KÜLTÜRE BAĞLI ÖĞELERİN ÇEVİRİSİ: JAN PEDERSEN VE MONA BAKER’İN ÇEVİRİ STRATEJİLERİ IŞIĞINDA LATİFE TEKİN’İN BERCİ KRİSTİN ÇÖP MASALLARI İSİMLİ KISA ROMANININ İNGİLİZCE VERSİYONU ÜZERİNE BİR ÇALIŞMA
Author :
DOI : 10.29228/ASOS.56823
Year-Number: 2022-125
Yayımlanma Tarihi: 2022-02-14 23:39:15.0
Language : İngilizce
Konu : Çeviribilim
Abstract
Bu çalışma, Latife Tekin'in Berci Kristin Çöp Masalları isimli kısa romanının Saliha Paker ve Ruth Christie tarafından yapılmış olan çevirisini, Jan Pedersen ve Mona Baker'ın kültüre bağlı öğelerin çevirisine yönelik stratejileri ışığında incelemeyi amaçlamaktadır. Makalede bu kısa romanın seçilmesinin nedeni, eserde kaynak dil ve kültüre özgü özel adlar, konuşma dilinde kullanılan sözcükler, geleneksel anlatımlar, deyimler, yöresel şiirler, türküler gibi dil içi ve dışı unsurlara geniş yer verilmiş olmasıdır. Bu nedenle, seçilen kısa roman ve çevirisinin, Pedersen ve Baker’ın çeviri stratejileri kapsamında uygulama ve değerlendirmeye oldukça uygun olduğu görülmüştür. Bu makalede, özgün metin ve çevirilerinden seçilen kültüre bağlı öğeler, dil dışı ve dil içi öğeler olmak üzere iki ana kategoride ele alınmıştır. Dil dışı öğeler Jan Pedersen'in taksonomisi ışığında, dil içi öğeler ise Baker’in taksonomisi çerçevesinde incelenmiştir. Pedersen'in özellikle altyazı çevirisi için tasarladığı, dil dışı kültüre bağlı öğelerin çevirisinde uygulanmak üzere ortaya koyduğu stratejiler, edebi bir eserde mevcut olan dil dışı öğelerin çevirisine aktarılmıştır. Pedersen'in stratejileri edebi bir eserdeki dil dışı öğelerin çevirilerine uygulanmak suretiyle değerlendirmeler yapılmıştır. Çevirmenlerin kaynak odaklı/hedef odaklı olarak tanımlanan iki temel yaklaşımdan hangisine daha fazla eğilim gösterdikleri belirlenmeye çalışılmıştır. Bu çerçevede, eserin çevirisinde hangi stratejilerin diğerlerinden daha baskın olduğu tespit edilmeye çalışılmıştır. Dil dışı öğelerin çevirisinde çevirmenlerin belli bir stratejiye diğerlerinden daha fazla ağırlık vermek gibi bir eğilim içinde olmadıkları görülmüştür. Öte yandan, özellikle deyimlerin çevirisinde olmak üzere, dil içi öğeler söz konusu olduğunda çevirmenlerin genellikle hedef odaklı bir çeviri eğilimi içinde oldukları; bu kapsamda çoğunlukla 'açıklama' stratejisini kullandıkları belirlenmiştir.
Keywords
Abstract
This study attempts to analyze Saliha Paker and Ruth Christie’s translation of Latife Tekin's novella Berci Kristin Çöp Masalları (Berji Kristin Tales from the Garbage Hills) in the light of Jan Pedersen and Mona Baker’s taxonomy of strategies for the translation of culture-bound items. The reason for selecting this particular work for study is that it abounds in proper names, colloquialisms, traditional expressions, idioms, local poems, folkloric songs, and other elements peculiar to the source language and culture. Hence, the novella lends itself well to the application of the translation strategies cited above. In this article, culture-bound items selected from the original text and their translations have been evaluated in two main categories: extralinguistic and intralinguistic items. Extralinguistic items were studied in the light of Pedersen's, while intralinguistic ones were analyzed under Baker’s taxonomy. Pedersen's strategies for translating extralinguistic culture-bound items (ECRs), designed particulary for subtitle translation, have been transplanted to the rendering of ECRs in a literary work. Basically, the applicability of Pedersen’s strategies to the translation ECRs in a literary work has been evaluated and verified. An attempt has been made to find out the basic inclinations of the translators as to whether they followed a source-oriented or a target-oriented approach. In the process, special emphasis has been placed on finding out which strategies predominated over the others in the translation of the novella. It has been found that, in the translators' rendering of extralinguistic items, there is no single strategy that predominated over the others. On the other hand, in the translation of intralinguistic items, particularly idioms, the translators often employed the strategy of ‘paraphrase’, which can be viewed as a reflection of their inclination toward a target-oriented approach.
