Ceyda Özmen

From Movie / Script to Novel: Translated Popular Cinema Novels in Turkey from 1944 to 1957 Ceyda Özmen

This study, by problematizing the relations between foreign films and novels, aims to reveal that foreign films are influential on translated popular literature. It is discovered that in the early republican Turkey, many private publishers wanted to capitalize on the popularity of films and published numerous cinema novels. In order to analyze the complex relations between translated cinema novels and foreign films, the study, at first, proposes a classification. Two translated cinema novels which fall under different groups and were published in different years (1944 and 1957), are taken as case studies with a view to explore the complex translation practices they harboured. In order to contextualize the novels, a database including translated and indigenous cinema novels published between 1933 and 1960 in Turkey is established and its critical analysis is provided. As a result; this study concludes that in the early republican Turkey, foreign films ?whether screened or not- influenced the translated popular literature; introduced a new genre ?cinema novel- to Turkish literature and brought diverse aspects of translation into Turkish culture repertoire.