Microsoft Word - (2) 121-135 - Aksoy & Tavil 2017.docx Aksoy, Ö. & Tavil, M. T. (2017). Cultural transfer in the translations of media organization websites: A Descriptive analysis of articles and their Turkish translations on the BBC website. International Online Journal of Education and Teaching (IOJET), 4(2). 121- 135. http://iojet.org/index.php/IOJET/article/view/167/156 Received: 24.01.2017 Received in revised form: 09.03.2017 Accepted: 10.03.2017 CULTURAL TRANSFER IN THE TRANSLATIONS OF MEDIA ORGANIZATION WEBSITES: A DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS OF ARTICLES AND THEIR TURKISH TRANSLATIONS ON THE BBC WEBSITE Özge Aksoy Hitit University ozgeertek@gmail.com Zekiye Müge Tavil Gazi University mtavil@gazi.edu.tr Inst. Özge Aksoy is a member of English language teaching staff at Hitit University. She is interested in translation studies, translation and cultural studies. Assist. Prof. Dr. Zekiye Müge Tavil is a member of teaching staff in the Department of English Language teaching at Gazi University. She is particularly interested in teacher training and development and teaching language skills. She has presented papers at several conferences and has published in EFL Journals. Copyright by Informascope. Material published and so copyrighted may not be published elsewhere without the written permission of IOJET. International Online Journal of Education and Teaching (IOJET) 2017, 4(2), 121-135. 121 CULTURAL TRANSFER IN THE TRANSLATIONS OF MEDIA ORGANIZATION WEBSITES: A DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS OF ARTICLES AND THEIR TURKISH TRANSLATIONS ON THE BBC WEBSITE Özge Aksoy ozgeertek@gmail.com Zekiye Müge Tavil mtavil@gazi.edu.tr Abstract The websites of media organizations address to readers from many different languages and cultures. Each culture has its own specific values, habits and norms. Translators employ some translation strategies in order to transfer these culture specific items (hereinafter; CSIs) from a source text (hereinafter; ST) to a target text (hereinafter; TT). They are supposed to establish translations that are completely comprehensible for the target readers. In this study, the articles of the British Broadcast Company (hereinafter; the BBC) that are translated by BBC Turkish Service translator and published in the link ‘Dergi’ are analysed based on Toury’s translational norms and Aixela’s classification for CSIs. It is designed with a qualitative method and supported with an interview to triangulate the data. The findings show that the translations are generally ‘acceptable’, that is, the translator has the tendency towards target culture according to Toury’ s translational norms. She mostly employs constitution strategies of Aixela to transfer CSIs and this indicates the general tendency of the translations to ‘be a representation of a source text’. However, the translator specifies the target readers of the link as ‘educated young population’ and this does not complicate the comprehensibility of the CSIs by the target readers. Keywords: Translation Studies, Translational Norms of Toury, Cultural Transfer, Culture Specific Items, Aixela, BBC Turkish Service 1. Introduction It is impossible to ignore that mass media tools are not just the medium for the latest news, social issues or entertainment; they also serve as a medium of cultural transfer by using various contents. Among the media platforms, today, digital media is one of the most effective form involving the internet and the mobile. The internet comprises some of the services such as e-mail, social media, and the most importantly websites, which people mostly apply to get information of unlimited subjects and news. These media tools create new and easily accessible communication platforms. Now, numerous websites provide people with various services and people prefer to get information via internet. Global media organizations follow these developments closely and they also play an important role in intercultural communication. Together with their broadcast and print media tools like radio, TV or newspapers, global media organizations offer some digital media services as well. On their websites, these organizations find a chance to reach millions of audiences or readers in different languages and cultures. Therefore, they have very high effects on societies and cultures. Due to their ‘global’ and ‘international’ features, their websites offer various Aksoy & Tavil 122 language options and thus connect these digital platforms with translation studies. In the book Media and Translation (2014), Bassnett highlights the importance of translation technology in our daily life to relate the translation with the media. She states that ‘Translation technology has increased in sophistication to the point where today we can all click onto a chosen website and change language with the touch of a key. Whether we recognize its significance or not, translation flows through our daily lives, affecting what we eat, what we read, or what we buy; the 24-hour breaking news that we now demand comes to us often via highly complex processes of interlingual and intersemiotic translation’ (Bassnett in Abend- David, 2014, p. xvi). Bassnett emphasizes that the definition of translation has already moved from ‘the transfer of a text in one language directly into other’ to ‘a highly sophisticated, complex textual practice’ (Abend-David, 2014, p. xvi). Dror Abend-David (2014) notes that ‘linguists find that the use of language (and translation) in the media effect oral and written forms of expression. He also states the translation and media relates in many fields that anything