Keywords
- Jan Pedersen is an associate professor in Translation Studies, and Director and Chairman of the Board of The Institute for Interpreting and Translation Studies at the Department of Swedish Language and Multilingualism at Stockholm University. He is known particularly for his studies on subtitling and his strategies on the translation of culture-bound items. In his paper “How is Culture Rendered in Subtitles?” (2005), Pedersen's views on subtitle translation are noted by a deep insight into the interrelated nature of language and culture, the notion of language as a complicated matter, and by the conviction that, depending on one’s vantage point, “everything, some things, or nothing is purely intra-linguistic” (p. 2).
- Pedersen discusses culture-bound references (CBRs) in two categories: Extralinguistic Culture-bound References (ECRs) and Intralinguistic Culture-bound References (ICRs). ECRs refer to expressions related to items beyond language, such as “names of people, places, institutions, food and customs” that one may not be familiar with, even if one knows the language used for describing these items (Pedersen, 2011, p. 2-3). As “extralinguistic entities”, ECRs are cultural items lying outside language; still, they are communicated through language (p. 46). The other category, ICRs refers to expressions such as “idioms, proverbs, slang and dialects”, which lie outside the scope of Jan Pedersen's model. In this article, translation of extralinguistic CBRs will be discussed in the light of Jan Pedersen's taxonomy of strategies for translating extralinguistic culture-bound references, while the rendering of intralinguistic CBRs will be studied on the basis of Mona Baker’s categorization of strategies for translating idioms, the latter being a systematized model for the rendering of intralinguistic culture-bound references.
- the study of those as well (2005, p. 2). ABOUT BERCİ KRİSTİN ÇÖP MASALLARI AND THE TRANSLATORS
- Latife Tekin's Berci Kristin Çöp Masalları is a work of fiction published in 1984. It is a story written in the tradition of magical realism, a genre of fiction in which fantastic, mythical or supernatural elements are blended with objective and realistic material (Hart, 2005, p. 1). The novella is rich in elements of folk culture, particularly in culture-bound items. The story involves genies and fairies, as well as fictional and heroic figures of folk culture, such as Keloğlan, Beybörek, and giant wives. In the novella, Tekin used the language and narratives of the people living in a shantytown located in a garbage dump and its surroundings, as well as giving us a glimpse of their beliefs in the supernatural. She depicted scenes from the miserable lives of people in the slums area, using folk expressions as part of their oral culture, and identifying herself with them at the level of language. The language here belongs not to the village, but to the quarters lying in the fringes of the city. While on the one hand Tekin employed elements of local language, as well as references to superstitions, which are manifestations of oral language; on the other hand she employed a ‘hybrid language’, which was formed by the incorporation of values and concepts peculiar to the new culture. In addition, the rapid flow of narrative typical of tales, short sentence structure based on repetitions, reduplications, analogies, cliché expressions, tongue twisters, laments, and chansonettes are the predominant language features of the novella (Balık, 2011, p. 251- 253).
- The novella was translated into English by Saliha Paker & Ruth Christie, and printed by Marion Boyars Publishers in 1993. Saliha Paker has various essays in international publications, as well as translations of modern Turkish literature such as Latife Tekin's Sevgili Arsız Ölüm (Dear Shameless Death), and Buzdan Kılıçlar (Swords of Ice). Ruth Christie translated into English several works written by Turkish authors, such as a chapter titled "Mehtaplı Gecelerde Hep Seni Andım” (I've Always Remembered You On Moonlit Nights) from Murathan Mungan's autobiographical work Paranın Cinleri, and Duvarların Ötesinde: Seçme Şiirler (Beyond the Walls: Selected Poems) by Nazım Hikmet. PEDERSEN’S TAXONOMY OF STRATEGIES FOR THE TRANSLATION OF EXTRALINGUISTIC CULTURE-BOUND REFERENCES (ECRs) AND THEIR APPLICATION TO BERJI KRISTIN TALES FROM THE GARBAGE HILLS
- The most source-oriented of all translation strategies, retention involves directly carrying over to the target text a given word or expression in the original text. The strategy of ‘retention’, which corresponds to Vinay and Darbelnet’s notion of borrowing, is used with reference to a situation where an ECR item in the ST is directly transferred to the TT with no change in form. Sometimes the ECR that is directly communicated to the target text is separated from the rest of the text by quotes and sometimes by italics. Also, it is possible to modify the ECR slightly to adapt it to target language conventions by changing the spelling or deleting an article. Though widely used in translating ECRs, retention is not an ideal way for dealing with “an ECR crisis point” in that “it offers no guidance whatsoever” to the target reader. (Pedersen, 2005, p. 4).
