Abstract:

Translation in the 21st century is not just seen as translating grammatical rules, syntaxes, and vocabulary. It is seen as a powerful tool in shaping cultures. In today’s world, countries and cultures do not have equal power, they have unequal cultural power that affects others. All the countries, especially after the 1990’s, realized the importance of the power of their culture. This power is called “soft power”. In order to reinforce their power and hegemony in the world, countries try to improve their soft powers and try to be culturally effective on the others. This cultural inequality and power relations are studied in Translation Studies because translation is one of the most powerful tools for cultural interactions and relations. In this context, Lawrence Venuti’s “Domestication” and “Foreignization” concepts are scrutinized to reveal the unequal cultural power interactions via translation. In this regard, by using Javier Franco Aixela’s methodology for translation of Culture-Specific Items, Sait Faik Abasıyanık’s stories and their translations are studied. Story of Sleeping In The Forest’s translation was carried out by a Turkish translator Nilüfer Mizanoğlu Reddy, the other story Such a Story is translated by American translators Joseph and Viola Jakobson. By comparing two of the case studies, it is aimed to find out while translating from Turkish into English whether translation into mother tongue and translation into the second language creates a difference. Besides, whether national origin affects translation tendency towards “Domestication” or “Foreignization” in Venuti’s terms will be /investigated.

Keywords: