Vıctor Hugo'nun Sefiller adlı romanının Türkçe çevirilerinin göstergebilimsel analizi

The object of our study concerns the semiotic analysis of translations of the book Les Misérables by Victor Hugo in the Turkish context from the point of view of the semiotics of translation. In our study, we choose to work on a book Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, one of the classic authors of French literature. The Misérables is a novel written in 1862 by Victor Hugo. The book is considered one of the most important novels of humanity in the world of French literature. It is the story of a former convict Jean Valjean for the theft of a piece of bread. Valjean is a poor peasant. He is the main character of the book. He suffered from the social poverty of the 19th century. The novel depicts the destinies of several characters such as Fantine, Marius, Cosette, Les Thénardiers, Gavroche but it focuses on the story of Jean Valjean. Les Misérables has an importance in the literary world as it is a work with literary particularities thus Les Misérables brings together various types of literary texts such as poetry. Then, it is a work with sociological importance also, so Les Misérables reflects the inequalities, the social injustices of the 19th century. At that time, there were social classes such as the working class, peasants, bourgeois, so each class had different rights and freedoms. In the book, we feel these inequalities. As it is an important work in literary and social context, translations of this book have been made in several languages. The novel has been translated many times into Turkish but its first translation into the Turkish language was made in 1862. This paper studies the four Turkish versions of the novel from the point of view of the semiotics of translation in order to better analyze the meaning and the designification. In the introduction, we give information on 19th century literature. The literary history of the 19th century shows that literary works are created in a relationship with the personal truth of the author. The literature of that time was in the search to stay or flee between reality and will. Les Miserables is a work with traces of the author's truth. In the search for meaning, semiotics is an essential means in literary translation. The essential goal of our work is to show the relationship between semiotics and literary translation. For this purpose, we present the relationship between semiotics and semioanalytic in the following part. Semiotics contributes to the criticism and analysis of the translated text. Thus, we compare the two semantic universes of the original text and the translated text. In our research, we compare the four different translations of the work. Our guide is always semiotics in this research. In the following part, we define our problem, the corpus of analysis and our methodological perspective for this study. We try to represent the signs and meanings of the semiotic universe of each text. We first begin with an overview of four different translations of the work and provide information on their translators. The essential aim of our study is to make the translator aware of the translation process and to reproduce the signs which create the semiotic universe of the original text to be translated. Translation happens daily, spontaneously, and sometimes we do what we call translation automatically in our minds, without questioning it. So, when we speak, we unconsciously translate the situation, event, emotions, feelings and ideas in which we find ourselves. Indicators point to a specific goal and situation. In any type of communication, these signs are repeated and acquire new meanings. With these new meanings, the words we choose, our gestures and our facial expressions create new indicators. Semiotics offers a grammatical, social and cultural field of research that deals with how signs that acquire new meanings are used and understood. According to the swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, language is a system of signs and there is no connection between the meaning of each word and itself. Besides language, semiotics also serves as a guide in the field of art such as painting, architecture and music, because with semiotics each system is understood and analyzed how to understand and interpret those systems. Translation, especially what we call literary translation, is the process of rewriting the text, taking into account not only the words of the work in question, that is, linguistic signs, but also social indicators to which these linguistic signs belong. This rewriting process becomes an easier and more understandable process thanks to semiotics, semiotic methods and semiotic readings. We therefore compare the four semiotic universes reproduced by the four Turkish translators of the novel in order to observe the stages of preserving, modification and degradation of the semiotic universe by comparing the original with its four different translations. For this purpose, we present the notion of designification by Sündüz Öztürk Kasar with her Systematics of designification in translation. We use the table prepared by Sündüz Öztürk Kasar en 2020.6 This table by Öztürk Kasar illustrates the process of achieving meaning at three levels and nine degrees during translation. Öztürk Kasar defines this expression designification as any act or state of distancing, change, deprivation, negation or destruction of meaning during the capture and reproduction of signs in translation. At the first level, with the overinterpretation of meaning, the obscuration of meaning, and the underinterpretation of meaning, we render the modification of meaning. Overinterpretation of meaning constitutes excessive commentary on the meaning of the original or it creates overtranslation. Obscuration of meaning makes the hidden or ambiguous meaning a clear meaning of the original. The underinterpretation of the meaning misses the information provided in the original. At the second level, with the shift of meaning, the alteration of meaning and the opposition of meaning we render the transformation of meaning. The shift in meaning involves the creation of meaning. Alteration of meaning creates false meaning through interpretation. The opposition of meaning provides an opposite meaning compared to the original text. At the third level, with the diversion of meaning, the destruction of meaning and the annihilation of meaning we render