- The strategy of using an ECR as a loan word may give rise to some problems in translation. Sometimes, an ECR that has been directly transplanted from the original text might be totally unfamiliar to the target reader. On other occasions, an ECR that sounds familiar to the target reader may not have the same connotations in the target culture as it does in the source culture. In other words, there may not be an absolute equivalence between these ECRs in terms of the sense they communicate in two different cultures (Taylor, 1998, p. 48).
- Specification refers to a situation in which the translator prefers not to translate the ECR at all, but adds some extra information that does not appear in the source-text. Consequently, the ECR in the target text becomes more specific than the ECR in the source text. There are two ways of employing this strategy: Explicitation and Addition (Pedersen, 2005, p. 4).
- In general terms, explicitation can be defined as the strategy of expanding the source text or explaining a source-language item that is not explicit in the original text. In the present taxonomy, however, the use of the term explicitation is restricted to situations in which the material added to the translation is "latent in the ST ECR, as part of the expression side (the name) of the ECR" (Pedersen, 2005, p. 4-5).
- Vinay and Darbelnet, the first scholars to introduce the term explicitation, defined this strategy as “a stylistic translation technique which consists of making explicit in the target language what remains implicit in the source language because it is apparent from either the context or the situation” (1995, p. 342). The scholars cautioned translators that the excessive use of explicitation results in “overtranslation” (p. 342). Examples of explicitation provided by Vinay and Darbelnet indicate that they all refer to situations in which the meaning of the TL item becomes more specific/informative, rather than explaining the source-language item in a way that leads to generalization. (Murtisari, 2016, p. 67). Blum-Kulka, on the other hand, described explicitation as “the process of interpretation performed by the translator on the source text” (cited in Murtisari, 2016, p. 69 ). Writing on the same strategy, Delisle et al. maintained that the translator inserts details into the target text in order to faciliate understanding in the face of the "constraints" in the target language as well as the lexical, synactic, stylistic and cultural differences between the two languages (Delisle et al, 1999, p. 139).
- In the rendering of ECRs, the strategy of explicitation can be applied in several ways. Among them are such techniques as explaining an acronym or abbreviation, adding someone’s first name, or completing an official name to clarify an ECR for the target reader who has little idea about the sense and implications of the ECR (Pedersen, 2005, p. 5).
- In this strategy, information added by the translator is already inherent in the ECR, whose meaning and connotations lead you to uncover the extra material potentially hidden within it. However, there are several drawbacks to this strategy: (1) one needs to use extra words and phrases to convey the message; (2) the strategy might be deemed somewhat “patronizing” (Pedersen, 2005, p. 5). Table 3: Translation of ECRs: Addition Hacı Müezzin kısır kadınları okuyup üflemeye, gönül yaralarına muskalar yazıp yakmaya başladı. (p. 133)
- same. (Pedersen, 2011, p. 83). A calque is the result of a strict literal translation, and it may
- sound foreign to the target reader. (Pedersen, 2005, p. 5). The shifts that occur when calques are
- (Pedersen, 2005, p. 5).
