Translating culture: Translation of Aşk Sarhoşluğunun Sabahı as Drunkard Morning novel by Fettâne Hacc Seyyid Cevâdî

Abstract

Culture, which has an impact on every aspect of life, differs from society to society. Traditions, rituals, lifestyles belonging to one society appear in a different way in another society. These cultural differences between societies are also encountered during the translation that provides communication, and these cultural differences require the translator to make some decisions. The translator, who is expected to have a command of both languages and cultures, either adheres to the source text or re-creates the target text with these decisions. In this re-creation, it is necessary to apply some translation strategies. The aim of this study is to reveal the translation strategies used in the translation of cultural elements in Iranian writer Fattaneh Haj Seyed Javadi’s Drunkard Morning in 1995 as the name Aşk Sarhoşluğunun Sabahı by Saliha Aydoğan from Persian to Turkish. The cultural elements conveyed by the translator are classified as ecology; material culture; social culture; organizations, customs, Ideas, procedures, and concepts; gestures and habits in accordance with Peter Newmark’s categorization of cultural elements. The classified strategies such as transference, naturalization, cultural equivalent, functional equivalent, descriptive equivalent, componential analysis, synonymy, through-translation/calque/loan translation, shift/transposition, modulation, recognized translation, compensation, reduction-expansion, paraphrase, notes, additions, glosses are examined in the context of translation strategies. As a result of the descriptive and comparative analysis, it was found out that the translator did not use one single translation strategy. Instead, he used different translation studies during the translation process and this way overcame the difficulties raised due to cultural elements.