ranging from film and television, drama to news casting, commercials, video games, web pages and electronic street signs (Abend-David, p. ix). Today, these relations show themselves in different forms of translation such as film translation and adaptation, subtitling and dubbing or computer translation. The translations of cultural elements in a website text inevitably affect the transfer of cultural items to the target readers. Thus, they are expected to be transferred into the target languages and cultures with minimum loss or shift in information. Because, the shifts in expression from the original and the loss of information and meaning in the translations may interfere with the transfer of cultural elements. If the translator shows more tendency to be loyal to the ST, target readers of that website may find the translations too obscure and complicated to read. In this case, a translator takes the responsibility as a mediator between two different languages and uses some translation strategies in order to keep the original meaning and to increase the comprehensibility of the cultural items. These strategies can be described with the analysis of the website texts in the light of descriptive translation theories. In translation studies literature, most of the studies describe the cultural elements in texts such as novels, technical texts, dubbing texts or subtitling texts. It is almost impossible to find any study analysing the translation strategies employed to the texts of a media organization website during the translation process of cultural items. However, the website texts of a media organization have very high potential to include many cultural elements and to affect the readers. The British Broadcasting Company (the BBC) is among the most reputed national broadcasting organization in the world and its website has a large amount of visitors every day. The website of the BBC is one of the most read global media organization website and it was designed in the 1990s. It offers a World Service published in 32 languages (‘Get the news’, 2016). The websites of these services are all in their own languages and they are the extensions of the BBC main web page. They give the news and information about that country. The website of BBC Turkish Service is also very popular in Turkey and presents recent and various news, articles, images, sound and video records (‘Türkçe Servisi’, 2016). This popularity and fame, in addition to its reliable and consistent publication policy, make the articles of this organization’s website worth analysing. Also, most of its articles have many cultural elements as a result of their topics and content. So, this study aims to analyse and describe the translation strategies employed by the translator during the translation process of culture specific items with a descriptive analysis of selected articles from the link ‘Dergi’ in light of Toury’ s translational norms and Aixela’ s classification of CSIs. The link ‘Dergi’ is one of the BBC Turkish Service sections and it offers some texts originally belonging to the BBC website and translated into Turkish. In International Online Journal of Education and Teaching (IOJET) 2017, 4(2), 121-135. 123 accordance with the aim and context of the study, three research questions have been generated in accordance with the theoretical framework of the study: 1. To what extent is the translator able to create ‘adequate’ and/or ‘acceptable’ translations according to Toury’s translational norms? 2. Which translation strategies are mostly employed during the translation process of ‘culture specific items’? 3. To what extent does the translator constitute or substitute the culture specific items in terms of Aixela’s classification? 2. Method 2.1. Research Design This study has been designed with a qualitative method and it has been supported with triangulation method that serves as a ‘multimodal approach to data collection and data analysis’ (Rothbauer, 2008, p. 892). Data collection and analysis are combined in order to provide a better understanding with a variety of research methods and thus to reach more valid and reliable results for the study. It covers a ‘complex/multiple triangulation method’ that encompasses both the ‘data triangulation’ including the articles of BBC website and the interview with the translator and the ‘theory triangulation’ with the analysis of the texts and the interview in the light of translational norms by Gideon Toury and classification of CSIs by Javier Franco Aixela (Rothbauer, 2008, p. 892). In a broader sense, this study covers both the description of norms that direct the translation process and of the decisions and strategies of the translator that have effects on the translations of cultural elements. 2.2. Data Collection Researcher observations, interviews and documentary analysis are among some of the data collection procedures of qualitative research. In a translation research, translations and their STs (original texts) can be used as data and this textual data can be supported with the interviews (Williams & Chesterman, 2011, p. 91). This also leads to the triangulation method that is used to increase the validation and reliability of research findings, to minimize the biases and to present different perspectives (Denzin, 1970). As the study aims to analyse and describe the translational norms and strategies used for the cultural transfer in the translations of articles of the BBC website, the original texts of articles have been obtained from the BBC website (http://www.bbc.com/) and their Turkish translations have been taken from the BBC Turkish Service website (http://www.bbc.com/turkce). Also, an interview has been made with the translator of the articles in the link ‘Dergi’ of the BBC Turkish Service Website. Therefore, the data has been triangulated through the STs, TTs and interview with the translator. The articles of the BBC website: The BBC website has many services such as News, Sport, Weather, Autos or Capital. The BBC Turkish Service has presented a link called ‘Dergi’ since October, 2014 and has included Turkish translations of articles from some of these services. This study covers the articles derived only from the Culture, Future, Earth and Travel services on the BBC website. These links/services have been intentionally selected for the study because they appear to publish the articles that include many cultural elements. This also provides a prior limitation for the extensive amount of all articles published in all links. The articles or writings of other services in the website mostly include the news texts and they have been excluded from the study. The study has been limited also to the period between October 1st, 2014 and July 31st, 2015 (‘BBC Türkçe’de yeni sayfa’, 2014). There are many articles translated and published during this period. So, a hundred of the articles have been selected randomly by using Aksoy & Tavil 124 stratified sampling method. Then, in order to equally represent these services, four articles for each link have been selected as the sample for the analysis. Three experts’ opinion have also directed the selection stage and the texts have been determined in accordance with their convenience in meaning and style for the analysis. Interview with the translator: The translator of the link ‘Dergi’ works in the BBC Turkish Service located in London and the interview has been carried out through e-mail. Totally twelve interview questions have been asked to the translator to get information about the translation strategies employed. The interview questions seek to get information about the translation strategies employed by the translator to preserve the original meaning of the ST and to shape the stylistic features of the TT during the translation process of CSIs. The main focus on the use of translator interview is to elicit data about the translation rules or translation policy of the BBC Turkish Service and its link ‘Dergi’ and also about the strategies employed and decisions made by the translator during the translations of cultural elements. 2.3. Data Analysis Procedure The data analysis has been supported by the theoretical triangulation of the analysis and it covers the translational norms of Toury and the categorization of CSIs by Aixela. Because, they both discuss the translation with target-oriented approach of descriptive translation studies and they are very suitable and convenient to analyse and describe the translation strategies employed by a translator during the translation process of culture specific items. The selected articles presented in the link ‘Dergi’ of BBC Turkish Service website have been analysed to seek the norms, that is, the preliminary, initial and operational decisions of the translator. Therefore, translational norms of Toury have been used to make detailed analyses of the equivalence of translation, punctuation and sentence and paragraph structure. More importantly, the articles have also been analysed to find the tendency of translators to create ‘adequate’ and ‘acceptable’ translations that leads the analysis to find the translator’s source-oriented or target-oriented approach to the translations. In addition to the norms, Aixela’ s classification of CSIs has been used to describe the choice of the translator, which shows ‘the degree of tolerance’ of the receiving society ranging from conservation (repetition, orthographic adaptation, linguistic translation, extra-textual gloss, intra-textual gloss) to ‘substitution’ (synonym, limited universalization, absolute universalization, naturalization, deletion and autonomous creation). Thus, as Aixela suggests, the strategies that are described help see the general tendency of translations ‘to be a representation of a ST’ and ‘to be valid text in itself’ (Aixela, 1996, p. 60). Moreover, the interview made with the translator has been analysed in order to see the consistency of the results with the analysis of the selected texts. So, the interview has been used to back-up and enhance the analysis of texts. The interview questions have been taken one by one and been analysed in accordance with the research questions. The analysis of the interview with the translator aims to present the existence of correlation between data obtained from the text analysis and interview analysis. Rothbauer (2008) states that for the sake of integrity and enhancing the internal validity of the findings, interview data are compared with information obtained from other sources and the interview data should be consistent with what the researcher observes from other sources related to the people interviewed (p. 191). So, the data gathered from the interview with the translator is compared with the information obtained from the website of the BBC Turkish Service, as well. Translational Norms of Gideon Toury: Toury suggests that translation naturally has equivalence but the focus point should be the International Online Journal of Education and Teaching (IOJET) 2017, 4(2), 121-135. 