- Cümbüş (p. 112) Banjo (127) As a target-oriented strategy, translation by cultural substitution involves replacing a culture-related expression with an ECR in the target language for the purpose of adapting the former to the target culture. Evidently, behind the use of this strategy is the desire to produce a translation that sounds more natural, familiar, and comprehensible to the target reader. 5.2 Paraphrase The strategy of paraphrase refers to communicating the sense of the original text by using words or phrases that are different from those in an otherwise literal translation. In essence, this strategy involves rewriting the ECR. Often, this is done in two ways: (1) one can focus on the sense being communicated by the original ECR; (2) one can totally delete the sentence that includes the ECR, and then replace it with a paraphrase suitable for the situation (Pedersen, 2005, p. 8). Below are several ECRs taken from the source text, coupled with their translations, which illustrate the use of ‘paraphrase’: Table 7: Translation of ECRs: Paraphrase İslamın 5 şartı (p. 21) Five Pillars of Islam (p. 26) Teravih namazları (p. 112) The evening prayers (p. 126) Ellerini burnuna kapayıp ağzıyla yanık yanık zurna sesleri çıkardı. Konduların sorunlarını uzun havaya çevirip çeke çeke söylemeye başladı. (p. 46)
- In general terms, omission involves dropping a word or a set of words from the source language in the process of translation. In Pedersen's model, this strategy refers to using nothing instead of the ECR in the source text. As Gideon Toury suggested, omission is a “valid” translation strategy that can be applied in certain situations with some justification. In certain cases, omission can be the only feasible choice in translation, but sometimes this strategy is employed simply because the translator feels reluctant to search for a corresponding item in the target language (Pedersen, 2005, p. 9). Or, in the words of Ritva Leppihalme, ”a translator may choose omission responsibly, after rejecting all alternative strategies, or irresponsibly, to save him/herself the trouble of looking up something s/he does not know” (cited in Pedersen, 2005, p. 9).
- In addition to the strategies cited above, there is another procedure called ‘official equivalent’, which stands apart from the other strategies in that it involves, in the words of Pedersen, "a bureaucratic rather than linguistic” process. Official Equivalent is at work when there is an established standard for translating an (ECR) and no requirement associated with translation can justify rendering it in another way. In cases where, for an ECR in the original text, there is an official equivalent readily available in the target language, one is not likely to experience "a translation crisis point, as there is a pre-fabricated solution to the problem” (Pedersen, 2005, p. 3). A typical example of this are the standard renderings of ‘Gross National Product (GNP)’ and ‘Ministry of Education’ into Turkish as ‘Gayrisafi Milli Hasıla’ and ‘Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı’ respectively. On the other hand, the literal translations of the original ECRs‘Büyük Milli Ürün’ and ‘Eğitim Bakanlığı’ - would not be appropriate. TRANSLATION OF INTRALINGUISTIC CULTURE-BOUND ITEMS
- In the process of translation, culture-bound problems, particularly lexical items that are hard to make sense of, may pose a special difficulty (Taylor, 1998, p. 105). Culture-bound problems associated with the intralinguistic aspect of language are not fewer than those related to the extralinguistic sphere of language. In written expression; syntactic structures, lexical items, metaphors, idioms, and the use of rhetoric may prove to be highly problematic in translation. Figures of speech such as dialect, sarcasm, irony etc. may be rather hard to translate. Strategies that can be employed to address issues associated with intralinguistic culture-bound problems are different in nature from those used to deal with extralinguistic ones. As Birgit Nedergaard‐Larsen put it, “There are also certain differences regarding strategies and possibilities that would present difficulties in a joint description” (1993, p. 210). To overcome this problem, the strategies specified in Pedersen’s model can be “modified” – as he himself pointed out - in order to address intralinguistic culture-bound problems (idioms in particular). In this study, for practical purposes, discussions on the translation of intralinguistic culturebound items will focus exclusively on the translation of idioms, whose analysis is likely to yield more tangible results. MONA BAKER’S THEORY OF EQUIVALENCE FOR COLLOCATIONAL PATTERNS AND IDIOMATIC EXPRESSIONS
- Mona Baker is a professor of translation studies and Director of the Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies at the University of Manchester in England. She is renowned for her work on translation equivalence and her taxonomy of translation strategies. In her book In Other Words: A Coursebook on Translation (1992), Mona Baker suggested eight translation strategies at word level, one of them being ‘cultural substitution’, a procedure that can be defined as ”replacing a culture-specific item or expression with a target-language item that does not have the same propositional meaning but is likely to have a similar impact on the target reader” (2018, p. 31). This strategy allows the target reader to find "a concept with which s/he can identify, something familiar and appealing” (p. 31).
- (ı) the linguistic system or systems being used, as well as the way the source-text writer and the translator use the linguistic systems at work; (ıı) the expectations, background knowledge and biases of readers within a specific culture; (ııı) the translator’s own conception of his/her task, including his/her decisions about what is suitable in a given context; (ıv) several constraints such as censorship by official authorities and various kinds of demands imposed by people other than the translator, author and reader (Baker, 2018, p. 16).
