Darwin translated into Turkish with a Marxist agenda: a sociological inquiry into the agents of translation

ABSTRACT This paper studies the agents of translation who introduced Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871) into Turkish more than one hundred years after their original publication in England. Elaborating on the agents’ motives for translating and publishing Darwin’s works in the Turkish (leftist) publication field, the study considers translator Öner Ünalan (1935–2011) and publisher Muzaffer İlhan Erdost (1932–2020), within the framework of Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of action. The findings of the study epitomize the ‘two-way relationship’ between the habituses of the agents of translation and the social dynamics of the field(s) in which they operate. The article demonstrates that Ünalan and Erdost’s translatorial interest in Darwin’s works was closely linked to the strong influence of Marxism on their social dispositions and to the dynamics of the Turkish publication field between the 1960s and 1980s. As a result, Ünalan and Erdost’s Darwin translations contributed to an increase in the scientific and social distinction of both the Marxist movement and the Turkish leftist publication field during a period of growing tension between right – and left-wing ideologies in Turkey.