125 ‘type and extent’ of this equivalence. He states that norms are the determiner of the equivalence and they are the internalized, regular behaviour and decisions of translator. So, Toury takes translation as a norm-governed activity. He describes three different kinds of norms, mainly, initial norms, preliminary norms and operational norms and all these norms operate at different stages of the translation process. Preliminary norms are concerned with the existence and nature of a translation policy and the directness of translation. Translation policy includes factors such as the selection of ST types, authors, SL or culture and the directness of translation, as is evident from its name, is related to the direct use of an original language or existence of an intermediate language (Baker, 2001, p. 164). Operational norms direct all decisions made and changes performed during the act of translation itself. Toury explains operational norms as two different types: matricial norms which describe the distribution of textual material, any changes in segmentation such as omission, relocation, addition of passages or footnotes, and textual-linguistic norms which are concerned with the selection and presentation of linguistic material to formulate the TT or replace particular segments of the ST (Toury, 1995, pp. 58-59) Initial norms govern the decision or choice of translator to adhere to the ST or to the target culture or language. If the translator has the tendency to use the norms of the ST and culture, then the TT (or translation) will be ‘adequate’; on the other hand, if the translator follows the norms of the target culture, the translation will be ‘acceptable’. Toury asserts that no translation is totally adequate or acceptable and shifts are inevitable because of the cultural norms of the TL (Toury, 1995, p. 57). And this is why they are defined as just ‘tendencies’. In any study, it is only possible to reveal the initial norms, only after the description of preliminary norms and operational norms that are related with the decisions of translators. Culture Specific Items Classification of Javier Franco Aixela: Aixela recognizes the complexity of the definition and classification of CSIs that can be used to analyse and identify them. He states that everything, beginning with the language itself, is culturally produced and so this situation makes it difficult to identify the cultural component (Aixela, 1996, p. 57). Aixela highlights the cultural differences between any two communities or cultures and explains this with the ‘variability factor’. Each culture has its own values, habits or classification systems, which are sometimes different and sometimes coincide. In other words, it is almost impossible to find any two linguistic communities that would have the same cultural aspects, whereas it is possible to see similarities and differences in certain areas (Aixela, 1996, p. 53). Aixela refers that if the function and connotations of an item involve a translation problem in its transference to a target text and if this is because of the non-existence of the referred item or of its different intertextual status in the cultural system of the readers of the TT, then this item is a CSI (Aixela, 1996, p. 57). He suggests possible strategies employed to CSIs in translation and defines two categories as conservation and substitution strategies. Conservation strategies are composed of repetition, orthographic adaptation, linguistic translation, extra textual gloss or intra textual gloss. Conservation strategies can also be defined as the ‘acceptance of the difference by means of the reproduction of the cultural signs in the ST’. And, substitution strategies are synonym, limited universalization, absolute universalization, naturalization, deletion and autonomous creation. All these strategies permit to see the general tendency of translation to ‘be a representation of a ST’ and to ‘be a valid text in itself’ (Aixela, 1996, p. 60). That is, if a translator mostly employs the conservation methods, this reveals his or her tendency to show the existence of the CSIs, on the other hand, if the translator mostly prefers to use substitution strategies then this means that the translator shows a tendency to hide the presence of CSIs and to create a valid text itself Aksoy & Tavil 126 (Aixela, 1996, p. 54) 3. Findings The findings of the study are presented in the light of research questions and they are given as the combination of both the findings of text analysis and of the translator interview. 3.1. To what extent is the translator able to create adequate and/or acceptable translations according to Toury’ s translational norms? This question seeks information about the adequacy or acceptability of the translations in terms of Toury’ s initial norms that leads the study to find the translator’s source-oriented or target-oriented approach to the translations. As it has been mentioned before, it is only possible to mention the adequacy or acceptability of the translation, when the preliminary norms and operational norms are described in detail. So, the first question intends to describe and analyse all these norms that govern the translations. In this sense, when the texts and the interview have been analysed in line with Toury’ s preliminary norms, it is possible to suggest about the directness of the translations and also about the translation policy of the BBC Turkish Service and the translator. As the translator states, the target audience of the link ‘Dergi’ is the people of Turkey, especially the educated and young population, due to which the direction of the translation is from English to Turkish. According to the interview, the translator has an excellent command of the English language as she is employed on the BBC Turkish Service. So, the articles are directly translated from the SL (English language) to the TL (Turkish language) without any mediating