This study aims to explore the autonomy level and use of language learning strategies in a preparatory school of a state university before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. One hundred fifty-five preparatory school students from a state university participated in the research. For the data collection, Oxford’s Language Learning Strategy (LLS) and a learner autonomy questionnaire developed by Zhang and Li were used. Means, standard deviation, t-test, and Pearson’s r-correlation were used to analyze the data. The results showed that while participants’ level of learner autonomy before the pandemic was high, during the pandemic it was moderate. Additionally, the results from the LLS questionnaires showed that students used a moderate proportion of language learning strategies before and after the pandemic. Finally, the correlation analysis used to determine the relationship between the level of learner autonomy and LLS use before and during the COVID-19 pandemic indicated that there is a positive and linear relationship between the level of learner autonomy and LLS use.

This study analyses the Turkish and German translations of Herbert’s Dune, Dune Messiah and Children of Dune, with a comparative point of view within the concept of cultural translation and Orientalism and thus, evaluates the translations of Orientalism within the Eastern and Western perspectives. The prominent Arabic culture in the Fremen language and the Arabic words describing the Fremen social identity are the most obvious indicators of Herbert’s orientalist discourse in the novels. The way Turkish and German translators transfer these words to their translations and the effect they could create in parallel to their social identities, are to be evaluated within Edward Said’s “Orientalist Discourse Analysis” and Taijfel and Turner’s “Social Identity Theory”, in order to bring a fresh perspective in the translation of the other. In the study, the translations of the Arabic words have been analysed within the translation strategies suggested by Newmark for the translation of cultural words, and the effect the translators have created in the target texts as the “in-group” or “out-group” have been compared relatively. The most common translation strategies used in the translation of the Arabic-inspired Fremen words are Transference and Naturalization. In the Turkish translations of Dune Series in 1995, the rates of these translation strategies are 41% and 58%, while 75% and 22% in 2015. In German translations, these rates are 2% and 95%. The Arabic words have been translated into Turkish not as a part of a fictional language, but like loan words from Arabic with an adapted phonetics, which has led to the loss of the Fremen language in the Turkish translated texts. On the other hand, Fremen words have been transferred exactly the way they are in the source text into German and Herbert’s image of the Orient has been transferred to the target readers with the intended foreignness within the target culture.