A comparative analysis of Turkish translations of Emily Bronte's 'Wuthering Heights' within the context of restranslation hypothesis

Wuthering Heights, the first and only novel by 19th-century English author Emily Brontë, is considered one of the most important works of English literature today thanks to its complex narrative structure and Gothic elements. The novel, which reflects the literary characteristics of the Romantic era and the Victorian period, has been translated into numerous languages worldwide. Wuthering Heights, which was included in the list of works planned to be translated by special publishing houses in the first issue of the journal of the Translation Bureau, was first translated from its original language into Turkish by Naciye Öncül in 1946. Especially after 2010, it has been retranslated by various publishers and translators. This study aims to examine four different Turkish translations of Brontë's Wuthering Heights within the framework of Antoine Berman's retranslation hypothesis. The twelve deforming tendencies defined in Berman's analytic of translation constitute the methodology of this study. Within the scope of the study, the translations by Naciye Akseki Öncül (1946/1983), Ertuğrul Koç (2016) and Başak Bekişli (2023) were analysed. A total of 48 samples randomly selected from each of the four translations were analyzed in terms of the deforming tendencies proposed by Berman, and the findings were evaluated within the scope of the retranslation hypothesis. As a result of the comparative analysis, although it was found that the latest retranslation of the work was source-oriented, it was observed that the assumption of linear development within the retranslation hypothesis was not proven.