language. Moreover, when the text analyses are taken into account, it has been observed that some of the STs include Spanish words such as ‘casa particulares’, French words such as ‘galoche’ and Latin words such as ‘Venda cycad’. While the meaning of Spanish word ‘casa particulares’ has been given as an extra information in brackets, the French word ‘galoche’ has been omitted and the Latin word ‘Venda Cycad’ has been repeated. So, it might be useful to point out that, the main idea behind these decisions shows the general translation policy of the BBC Turkish Service to decide together in these cases, a fact supported by the translator’s interview. Besides, the BBC Turkish Service has some general rules about writing the news and articles. These rules include using simple and clear language and making facts and events more understandable for the target audience. They use these rules as the translation policy. The articles from the BBC links of Future, Culture, Travel and Earth are selected randomly as the STs. The translator also states that at the selection stage, she tries to choose compelling and permanent articles that stay up-to-date for a long time and give information to the target audience clearly. When all the texts analysed in this study have been taken into account, it can be suggested that they are mostly informative texts that are compelling and kept up-to-date. The analysis of the articles in the link ‘Travel’ shows that the articles selected by the translator to transfer into Turkish language are all compelling ones giving information about the English breakfast, a volcano in Iceland, homestays in Havana and India’s tribe life. When the analyses of the articles in the ‘Culture’ section are taken, it is possible to say that they include up-to-date and compelling subjects such as the best directors or Grimm’s fairy tales. Also, the analysis of the articles in the link ‘Future’ shows that the original articles and their translations give information about the future such as building a village on the moon or reading at superspeed. Lastly, the analysis of the articles in the link ‘Earth’ indicates that their subjects are about living or non-living things on the Earth like animals, diamonds or plants. Therefore, even though the subjects of the articles selected for translation are not newsworthy, they are transferred to Turkish language to inform the target readers about certain subjects. It can be inferred that the translator and her translations have the translation International Online Journal of Education and Teaching (IOJET) 2017, 4(2), 121-135. 127 policy to select the texts that stay up-to-date, compelling and informative for the target readers. In the study, the examples that are taken from the STs and TTs have been compared and analysed within the operational norms of Toury. According to Toury, operational norms govern the translator during the translation process. They direct the translation strategies such as omission, addition, or replacement. It has been found out that the translator omits words, phrases, sentences or even a whole paragraph of the texts. The translator states that these parts might be found unnecessary for the target reader. Also, they are employed to the translations in order to avoid any interfere in the reading flow of the TTs and any long texts that will disturb the target reader while reading as well. Considerable omissions have been observed in the translation of certain parts such as some depiction of places or events like ‘The café’s interior was simple: Formica tables, plastic chairs and walls plastered with boxing memorabilia’, some proper names like ‘Food Lovers’ London’ (a famous food book in London) whose translation will make no sense for the Turkish reader and some phrases like it seems or in fact that will not change the meaning at all. These omissions can be counted as acceptable translations because they intend to provide the requirements of the target readers. Also, it has been found that some of the sentences or phrases have been expanded by employing the addition strategy. The aim of these additions can be explained as the endeavour of the translator to make the sentences or phrases more understandable for the target readers. In the translations, additions are employed in order to remind the readers what the proper name in the ST is. E.g. the sentence ‘Today, Krafla broods quietly’ has been translated as ‘Bugün Krafla yanardağı sessiz’. Here in this example, the translator intends to remind the readers what Krafla is and her translation seems to be acceptable as she shows tendency towards target-culture oriented approach to translation. Moreover, the translator employs the strategy of addition to inform the target reader about some people who might have been expected to be unfamiliar for them. For example, one of the STs mentions about the poet ‘Gerard Nolst Trinité’ and his nationality was not given in the text. However, it has been transferred as ‘Gerard Nolst Trinité adlı Hollandalı şair’. Or in another example, although the ST does not include any information about the academic title of a mentioned person, the word araştırma görevlisi (research assistant) has been added to the translation in order to inform the reader about the person in question. In addition to this, most words or phrases have been transferred according to their lexical equivalence. However, in order to provide clearer translations to the target readers, some functional or descriptive equivalents have also been preferred by the translator. Translations of the text titles can be given as an example of this. The article titled ‘Should we build a village on the Moon?’ has not been transferred according to its lexical equivalent but it has been translated with an expansion as ‘Ay’ da köy kurma hedefi gerçekçi mi?’