Analysis of the Culture-Specific Items in the English Translation of Sait Faik Abasıyanık’s Short Stories within the Framework of the TEDA Project

Abstract

One of the primary purposes of translation is to promote communication among different cultures. Yet, cultural differences may influence the choices of translators and culture-specific items may becloud the translation process and cause translation barriers. The objective of this study is to explore the culture-specific items in the English translation of Sait Faik Abasıyanık’s selected short stories taking into consideration the fact that Sait Faik Abasıyanık’s stories are included within the scope of the TEDA Project. TEDA is a grant programme run by the Republic of Turkey’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism in an attempt to promote the publication of Turkish literature in foreign languages and introduce the Turkish art and culture to the world. This study focuses on exploring how the Turkish culture has been represented and to what extent the cultural otherness of Sait Faik Abasıyanık’s work is preserved in the English translation done by Maureen Freely and Alexander Dawe. Consequently, it aims to reveal whether the English translation of the short stories serves the purpose of the TEDA Project. In order to carry out the analysis of the study, translation strategies put forward by Javier Franco Aixelá (1996) for the translation of culture-specific items will be used as microstrategies; and Lawrence Venuti’s (1995) domestication and foreignization concepts will be used as macrostrategies. Following the analysis of the source and target texts, this study reveals that the foreignization approach outweighs the domestication approach; and therefore, the otherness of the Turkish culture has been recreated in the target text. Therefore, the study reveals that the English translation of Sait Faik Abasıyanık’s selected short stories serves to a large extent the purpose of the TEDA Program to a great extent.