bilig-15/ Autumn  2000

TRANSLATION PROBLEMS BETWEEN THE TURKIC LANGUAGES
and THE NOVEL “ABAY JOLI”

 

Mustafa UĞURLU
Kırıkkale University, Department of Turcology


ABSTRACT

The cultural integrity of the Turkic peoples ("Turcia") could only be achieved provided that scientific, cultural and literary works of each community are made known to each other. The greatest difficulty standing before that is that several different standard languages and script systems have been used because of certain historical and political reasons. The best way to cope with this difficulty in the short term is to translate be the scientific, cultural and literary works into each other. 

So far very few of such works belonging to the other Turkic peoples have been translated into Turkish. One of them is Abay Joli (Abay Road) written by a major Kazakh scientist and writer, Muhtar Avezov, the work of whom is thought to be the masterpiece of both his own and the Kazakh literature. The work tells about the life of Abay Kunanbayulı (1845-1904), a leading Kazakh poet, thinker and statesman. 

Making translation between the Turkic languages has proved to be difficult and this is confirmed by the translated version of the work Abay Joli. The object of this study is to find out what sort of mistakes could be made while making translation between the two Turkic languages, and it has been understood that it is probable to make lexical, morphological and syntactical mistakes. Some suggestions have also been made how to avoid making such mistakes.                                             


Key Words : False equivalence (= "false friends"), Translation, The Novel "Abay Joli", Turkic languages

 

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