation as a bad or good job is very personal. I like the examples that you have given above, which creates concrete examples and concepts in my mind. The reason is that whenever I confront with a movie's title translated, I become biased to the translation of it. As another example, it is as if you went to a bookstore to buy a book, you looked at covers of many books and you decided to buy the one with attractive cover. So, in translation we need to have something appropriate enough to draw the readers's attention so that they want to read the book. Also, we share the same idea in terms of people making comments on translations though they do not have any ideas. I mean being qualified enough is important to make any comments on any areas like translation. **====