The ideology of lexical choices in the Turkish translations of Oliver Twist

In August 2006, Radikal Daily uncovered a `scandal? concerning the distorted versions of the world?s classics indicated on a booklist named `100 Essential Readings? approved by the Turkish Ministry of Education. Radikal found out that some Islamist-oriented publishers printed and released wellknown world?s classics by inserting their Islamic ideology into them. This issue has drawn the attention of people from diverse and, at the same time, interrelated fields such as education, literature, and translation. The aim of this thesis is to scrutinize the ideological aspect in five different abridged Turkish versions of Charles Dickens? Oliver Twist (1838) published by Timaş, Damla, Nehir, Karanfil, and Tomurcuk Publishing Houses in terms of the lexical choices made in the translation process. Ideology is regarded as a discursive practice referring to a set of beliefs and values that constitute the world-views of the publishers that are assumed to have produced the versions. Through Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of its five Turkish versions, it has been found out that several points in Oliver Twist have been subject to ideologically-oriented manipulations in the translation process. That is, there seems to be a great number of discrepancies between the original Oliver Twist and its five different abridged Turkish versions. These discrepancies signal the intervention of a religious-conservative ideology. By exploring the relationship between ideology and translation through a case study, the thesis also aims to raise further questions that shall be taken up in future studies.