The language problem in the translation of young adult literature and a theoretical approach to the translator's decisions

Young adult literature, which is still very much in its infancy and has not yet gained ground in our country, was introduced into our domestic literary system through translation. We witness an increase in academic research on this field in addition to the expansion of the field and the surge in copyright young adult literature. Although there are different viewpoints on child and young adult literature, we suggest in this study that a distinction needs to be made between these two areas. The focus of our study is on exploring how far translated works fill the gap in the young adult literature in our domestic literary system and examining this genre by differentiating it from child literature. This study also focuses on identifying and assessing how translators and publishing houses influence the process of translation. To this end, eight young adult novels have been examined. Specifically, the youth's language and the text's understanding of its subject matter in these works and the translator's decisions in relation to these factors have been investigated and interpreted from a theoretical framework. These target texts have been analysed within the framework of Itamar Even-Zohar's polysystem theory. In doing so, the role of these translations in our literary and cultural system has also been examined, since Lawrence Venuti's 'foreignisation' method is applied in all the texts. Moreover, the present study discusses the difficulties, and the reasons for these difficulties, involved in incorporating the problem-oriented translations of young adult literature from German into Turkish into our education system. Keywords: young adult literature, literary translation, translation of young adult literature, polysystem theory, target-oriented translation