. As another example, the article titled ‘Rats will save their friends from drowning’ has been transferred as ‘Sıçanda empati duygusu: boğulan arkadaşa yardım’. It is clearly seen that the translator omits the sentence, changes the translation and refers to the content of the article. This can be supported with the interview because the translator also states that they prefer to compose a new title that attracts the target readers and gives them information about the content of the text. The STs and the TTs have also been compared and analysed in terms of sentence and paragraph structure and also punctuation. Some of the sentences are divided whereas some are combined. For example, the use of semicolon is common in English grammar and it becomes a comma in the translations of the texts. Or, it has been analysed that hyphens are also removed and the sentence structure is changed accordingly. These types of changes or interferences exhibit that the translator adheres to the rules of Turkish language grammar Aksoy & Tavil 128 during the translation process. Thus, this attachment to the Turkish grammar rules provides easy reading and clear understanding for the target readers. When preliminary norms and operational norms are taken into account, it is possible to present the initial norms that govern the translations of the articles even before the translation process. Toury asserts that no translation is totally adequate or acceptable and shifts are inevitable because of the cultural norms of the TL (Toury, 1995, p. 57). Therefore, it could be suggested that acceptable equivalence has generally been employed throughout the translation in spite of some adequate equivalences in translations. Mostly, the real and understandable meanings have been given in translations instead of their word-for-word equivalents. All these show that the translator of the link ‘Dergi’ has tendency towards target- oriented translation approach. As a last point, any translation of BBC articles from English to Turkish can also be taken as the translation of cultural elements due to the fact that language -together with all its components- is one of the most important cultural items itself. So, these results of the analysis within Toury’s translational norms should naturally be taken as the results of the cultural transfer in the translations of media organization websites. That is, the translator generally employs some strategies to translations that helps her to create acceptable equivalences for the cultural items in the translations of BBC articles. 3.2.Which translation strategies of Aixela are mostly employed during the translation process of CSIs? It has been found out that most of the proper names have been repeated in the majority of the translations. The names of the famous directors like David Fincher, James Cameron or the names of the universities like Harvard or Oxford have all been transferred with repetition strategy. Besides, the analysis of the articles in the link Travel shows that some phrases in other languages have been repeated. Hola Soy Kike is in Spanish and this phrase has been repeated and its Turkish translation has been given in brackets in the TT. The aim of this repetition can be to inform the readers before they travel to the mentioned places. The names of the social media tools such as Facebook or Twitter and some of the brand names like IKEA or Blackberry have also been repeated. The translator even repeats some of the book names like Moby Dick. Therefore, it may be suggested that the translator constitutes these names as she thinks they are known by the educated target readers. Also, the translator prefers to transfer some of the proper names with their pre-established versions: The toponyms London and England have been transferred as Londra and İngiltere or the story name Snow White has been transferred as Pamuk Prenses instead of repeating them. The translator claims that they try to keep the proper names in their original forms and this supports the findings in the repetition strategy. The translator mentions an exception and adds that if the proper names have pre- established versions, the BBC Turkish Service prefers to employ this to the texts. Pre- established versions are generally the ones that have been transferred with transcription or transliteration procedures. So, it has been seen that some of the CSIs have been transferred with Aixela’s strategy of orthographic adaptation that requires the use of transcription or transliteration. Proper names like Cuba, Chicago, Hiroshima or Seychelles have been transferred as Küba, Şikago, Hiroşima and Seyşeller. Also, some words like sterling, sulphurous gas, hippocampus or kortex have been transferred as sterlin, sülfürük gaz, hipokampus and corteks. The translator also employs orthographic adaptation to the translations of some verbs, for example to engage with has been transferred as angaje olmak. This verb has recently been begun to be used in the Turkish language and so it could be suggested that the translator constitutes the pre-established versions of the words or phrases International Online Journal of Education and Teaching (IOJET) 2017, 4(2), 121-135. 