Comparison of Ahmet Ümit's novel "İstanbul Hatırası" with German translation in the context of the transfer of cultural elements

Literary texts, which are considered as a reflection of the linguistic and cultural characteristics of societies, are one of the types of texts that contain many cultural terms. Cultural terms are known for being unique and peculiar to the society to which they belong. These characteristic features, cause serious difficulties especially for literary text translators, in transferring these terms to other languages during the translation process. For this thesis, Ahmet Ümit's novel "İstanbul Hatırası" and the work translated by Sabine Adatepe as "Die Gärten von Istanbul" (2017) were selected as examples for comparative translation analysis. The aim of this study is to provide a critical perspective on the translation decisions taken by the translator in the process of translation of cultural elements by comparing the works selected as examples. In addition to this, to evaluate the comprehension of the translations of the translator in terms of the target readership, by considering the characteristics of target culture and the needs and expectations of the target culture reader. For this purpose, after examining the novel "İstanbul Hatırası" which was chosen as an example in terms of the cultural terms it contains, a certain number of cultural terms were selected from this work. These selected terms are categorized based on Newmark's proposed model for classifying culture-specific terms. In the next stage, it has been determined which translation methods the translator prefers to use in the translation of these terms proposed by Vinay & Darbelnet and Peter Newmark. Based on this, it has been established which translation strategy of Venuti has predominantly adopted by the translator in the transfer of the source text to the target language. As a result of detailed translation analyses of cultural terms, it was seen that the translator adopted a culture- oriented approach. Add to this, it was established that the translator preferred to use the methods of "Cultural Equivalence, Functional Equivalence and "Transference" predominantly in the transfer of cultural terms to the target language, and predominantly adopted Venuti's "Domestication" strategy.