A descriptive and comparative study on the Turkish translations of Jean Webster's Daddy-Long-Legs

Around the world as well as in Turkey various studies are being conducted in the field of children's literature. There have been numerous discussions concerning the definition, types, functions and addressees of children's literature besides the roles played by adult readers, writers and translators. Thanks to its unique characteristics such as addressing to more than one audience, adapting contexts in line with the cultures, the relations of texts and images along with manipulations with ideological intentions, children's literature paves the way for countless studies on translated texts in the field. With the advantage of these features, a descriptive and comparative study has been carried out on the chosen Turkish translations, Örümcek Dede and Uzun Bacaklı Baba, of a renowned novel Daddy-Long-Legs, written by Jean Webster in 1912. With the aim of determining the equivalence relationship between Daddy-Long-Legs and the aforesaid translations to the acceptability and adequacy poles, norms and their relations in translation put forward by Gideon Toury (2012) constitute the framework of this study while the features that clarify the systemic constraints on translated texts put forward by Zohar Shavit (1986) constitute the focal point of this study. As a result, it can be asserted that the equivalence relationship between Örümcek Dede and Daddy-Long-Legs is close to the acceptability pole; the equivalence relationship between Uzun Bacaklı Baba and Daddy-Long-Legs is close to the adequacy pole. Nevertheless, the results of the analysis are valid for the chosen examples and aforesaid poles are not contrary. Besides, it can be claimed that the principles of systemic affiliation have been applied for Örümcek Dede and it is exposed to manipulation.