Şebnem Susam-Saraeva
Senior Lecturer in Translation Studies

- Translation Studies
- School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures
Contact details
Background
- BA in Translation and Interpreting (University of Boğaziçi, Istanbul, Turkey)
- MA in Translation Studies (University of Warwick, UK)
- PhD in Comparative Literature (University College London, UK)
- Freelance literary and technical translator.
- Research fellow and part-time lecturer at the MonAKO Multilingual Communication Programme and Christina Institute for Women's Studies, University of Helsinki, Finland.
- Part-time lecturer at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland.
- 2003, Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, affiliated with Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies.
- 2007, Senior Lecturer in Translation Studies
Susam-Saraeva's literary translations include the 2017 Nobel Laureate Kazuo Ishiguro’s 'The Remains of the Day' into Turkish. She is also the winner of PEN Wales Translation Challenge 2017 with her poetry translation from Küçük İskender. Her own poems appeared in Ambit 234, October 2018; The Scores – A Journal of Poetry and Prose, Issue 3, Winter 2017; and Doulaing, issues 31 (Summer 2017) and 28 (Autumn 2016).
Responsibilities & affiliations
Beyond the University of Edinburgh, Dr Susam-Saraeva has been:
- 2021 onwards – Member of the editorial board for STRIDON: Studies in Translation and Interpreting, University of Ljubljana Press
- 2017 onwards – Member of the advisory board for Chronotopos – International Journal for Translation History, University of Vienna
- 2016 onwards – Affiliated Member of the Research Group on Translation and Transcultural Contact, based at Glendon College (York University), Toronto, Canada
- 2013 onwards – Member of the international advisory board of the Routledge journal Translation Studies
- 2018 – 2020 Member of the editorial board of the Approaches to Translation Studies series, Brill
- 2016 – 2020 Chair of ARTIS (Advancing Research in Translation and Interpreting Studies); member of the ARTIS Steering Committee since 2014
- 2010–2015 – Co-vice president of the International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies (IATIS)
- 2006-2017 – Member of the Board of Advisors for Cunda International Workshop for Translators of Turkish Literature
- 2004-2006 – Member of the advisory panel for the journal New Voices in Translation Studies
Areas of interest for supervision
Dr Susam-Saraeva is available to supervise PhD projects on translation and music, non-professionals translating and interpreting, translation and gender, translation and health, translation and personal/public narratives, and translation of literary and cultural theories.
Current PhD students supervised
Yijia Dong, Rewriting Female Discourse across Cultures: Translating Chinese Feminist Literature into English
Grey Micah, Translation of Gender-Nonconforming Characters from Japanese into English
Hanyu Wang, Queer in the fansubbed The L Word: Representation and Reception of American Queer Experiences in Chinese Translation
Past PhD students supervised
- Helena Miguélez-Carballeira (2005): Reneweing Old Acquaintances: The Conflation Between Critical and Translation paths in the Anglo-American Reception of Merce Rodoreda, Esther Tusquets and Rosa Montero
- Ya-mei Chen (2006): Reconstruction of Ideology-related Norms in News Trans-editing
- Fuzi El Mallah (2007): Cross-cultural/Linguistic translation of the figurative language of Quran
- Iraklis Pantopoulos (2009): The stylistic identity of the metapoet: A corpus-based comparative analysis using translations of Modern Greek Poetry
- Anne-Lise Feral (2009): Genre and Gender in Translation: The Poetological and Ideological Rewriting of Heroine-Centred and Women-oriented Fiction
- Kate November (2009): Translation and national identity - A case study based on the multilingual situation of Mauritius and its Reception of Mauritian Creole Translations of Shakespeare and Molière
- Pei Meng (2011): The politics and practice of trans-culturation: importing and translating autobiographical writings
- Chung-Yan Kong (2011): Translating destination images as a re-presentation of multiple identities: comparing the Chinese-to-English translations of four tourism websites
- Varvara Alexandrovna Christie (2012): Socio-cultural aspects of substandard language in film translation
- Charlotte Berry (2013): Publishing, translation, archives: Nordic children's literature in the United Kingdom, 1950-2000
- Elisabeth Mockli (2013): Reporting Goebbels in Translation: A Study of Text and Context
- James Kelly (2015): Toward a Deleuzean Theory of Translation: A Translation of & Commentary on A fuego eterno condenados
- Lingli Xie (2016): Blurred Boundaries between Translation and Rewriting Lyrics
- Bibiana Kan (2016): Translation of Novels by English Female Writers in China, 1935-1949
- Eva Spisiakova (2018): Shakespeare's Young Man behind the Iron Curtain: Censorship of Same-sex Affection in Czech and Slovak Sonnet Translations
Research summary
Dr Susam-Saraeva's research interests have included:
- Gender and translation
- Retranslation
- Translation of literary and cultural theories
- Research methodology in translation studies
- Non-professionals translating and interpreting (often within the context of social movements)
- Translation and music
She is currently working on:
- Translation and health
- Translation and environment
Research activities
- The Translation Studies Network of Ireland Workshop for PhDs and Early Career Researchers. Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation, Trinity College Dublin. Title: Navigating the World of Academic Publishing and Impact.
