Main stages of Russian classical literature translations into the Turkish language

Abstract

Russian literature occupies one of the leading places in world literature. Every country knows and loves Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Chekhov. These writers had a powerful impact on the entire world literature of the twentieth century. Russia and Turkey are neighbors, so knowing the culture of neighboring countries is necessary in every sense of the word. Turkey understood this back in the Ottoman period. It was in the Ottoman Empire in the 19^th century that the first translations of Russian literature into Turkish appeared. With each decade, the number of translations kept growing. Three stages are distinguished in Russian classical literature translations: 1) the Ottoman period (XIX – the first decades of the 20^th century, before the collapse of the empire), 2) the Republican period, which is divided into two stages: a) the 1930s–1980s, b) the 1990s – the beginning of the 21^st century. Each of them was largely determined by the pressing tasks of the socio-political development of Turkish society. Thus, the main objective of the article is to give a general idea of Russian literary classics translations into Turkish. This task is justified for two reasons: firstly, our insufficient knowledge about Turkish translations of Russian literature, secondly, translations of Russian literature in Turkey are currently among the rapidly developing humanitarian practices. Hence, our experience of systematization of translations, their interpretation in historical and cultural terms.