Culture specific items in literary texts and their translation based on “foreignization” and “domestication” strategies

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to determine culture specific items in the novel titled Baba Evi by Orhan Kemal and find out the translation strategies used in translation of these culture specific items in English translation of the novel titled My Father’s House with a view to exemplifying and presenting potential translation strategies for professional and prospective literary translators. To this end, Newmark’s (2010) categorization of culture specific items was adopted in order to classify the culture specific items besides proper nouns suggested by Aixelá (1996) as culture specific items. The translation of those culture specific items was analyzed based on a synthesis of Aixelá’s (1996) conservation and substitution strategies with Venuti’s (2001[1995; 1998]) foreignization and domestication strategies. The analysis of the culture specific items in the source text yielded 194 items specific to the source culture. 31 items were found from proper nouns category while 163 items were found based on Newmark’s (2010) categorization. The translation analysis showed that foreignization strategies were dominantly used in translation of the culture specific items in the novel, while domestication strategies were used infrequently. Besides foreignization and domestication strategies, the translator also preferred to translate 59 source culture specific items through universal and neutral signs, favoring neither foreignization nor domestication strategies. Therefore, literary translators could benefit from both foreignization and domestication translation strategies rather than adopting only one of them in translation of culture specific items.