Censorship and literary translation in Turkey: translating obscenity after The Soft Machine and Snuff court cases

Abstract

In 2011, the Turkish publishers (İrfan Sancı and Hasan Basri Çıplak) and translators (Süha Sertabiboğlu and Funda Uncu) of the books The Soft Machine and Snuff were taken to court on the grounds of obscenity. This article investigates the effects of these court cases on Turkish publishers’ and translators’ subsequent publication/translation behaviours regarding their choice of books to publish/translate and strategies for publishing/translating obscenity. The study is informed by corpus methods and the results are discussed in the light of interviews conducted with Sancı, Sertabiboğlu and Uncu. The study concludes that although the publishers and translators under investigation continued publishing/translating books containing obscenity, their publication/translation behaviours changed to some degree after the court cases.