International Journal of English Language and Translation Studies (Apr 2020)
Translation of Turkish Swear Words in Subtitling: GORA
Abstract
This research examines the translation of the swear words of a Turkish film (GORA, 2004) into English subtitles. So far, the most closely related research on translation of swearing in the Turkish language is Gökduman’s (2017). In addition to the English language, many research papers analyzing other languages are available (Ameri & Ghazizadeh, 2014; Bilby, 1997; Fernandez, 2009; Fernandez Dobao, 2006; Maher, 2012; Soler-Pardo, 2015). The main reason for this paper is the current research gap in translating the Turkish swear words into another language (English). Throughout this research, the English subtitle translation of Cem Yılmaz's GORA (2004) was picked on Netflix and parts which contained swear words were documented on a .txt file, were marked and analyzed using swear words categories of Pinker (2007). Ameri & Ghazizadeh's (2014) swear word translation model, as well as Harvey's (2000) technique of 'functional equivalence' (2000, pp. 2-6) presented by the four main culture-based concepts of translation technique was used for the analysis. This article aims to explore and answer the following questions; (i) How have the Turkish swear words in GORA (2004) been translated into English? (ii) How and for what reason did changes in translation occur? The hypothesis of this research is as follows; (a) there will be a loss of meaning and function due to smoothing during the translation of swear words; (b) cultural contraction will be observed during the translation of swear words. The findings confirm the hypotheses and support that the words of curses are either completely omitted from the frame or changed in meaning by being softened. This shows that the translations also adopted a target language-oriented strategy during translation.
