On the passage of transcendent messages: Johnnies and Mehmets

Abstract

Translation is one way texts are accorded transcendence, understood as material transfer from a site of utterance. Although frequently construed as a quality of texts or auctorial virtue, transcendence is enacted by receivers (including translators) pulling texts across time and space, transforming them accordingly. Study of a war-commemoration text attributed to Atatürk shows this happening in its transfer to Australia. The historical authorship of the text has been contested, and analysis of its various translations and interpretations reveals competing interests, strategic omissions, distributed intercultural agency, and inscriptions. However, the historians involved in the debate, in bot..