- In her seminal work, In Other Words: A Coursebook on Translation (first published in 1992), Mona Baker proposed her theory of equivalence, elaborating particularly on ‘equivalence at word level’ and ‘equivalence above word level’. According to Baker, a major difficulty involved in the process of translating has to do with lack of equivalence at word level. A given word in the source language may suggest a notion that is completely unfamiliar to the target reader. This particular concept may be abstract or concrete, and is often termed ‘culturebound’, in the sense that it is usually associated with a religious belief, a social tradition, a kind of food, etc. (2018, p. 19). Like culture-bound words, “collocational patterns” (idioms and fixed expressions), due to their “arbitrary nature” , can pose serious problems for the translator (p. 66). Collocations are groups of words that are usually used together. While some collocations give us an idea about the cultural context in which they occur (p. 66), often it is difficult to figure out what they mean simply because they do not lend themselves to literal translation.
- In their influential book, The Theory and Practice of Translation (1982), Nida and Taber defined an idiom as “a phrase structure, the meaning of which is not simply the sum of the meanings of the parts” (p. 45). The two scholars pointed out that idioms often entail semantic adjustment, for they do not lend themselves so well to literal translation. As a matter of fact, it is a rare occasion when one can match an idiom in the source language by an idiom in the target language. Nida and Taber introduced the concept of “adjustments” as a special strategy that can be employed when it is impossible to achieve equivalence through a literal translation. The scholars mentioned three types of adjustment: addition, subtraction and alteration. They argued that in the process of translating idioms a certain amount of ‘loss' inevitably occurs in semantic content. Still, the process can be planned in such a way that losses are kept to a minimum through a number of adjustments: (a) from idioms to nonidioms (e.g. ‘Dilimde tüy bitti’ – ‘I am tired of saying it’); (b) from idioms to idioms (e.g. ‘Yüreğim ağzıma geldi’- ‘My heart jumped into my mouth’ and (c) from nonidioms to idioms (e.g. ‘Tarafsız kalmayı tercih ettim’ - ‘I preferred to sit on the fence’).
- idiom makes almost no sense to the reader (1991, p. 58). According to him, in such cases, one
- their literal equivalents in the target language (Delisle, Lee-Jahnke, & Cormier, 1999, p. 144).
- play with ‘equivalence’ is to attack the discourse of the foreign work” (cited in Munday, 2008,
- Idiomatic expressions are an integral part of language and culture, which are inseparably linked with each other. These expressions give us a clear insight into social norms, customs, beliefs, as well as into people’s thoughts and feelings. Idioms are phrases or syntactic structures that cannot be rendered through a literal translation, for their meanings and connotations are quite different from the sense conveyed by the words that constitute them (Baldick, 2001, p. 121). MONA BAKER’S TAXONOMY OF STRATEGIES FOR TRANSLATING IDIOMS
- In her book In Other Words: A Coursebook on Translation, Mona Baker proposed her own taxonomy of strategies for translating idioms as employed by professional translators. In the same book, Baker also addressed the problem of non-equivalence, as well as the difficulties involved in translating certain kinds of semantic, lexical and syntactic items, among them culture-specific concepts (2018, p. 21). With regard to the translation of collocations with cultural associations, Baker argued that, in this process, the use of extra information is not only unavoidable, but also desirable, for, without it, the target reader would not be able to make sense of the meaning and implications of the collocation in the source text (p. 59-60).
- Mona Baker's work on the translation of idioms throws considerable light on rendering intralinguistic culture-bound references. According to Baker, the major problems that arise in the rendering of idioms are: (1) difficulties involved in identifying and interpreting an idiom accurately; (2) problems translators might be confronted with in transferring to the target language different meanings and connotations of a source-text idiom (2018, p. 71).
- be” (cited in Baker, 2018, p. 77).
- The strategy of omitting puns describes a case in which the translator conveys only the literal sense of an idiom. This results in a situation where the playfulness of the source-text idiom is not transferred to the target text (Baker, 2018, p. 85). A pun (wordplay) is “a figure of speech that plays with words that have multiple meanings, or that plays with words that sound similar but mean different things” (Florman, 2017). If an idiom of this kind is translated literally, the element of pun will be removed from the idiomatic expression. In her discussion on the subject, Baker calls attention to a major difficulty in dealing with puns in translation.
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