129 of the STs. Measuring units such as the translation of micrometres to mikrometre are also the ones that have been adapted orthographically. Although the translator uses repetition or orthographic adaptation strategies, she also considers it necessary to explain the meaning or implications of CSIs. So, it has been found out that some of the words or phrases have been explained with extra-textual gloss strategy that is one of the other constitution strategies. In the TTs, the proper names Cuba Casa Particular Association has been repeated and transferred as Cuba Casa Particular Association (Küba Özel Ev Derneği) or the words Animal Cognition has been repeated and transferred with an extra gloss in brackets as Animal Cognition (Hayvan Bilişimi). On the contrary, it has been seen that some of the CSIs have been transferred according to their lexical equivalence, but their original forms have been repeated in brackets as extra-textual gloss. For example, the phrase baked beans has been transferred as fırında pişmiş kuru fasulye (baked beans) or the film Fight Club has been transferred as Dövüş Kulübü (Fight Club). As it is seen, the lexical equivalences are given but the original forms of the CSIs are repeated in brackets. These have also been accepted as extra-textual gloss, because the aim of the translator can be suggested as to inform the reader about the original versions of the CSIs in order to make the original forms of the CSIs familiar for them. Besides, in order not to disturb the readers’ attention while adding extra information, some of the CSIs have been transferred with the intra-textual gloss strategy. For example, one of the articles mentions the lander Philae without any direct explanation of the assumption that the readers know it, whereas, the translator provides extra information and transfers this CSI with an explanation like ’10 yıldan uzun bir süre önce Dünya’ dan ayrılıp da uzaydaki bir göktaşına konan Philae adlı robot’ in the TT. Or, in another article the author directly mentions the proper names Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm as a cultural item, whereas, the translator transfers the names as ‘Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Kardeşler’. This addition of information may be found necessary to remind the reader of these best-known storytellers that are also known as The Brothers Grimm in English and Grimm Kardeşler in Turkish. The translator claims that they give extra information whether in the text or in the brackets to explain the original concepts or terms that seem to be exotic for the Turkish readers. So, all these findings about the translations of CSIs by using intra-textual gloss or extra-textual gloss strategies can also be supported with this explanation of the translator. It has been inferred that the CSIs are mostly transferred by constituting them in the TTs. However, there are also some substitution strategies that are employed to the texts. The most employed substitution strategy is the absolute universalization that includes procedures like replacing the CSI with a neutral reference to eliminate the foreign quality of the word. For instance, the author mentions about the Milestone Hotel in South Kensington in the source article. The author seems to be sure that all English readers know about the hotel and its luxury location as it is in London. However, the translator decides to omit these proper names and replace the CSI as lüks semtin oteli to inform the reader just about the content. Or, the cultural item London Underground’s Metropolitan line has been replaced only with a neutral reference as metro that is a better known word for Turkish readers. Deletion is another substitution strategy that is employed in the translations of BBC articles. The sentence that’s the $64m question is in fact a cultural item. It refers to the name of a quiz show broadcasted in the USA and now it is used as a noun when faced with a critical question or problem. However, the CSI $64m has been deleted in the translation and transferred just as bu milyon dolarlık soru. This employment of the deletion strategy to the translation removes the CSI and makes it an ordinary sentence. Also the phrase washing on Tuesdays is another cultural item from the Indian superstition that is supposed to bring bad luck when Aksoy & Tavil 130 washing on Tuesdays. However, the CSI has been deleted and transferred as temizlik yapmak. The reason for the use of deletion strategy can be explained with the translator interview because the translator states that they delete the items that are unnecessary and complicated for the target readers. To conclude, repetition, orthographic adaptation, extra-textual gloss and the intra-textual gloss are the most employed translation strategies to constitute the CSIs whereas absolute universalization and deletion are the most employed strategies to substitute the CSIs in the link ‘Dergi’ of the BBC Turkish Service website. 3.3.To what extent does the translator constitute or substitute the CSIs in terms of Aixela’s classification? The translations of CSIs have been established by employing some of the translation strategies. In line with Aixela’s classification of CSIs, it could be noticed that in the majority of the texts constitution strategies like repetition, orthographic adaptation, extra-textual gloss and intra-textual gloss have been employed to the translations for the transfer of CSIs. Also, some of the substitution strategies like absolute universalization and deletion have been used even if sparingly. So, it is clear that the translator mostly constitutes the CSIs and also substitutes some of them. These findings show that the tendency of the translations is towards ‘to be a representation of their STs’. In other words, the translator of the link ‘Dergi’ has the tendency ‘to present the existence of the CSIs’ as she mostly decides to employ the conservation method (Aixela, 1996, p.60). However, this result of the translations to show tendency towards constitution of CSIs must not be understood as the tendency of the translator to directly employ foreignization strategies to translations. This is the case, because the translator states that their target readers are the ones that are educated and young population. So, the translator shows this tendency as she thinks they will mostly know the CSIs that are constituted. That is, by mostly employing constitution strategies, the translator of BBC Turkish Service shows tendency to establish translations that are the representations of their source texts. 