Retranslation and cultural transfer: The comparative analysis of the Turkish and French translations of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart within the framework of Aixela's translation strategies

This study aims to observe the role of retranslation on cultural transfer, its advantages and inconvenients within the framework of Aixela's Culture-Specific Items (CSI) translation strategies. To achieve our primary and prominent objective, the focal point of our study is the book called Things Fall Apart of Chinua Achebe first published in 1958 which is a great reference of postcolonial literature. The first Turkish translation of Anjel Selveroğlu is known as Ruhum Yeniden Doğacak published in 1983 and the second Turkish version Parçalanma by Nazan Arıbaş, published in 2007. On the other side, two French translations, the first entitled Le Monde s'effondre by Michel Ligny in 1966 and the second Tout s'effondre by Pierre Girard in 2013 have also been analyzed. Aixela's translation strategies of CSIs (1996) and Antoine Berman's Retranslation Hypothesis constituted the theoretical framework of this thesis and gave us necessary tools to analyze the translation of cultural elements. The Retranslation Hypothesis helped us to verify if retranslations or the latter written versions of Things Fall Apart are translated closer to the source text. Through this study, it is essential to note that the transfer of cultural elements is a mean to establish the reality and to identify the real identity of the colonized nations in a different language, thus the book Things Fall Apart. The main strategies used by the Turkish and French translators are evaluated in the cultural transference context. Through the analysis that we have done, we remarked that Berman's Retranslation Hypothesis has been verified in the second Turkish translation where the translator Erbil has applied more strategies from Conservation category. However, this hypothesis has not been verified in the second French translation. Indeed, the first French translator Ligny has adopted more Conservation strategies than the second translator Girard, contrary to what could be expected according to the Retranslation Hypothesis.