Michael Endes Roman "Die unendliche Geschichte" im Türkischen. Eine übersetzungskritische Analyse

It is well known that translation of children's and youth literature bears special importance in Translation Studies and contains many translation problems. Furthermore, there have been very few translation criticism studies in the field of children's and youth literature translation. The aim of this study is to contribute to discussions on translation of children's and youth literature through the example of Michael Ende's children's fantasy novel Die unendliche Geschichte, which has been translated into many languages. The first Turkish translation of the novel, entitled Bitmeyecek Öykü, was made by Saadet Özkal in 1986 and published by Ren. The second translation, also entitled Bitmeyecek Öykü, was made by Saffet Günersel in 1996 and published by Kabalcı. A third translation by Saadet Özkal was published by Kabalcı in 1999 once again with the same title. The children's fantasy novel Die unendliche Geschichte includes many translation problems especially due to the fact of having specific visual, linguistic and stylistic means. The purpose of this study is to analyze different translation techniques of the mentioned translators within the scope of functional and child-centered theory, to discuss its translatological aspects, and to find out to what extent the translation techniques effect the translation quality. First, analysis was conducted to determine the skopos of translations based on paratexts. This was followed by an identification of the sections that convey message of the source text and constitute a translation problem. The translation techniques which were benefited by the translators to solve translation problems were analyzed comparatively. According to this, Özkal's (Ende, 1986; 1999) translation is the source text oriented and Günersel's (Ende, 1996) translation is the target recipient oriented by considering of translation function.