Sevda Ayluçtarhan focused on translations of Abdullah Cevdet and systematic instrumentalization thereof with a culture planning perspective. Eight of Abdullah Cevdet’s translations (four literary and four non-literary texts) were analysed for the study by Ayluçtarhan. All of the literary texts translated by Abdullah Cevdet were Shakespeare’s texts, namely Romeo ve Jülyet, Jül Sezar, Makbes, and Hamlet. Tarih-i İslamiyet is the one which most outstandingly shows his political agenda and his purpose of promoting the anti-religious texts/behaviours/movements among the none-literary texts translated by him.
According to Ayluçtarhan, Abdullah Cevdet is, politically, one of the most significant and influential figures in the Second Constitutional Period as he had an important role in the İttihat ve Terrraki political party. She suggests that Abdullah Cevdet’s translations and his approach of using translation activity as a part of his political agenda make him an important figure in the Turkish translation history, as well. Thus, it is not surprising that he also used his translations to criticize the current politicians and chose texts to translate accordingly and specifically for this purpose. He also expressed, reinforced, and defended his translations and attitudes towards the political issues of his time via his journal İçtihad, published by his own publishing house, which helped the researcher to define Abdullah Cevdet’s position in the literary circle in his time.
The aim of the study is to show the reflection of materialist, anti-religious and enlightened perspective of Abdullah Cevdet on his selection of texts, together with his translation strategies. With this objective, Ayluçtarhan examined Abdullah Cevdet’s translations and secondary materials on these translations written by Abdullah Cevdet himself and others. She analysed the paratextual elements in the translations such as footnotes, prologues and epilogues. One thing that might be thought as lacking in the analysis is the comparative analysis of translations. However, deducing from his comments on different translations of Shakespeare in different European languages in the footnotes, Ayluçtarhan suggests that the source texts Abdullah Cevdet used for his translations were not clear. According to Ayluçtarhan, Abdullah Cevdet might have used either of these texts as his source text.
Ayluçtarhan preferred a systemic approach to analyse Abdullah Cevdet’s translations, thus she was able to contextualise the ideological standpoint and culture-planning aims of him. She tried to contextualize these texts “in terms of their whats, hows, and whys” with her own words. Ayluçtarhan successfully describes the place of Abdullah Cevdet in the Ottoman polysystem, thus proposing that he is as significant as Ahmed Midhat who is most renowned figure in the Turkish history of translation.
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