Article+reflection+2+by+Meryem+LULECI

Article reflection -2 Turkish Literature and Translation Problems on Some Kinship Terms [] It is written by Ridvan Tuncel.

It is mainly talking about the cultural terms and their translation process. He gives very good explanation what the culture is. “The term culture involves two major areas that in one sense culture is people’s way of life including beliefs, values, daily activities organizing their society and the like. In other sense culture covers people’s achievements such as music, art, literature, and painting.” He states that the vocabulary of the language may reflection the culture of that society. He mainly discusses about kinship words. According to him, kinship terms that are mainly culture specific certainly indicates the firm and close social ties that a community has established throughout thousands of years.

He say s that In Turkish social environment many different kinship terms that are highly specific and cannot be found in other languages may create some translation problems and misunderstandings. At least, the intended meaning one of the culture bound kinship terms that exist in Turkish socio-cultural milieu cannot be carried through group of words which are thought to be the English equivalents in the translation process.

He says that in Turkish Literary works, inevitably, many kinship terms are used, however, the translation of such words create many difficulties for readers of other languages whose mother tongues are other than Turkish.

He explains the kinship difficulties between Turkish and English by giving very good examples. “1- "Birden kapı açıldı. Görümcemin kocasıydı.... Eniştem çok sessizdi." (Füruzan 1971: p.38) The translated version of above statement is; IV- "All of a sudden the door opened. It was my sister-in-law's husband.....My brother-in-law was very quiet." (Erwin 1982:p.97)”

As a conclusion he says that The classification of kinship terms, which would be the result of the long lasting Turkish socio-cultural evolution, is often bring about translation problems in literature. He states two major sources of translation problems oftentimes emerges from “(a) specific Classification of Turkish kinship terms on the one hand and (b) other languages belonging to Western cultures are deprive of kinship terms in their terminology on the other.”