Dis/re-appearance of illusion: The quest for an ontology of translation studies

Following the cultural turn in translation studies, postcolonial studies on translation originating from literary studies have stressed the "in-betweenness" of translation and the translator. Yet, when problematized from a descriptive stance translations positioned to be "in-between" in the target system in view to the studies on cultural translation reveal a number of underlying questions. First of all, studies on postcolonial translations require a metaanalysis from the descriptive paradigm. The literature review on the subject demonstrates a lack of precise theoretical framework between translation analysis, theory and criticism. Secondly, the cultural translation dilemma concerning the semi-ethnographic literary works, the subject topic of which is culture itself, discloses the relationship between textless backtranslations and the concepts of pseudo- and assumed translations, in Gideon Toury's terminology. Thus, this thesis also looks for an answer regarding how assumed translations can be descriptively analyzed. The corpus includes translations of works whose authenticity is contested. Translations of A Turkish Woman's European Impressions and An Englishwoman in A Turkish Harem as examples of cultural translations returning to their original source system is analyzed with a strict eye on descriptivism. Upon this analysis the nature of "illusion" in translation studies is discussed. This discussion concludes with the fundamental enigma of an ontology of translation studies.