Translation of Christian children’s books into Turkish: restrictions, strategies, outcomes

Abstract

This study focuses on the role of translation on the religious and moral instruction of Christian children in Turkey, and is intended to analyze the strategies that are utilized by the translators and/or publishing houses during the act of the translation, and discuss the rationale behind these decisions in terms of the skopos and ideology of the translators and publishing houses in question. The agenda and skopos of the translators and publishing houses will be examined by comparing the source texts and the target texts on a descriptive basis. The descriptive approach of Gideon Toury, the skopos theory of Hans Vermeer, and the views of Lawrence Venuti on translation will be referred to in this study in discussing the norms, aims, and strategies of the translators and the publishing houses. The strategies utilized by translators and publishing houses before, during and after the translation process are demonstrated with the case studies selected for this study. The analysis of the case studies has shown that the translators and the publishing houses opted for strategies that are in compliance with their ideology and skopos. The interviews conducted with the owners, and the editors of the publishing houses and the analysis of translation policies of the publishing houses through case studies have shown that Christian publishing houses, especially Protestants, regard translation as their primary source of education, since there are no adequate original sources in Turkey on the religious and moral education of Christian children.