- Steering Committee member of joint project by Edinburgh Pregnancy Research Team and the Lothian Maternity Voices Partnership (External organisation)
- Public lecture - Dolphin and Whale Communication in Arts and Music. Towards a New Ethics of Translation and Representation. Trinity Long Room Hub, Trinity College Dublin.
- Translation in Climate Crisis Discourse, SALIS, Dublin City University
- Trinity College Dublin to
- 6th e-Expert Seminar in Translation & Language Teaching: Feminism and Gender Awareness in Modern Foreign Languages and Translation. University of Córdoba - Translation and interpreting in maternal healthcare: Implications for training
- Invited talk at CenTraS Online Lecture Series 2021-22: Translation and Health, University College London
- Guest Professor at DOTTSS (Doctoral and Teacher-Training Translation Studies Summer School), University of Boğaziçi, Istanbul to
- Keynote at New Voices in Portuguese Translation Studies IV NOVA/FCSH - Translation and interpreting in maternal healthcare contexts: ethical and feminist issues
- Member of the editorial board for STRIDON: Studies in Translation and Interpreting, University of Ljubljana Press (External organisation)
- Invited talk at the Department of Translation and Interpreting, University of Bogazici, Istanbul: Translation in Maternal Health
- 9th UNNES International Conference on English Language Teaching, Literature, and Translation (ELTLT)
- Keynote at Naming and Translating 'The Marginal' conference, University of Ottawa
- Translating birth stories as feminist counter-narratives
- Invited talk at the Department of Linguistics and Translation, University of Montreal
-
Roundtable: Feminist interpreting (studies) – the story so far
In:
Translation Studies, vol. 16, pp. 134-159
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14781700.2022.2147989
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Comment/debate (Published) -
Retranslating ‘Kara Toprak’: Ecofeminism revisited through a canonical folk song
(14 pages)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003134633-16
Research output: › Chapter (peer-reviewed) (Published) -
The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Health
(428 pages)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003167983
Research output: › Book (Published) -
Beyond translation and medicine: Initiating exchanges between translation studies and health humanities
(10 pages)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003167983
Research output: › Chapter (Published) -
Translation in maternal and neonatal health
(21 pages)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003167983
Research output: › Chapter (Published) -
Performance and socio-cultural context in interlingual cover songs: Translation as inspiration
Research output: › Chapter (peer-reviewed) (Published) -
Response by Susam-Saraeva to the responses to “Representing experiential knowledge”
In:
Translation Studies, vol. 14, pp. 358-363
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14781700.2021.1973552
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Comment/debate (Published) -
Representing experiential knowledge: Who may translate whom?
In:
Translation Studies, vol. 14, pp. 84-95
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14781700.2020.1846606
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Comment/debate (Published) -
Translating birth stories as counter-narratives
In:
Mutatis Mutandis: Latin American Translation Journal, vol. 13, pp. 45-63
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17533/udea.mut.v13n1a03
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
Diversity of translational data in contemporary social knowledge making
Research output: › Chapter (peer-reviewed) (Published) -
Interlingual cover versions: How popular songs travel round the world
In:
The Translator, vol. 25, pp. 42-59
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13556509.2018.1549710
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
Translation and music
Research output: › Entry for encyclopedia/dictionary (Published) -
In search of an 'international translation studies': Tracing terceme and tercume in the blogosphere
In:
Translation Studies, vol. 10, pp. 69-86
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14781700.2016.1219273
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
Günden Kalanlar (Turkish translation of Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro)
Research output: › Book (Published) -
Translation and Popular Music: Transcultural Intimacy in Turkish-Greek Relations
(180 pages)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3726/978-3-0353-0769-6
Research output: › Book (Published)