A Comparative Analysis of the Turkish Translations of Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Abstract

Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964) is regarded as a children's classic extensively read by children worldwide. Dahl's unique storytelling techniques, neologisms, intriguing plots, and stylistic features earned him worldwide recognition as one of the most prominent children's authors. Therefore, it is essential to examine how it was translated by two different translators for the same publishing house and received by Turkish children's literature readers. This study aims to make a thorough translation analysis of the book within Raymond van den Broeck's translation criticism model, with an attempt to pave the way for further research on the translation of children's literature and its translation criticism. Translation of children's literature requires serious consideration of its audience. Translating for children is considered an easy task; however, it is as complex and demanding as translations of adult literature. To this end, a masterpiece of the genre, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964) by Roald Dahl and its two Turkish translations by Makbel Oytay (1989) and Celal Üster (2006) is going to be analyzed and compared in accordance with Broeck's translation criticism model. Within this framework, cultural and cross-cultural elements in the book will be analyzed, the translators' choices will be evaluated, and the translators' possible reasons for using numerous translation strategies when translating the culture-specific terms will be discussed. In addition, the transmission of the translation of linguistic and extralinguistic elements in the source text is examined and compared. This thesis also uses Aixela's translation strategies and aims to specify the choices made by the translators based on Broeck's framework. The study results conclude that there are significant differences between the source text and target texts in terms of stylistic, lexical, and cultural elements between the source text and target texts.