the deterioration of meaning. The diversion of meaning creates a meaning that has no semantic link with the original text. The destruction of meaning provides a translation where there is no longer any meaning. The annihilation of the sign completely eliminates significant unity. In the next part of our work, we compare the translations in the context of designation. We observe the stages of transformation, modification or degradation of the semiotic universe of each version. The first translation in our study is the version entitled Magdurin Hikayesi published on Ceride-i Havadis. Les Misérables is the second western novel translated into Ottoman history after Fénelon's Télémaque. The novel has been translated many times into Turkish but its first translation into the Turkish language was made in 1862 under the name Magdurin Hikayesi. On May 5, 1862, the newspaper Ruznâme-i Ceride-i Havadis published a short summary as content of Les Misérables in the form of a short story in order to introduce the work and the author of this work to the Turkish readership. The language of this summary is far from a literary language. As in the original text, the translation also reflects Hugo's life by changing names and places. The second translation of our study is the version of Şemsettin Sami. This translation was published under the same title of the original work. Şemsettin Sami translated the first 402 pages of the work from the beginning to the second chapter entitled Marius of the 9th part. So, the translator Şemsettin Sami has not completed his translation. We learn from the research of Kerman the translation of Şemsettin Sami was completed in 1911 by Hasan Bedrettin Bey, the director of the Editorial Board of Sabah newspaper and he made this translation using Latin characters in 1934. The part translated by Şemsettin Sami contains old words and these words reflect meanings sometimes far from the original version. The third translation in our study is Cenap Karakaya's version. His translation was published under the title Sefiller in 2013. The translation begins with illustrations and a chronological list that compares the life and works of Victor Hugo with the sociological and political events of that time. The fourth translation in our study belongs to Volkan Yalçın Toklu II published his translation under the title Sefiller in 2016. Following the presentation of each version, we compare the examples we found in these translations in the context of the notion of designation. To make this comparison, we prepare tables in which we find examples of the designification in each version comparing with the original text. For each example, we explain the mistranslation parts that we found. In the following part, we discuss the difficulties we encountered during the analysis process. We note that these difficulties are based on linguistic and cultural differences. Language and culture are two inseparable concepts. Thus, a literary text is a cultural product of a language so a text always carries cultural elements of the language to which it belongs. In this context, cultural elements are sometimes challenges for a translator in the translation process. So, a translator must first of all master his own language but also his target language. Then a translator must know the source culture and the target culture as much as possible such as idiomatic expressions. Here we highlight the importance of semiotics for analyzing and translating a literary text. The translator must have the sensitivity to analyze a text before carrying out the literary translation. Semiotics is like a guide to criticizing and analyzing a translated text. Thus, through semiotics we compare the two semantic universes of the original text and the translated text. In the quest for meaning, the translator must form his own method of reading and analysis. Semiotics is like a guide in the creation of these methods of reading and analysis. In particular, certain literary works pose great difficulty in the process of reading and especially analysis due to the style of the author in order to say the language of the author and the choice of words that the writer uses. The methods to follow have great importance so that this translation process takes place with precision and simplicity. The translator must first understand and analyze the sign field in the source text because a text well analyzed in terms of semiotics, especially if it is a literary work, appears as an understandable text and not away from the source text without certain tendencies such as modification, transformation and deterioration of meaning. To compare the prefaces of each version we add the prefaces of the translations in the appendices section. The purpose of adding these prefaces is that each translator or editor adds a preface text different from the source text. This difference in prefaces is influenced by many factors such as the word choices of the translator, the movement by which he is influenced, the period in which he is translating, and these elements also influence the language and the style of the translator, The choice of prefaces is different for each version, and we present these different prefaces with their French translations in the appendices. In fact, these prefaces are like a mirror, because they show us the methods followed by translators in their translation processes, the movement that influences them and the factors that affect their word choices and styles so that we witness the illustrations and the chronological lists of important events in the novel just before the preface in Karakaya's translation. In this section, we defined our thesis subject and summarized the methods we used. During our study, we use the Systematics of designification in translation presented by Sündüz Öztürk Kasar.7 We have seen that each version constitutes a systematic which function in three fields of meaning: the field of meaning of the work, the field of peri-meaning of the work and the field of nonsense. These are the steps to follow in these three fields. In each stage, the designification tendency that we have encountered goes through an operation which affects meaning to a different degree. Finally, we end our study by mentioning the results that we draw from this study. The aim of our study is to raise the translator's awareness in translation process and to reproduce the signs which create the semiotic universe of the original text to be translated.