Having an accent in spoken English is a common linguistic reality for many migrants and their subsequent generations. In reality, having a linguistic variation can result in “othering”, prejudice, discrimination, and racism. I wanted to explore and respond to what it means to have an accent, for both speakers and listeners. This essay includes moments of the personal with cultural, critical, and contemporary responses; poetic interruptions and instances of first language loss; of how accented language can be used to exclude and identify, but should be used to include.
Robyn Rowland’s poems about Turkey and its history are unique in their representations of a poet’s perspective both from outside Turkey and from within the country as a foreign observer. Rowland’s poetic depictions of the country she travels intensively are not only vivid presentations of landscape but also personal reflections on its history and culture. Although her poetry on Turkey functions as a passage to Turkey for readers in English, it also appeals to Turkish readers who wish to read about Turkey from a Western point of view, particularly in her poems on the Battle of Gallipoli, which depict historical events of great importance to both Turks and Australians. This study is an analysis of the process of translating Robyn Rowland’s poems from English into Turkish in order to demonstrate the delicacy and particularity of translation, both linguistically and culturally. Poetry translation is not only the process of transferring the lexical meaning from one language to another; it also entails transferring the cultural and emotional meanings in the poetics of the target language. The objective of this study is to present analytically the translation of Robyn Rowland’s poems into Turkish from syntactic, semantic and cultural perspectives.