SOURCE: Gün, Güneli. “Something Wrong with the Language.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 5006 (12 March 1999): 14.

In the following essay, Gün responds to criticisms of her use of idiomatic American English in her translation of The New Life. Gün argues that British reviewers are critical of translations that use colloquial American English rather than literary British English.

The drubbing I received from British reviewers for my translation of Orhan Pamuk's novel, The New Life (reviewed in the TLS, October 10, 1997), gives me a chance to expose the assumptions, biases, chauvinisms that beset a former empire (in this case, the British), which must now compete with other nations not only for other ideologies but also for other “englishes”, which, in my case, is American. I am amazed that some British reviewers complain that my text is “too American”. “Slangy” is another all too easy potshot from some of the...