Across Languages and Cultures 14 (2), pp. 199–220 (2013) DOI: 10.1556/Acr.14.2013.2.4 1585-1923/$ 20.00 © 2013 Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest IMAGES OF ISTANBUL IN TRANSLATION: A CASE STUDY IN SLOVENIA ŞULE DEMIRKOL-ERTÜRK Yeditepe Üniversitesi, 26 Ağustos Kampüsü İnönü Mah. Kayışdağı Cad. Güzel Sanatlar Fakültesi 7. Kat. Ataşehir. İstanbul. Türkiye Phone: 0090 216 5781748 E-mail: suledemirkol@gmail.com Abstract: The present paper examines the role of the translation of Orhan Pamuk’s İstanbul, Hatıralar ve Şehir (2003) into Slovene, in reshaping the image of Istanbul as per- ceived by the receiving audience. Considering Pamuk as a “translator” of Istanbul and fo- cusing on the “metonymics” of translating cities, the present paper illustrates that transla- tions can challenge and change the stereotyped images of cities as perceived by receiving audiences. It also shows that the narratives of cities which are bound by their authors’ choices as “translators” can only provide a partial representation of the “real” cities and can give more clues about the literary intentions and historical environment of their authors than they can give about the real cities. Keywords: image of Istanbul, metonymics of translation, translating cities, city as text, Orhan Pamuk. 1. INTRODUCTION The present paper examines the role of the translation of Orhan Pamuk’s İstanbul, Hatıralar ve Şehir (2003) / Istanbul, Memories and the City ([2005] 2006) into Slovenian (Istanbul: spomini na mesto, 2007a) in reshaping the image of Istanbul as perceived by the receiving audience. Research apropos of Istanbul’s image is rele- vant today as the city seems to have gained wider fame due to Orhan Pamuk’s book and his reception of the Nobel Prize of Literature in 2006. Remarks by Professor Horace Engdahl, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy and Member of its Nobel Committee, who made the presentation speech for Orhan Pamuk at the award ceremony, offer an idea about the important role Pamuk plays in reshaping the liter- ary image of the city. Engdahl congratulated Pamuk for making his native city “an indispensable literary territory, equal to Dostoyevsky’s St. Petersburg, Joyce’s Dub- lin or Prous’s Paris – a place where readers from all corners of the world can live another life, just as credible as their own, filled by an alien feeling that they imme- diately recognise as their own” (2006). 1 Based on an analysis of a survey on read- ers’ responses carried out at the University of Ljubljana, the present paper illustrates that the Slovenian translation of Pamuk’s book changes the image of Istanbul as perceived by readers to a great extent and argues that the “metonymics” (Tymoczko 1995; 1999) of translating cities is at the basis of this change. This paper also points