Abstract
This study is concerned with an analysis of Tomris Uyar’s rendering of two grotesque stories by the American fiction writer Flannery O’Connor, “The Lame Shall Enter First” and “The Comforts of Home”, translated into Turkish as “Önce Sakatlar Girecek” and “Yuvanın Nimetleri” respectively. The article mainly focuses on the translator’s use of idiomatic language in the rendering of these grotesque stories as a strategy for conveying the semantic content of the stories to the receptor audience as well as for evoking in them the feelings and responses similar to those created in the source-text reader. In her translations, Tomris Uyar adopts a receptor-oriented strategy closely associated with Eugene A. Nida’s concept of Dynamic Equivalence. Out of a desire to achieve an easy, natural, and fluent style in translation, the translator relies heavily on the use of idioms in receptor language, thus creating in the reader the feeling that these stories were originally written in Turkish.
Highlights
Various Approaches to the Concept of Equivalence in a Historical PerspectiveThroughout history, there has been an ongoing debate among translation scholars about the dichotomy between source-oriented and target-oriented translation
According to Erasmus, one of the criteria for a good translation was the employment of idioms widely available in target language, an idea reflecting his conviction that it is the rendering of meanings, rather than of words, which matters (De Jonge, 2016, p.29)
As seen in the extracts above, the translator uses various forms of idioms in Turkish to be able to effectively portray in the receptor language the grotesque characters, incidents, and situations, as well as the setting and atmosphere depicted in the stories
Summary
Throughout history, there has been an ongoing debate among translation scholars about the dichotomy between source-oriented and target-oriented translation. Nida’s unique contribution to the field of translation studies lies in the originality of the ideas he introduced on the linguistic, communicative, and contextual aspects of translation, as well as in his notion of dynamic equivalence which forms the basis of his receptor-centered approach (ibid., p.169). In his often-quoted work Toward a Science of Translating, Nida mentions two types of equivalence: ‘formal equivalence’ and ‘dynamic equivalence’. Before starting out a full-length discussion on the concept of dynamic equivalence, one should first gain some insight into Nida’s notion of formal equivalence, its polar opposite, which will help account for his preference for the former
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
