STRATEGIES IN TRANSLATION OF IDIOMS IN A SHORT STORY

The aim of this study is to analyze the short story Herkesin İçtiği Su (The Water That Everybody Drinks) by Ömer Seyfettin to find out the idioms used in this story and find out the strategies used in translation of idioms from Turkish into English in the target text. 11 contexts were found to include a total of 12 idioms in the short story. The strategies put forward by Baker (1992) for translation of idioms were used in translation evaluation. As a result of translation evaluation, it was found that the translator used the strategy of ‘translation by paraphrase’ in five contexts (41.67%); the strategy of ‘using an idiom of similar meaning’ in three contexts (25%); the strategy of ‘using an idiom of similar meaning but dissimilar form’ in two contexts (16.67%); and the strategy of ‘translation by omission’ in one context (8.33%). In translation of one idiom, no strategy was found as the context including the idiom was totally omitted in the target text, which cannot be considered ‘translation by omission’ since there is no translation of the context. The findings in this study were supported by studies in relevant literature. It was concluded that awareness of the strategies suggested for translation of idioms could allow a literary translator to make conscious decisions on how to translate an idiom into the target language.

Keywords

translation of idioms, literary translation, strategies for translation of idioms, Ömer Seyfettin, short story.