Domestication and Foreignization in The Turkish Translation of Video Games

Abstract

ABSTRACT

ZAN, Arman. Domestication and Foreignization in the Turkish Translation of Video Games, Master’s Thesis, Ankara, 2018.

One of the most important features of video games is their ability to immerse the player into the game universe. Video game developers use storytelling, along with visual and auditory elements, in order to create this immersion. The game universe that is created to convey the story to the player usually includes its own history, culture, and cultural elements. A video game also includes culture-specific items that belong to the culture that the video game is created in, i.e. the culture of the video game developers. As a result, players who play the game in its original language encounter both unfamiliar (game-universe specific) and familiar (their domestic culture) CSIs. This study aims to research the Turkish translation of the CSIs that are encountered in video games in light of Venuti’s (1995) domestication and foreignization, and Aixela’s (1996) substitution and conservation concepts. To this end, ten video games that are translated from English into Turkish have been analyzed; the CSIs in these games have been located; the cultures that these CSIs belong to have been identified; and the strategies that are used in their Turkish translations have been studied. Furthermore, the translator’s choices regarding these strategies and whether the translated CSIs can invoke the same feeling on the target player as the source player have also been discussed. This study has revealed that the CSIs that belong to the game universe are generally foreignized in the target text, while the CSIs that belong to the culture of the source text are domesticated. It must be noted that this method can be observed as a general tendency in all of the analyzed translated games. It can be argued that the reason for the high prevalence of this approach may be the translators’ effort to preserve the foreignness of the items that are already foreign for the source player, and to familiarize the items that are already familiar for the source player. This method enables the target language player to both encounter unfamiliar game-universe specific concepts, and to feel in an environment laden with familiar cultural items in contexts that do not belong to the game universe. Hence, it is reasonable to argue that both of these situations aid the video game in creating the immersion for the player.

Keywords video game translation, culture-specific items, domestication, foreignization, substitution and conservation