4. Discussion In this study, the translation strategies employed by the translator during the translation process of CSIs in the selected articles of the link ‘Dergi’ on the BBC Turkish Service, have been analysed and described in light of a specific theoretical background that has been designed to triangulate for reliable and valid results. This background of the study involves the translational norms of Gideon Toury and CSIs classification of Javier Franco Aixela. The research questions of this study have been established for this aim and they seek answers about translation strategies employed by the translator in light of these theoretical basis. In accordance with the translational norms of Toury, the findings show that the translations are mostly target oriented and so most of the translations are acceptable equivalences of their source texts (Toury, 1995). The strategies of Aixela used for the translations of CSIs are repetition, orthographic adaptation, extra-textual gloss, intra textual gloss and deletion. The findings also show that the translator mostly constitutes the CSIs in the texts. This indicates the general tendency of the translations to ‘be a representation of a source text’ (Aixela, 1996). However, the translator specifies the target readers of the link as the ‘educated young population’ and this does not complicate the comprehensibility of the CSIs by the target readers. Kaya (2015) uses translational norms of Toury as one of the theoretical basis of her study and tries to find out the translation strategies that are employed by the translator in the translations of taboo expressions. She aims to analyse and define the strategies employed in International Online Journal of Education and Teaching (IOJET) 2017, 4(2), 121-135. 131 translating the taboo references of sexual and social nature in three different Turkish translations of D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover published by three different publication companies in the same period. So, her case study consists of the comparative analysis of three Turkish translations of a novel. This study analyses the translation strategies employed by the translator of the link ‘Dergi’ of the BBC Turkish Service during the translation process of CSIs rather than taboo expressions of a novel. Also, Kaya supports her study with the classification of strategies proposed by Allan and Burridge (2006), whereas in this study, the target-oriented approach of Toury is supported with the CSIs classification of Aixela. There are some more studies analysing the translation strategies employed by the translator and considering from different angles within the framework of target-oriented approaches. In their study, Yalçın and Pazarlıoğlu (2013) aim to identify the translation strategies applied to the translations of a literary work. They critically compare five different translations of the novel Madam Bovary and evaluate the example sentences in the light of Toury’s translational norms as target oriented approach. They make the analysis in the light of preliminary norms, operational norms and initial norms of Toury. As a result, they rank the translations from adequate to acceptable translations showing the tendencies of the translator towards target-oriented or source-oriented translational approach. However, the findings of the text analysis are supported with an interview and only the source text–target text comparison has been made in this study. There are also a few more studies that focus on the texts of the literary works. One of them tries to find out the manipulative effects of children’s literature on the target cultures (Karadağ, Bozkurt and Alimen, 2015). Their aim is to investigate Sabiha and Zekeriya Sertel’s translations of children’s literature and books on children’s education published by different companies from 1926 to 1928. The theoretical basis of their study involves ideology, manipulation and patronage factors. They analyse the translated texts in accordance with Toury’s translational norms within descriptive translation study and reveal how the translators manipulated target cultural and literary systems by using translation as a tool. Unlike their study, this study focus on the description of the translation strategies employed by the translator rather than ideological issues. Many studies have been conducted to analyse the translation strategies for the transfer of CSIs in translation studies. For example, in her study, Zengin (2010) focuses on the role that cultural affinity and cultural distance play in the selection of translation strategies in Salman Rushdie’s Shame as a novel of postcolonial literature and used the classification of Aixela in order to find the strategies adopted for the translations of CSIs in Turkish and French texts. In order to demonstrate the effects of cultural affinity or distance, she categorizes the CSIs as Perso-Arabic cultural terms and Hindi-Urdu cultural terms. The findings of her case study shows that the repetition method (as a constitution method) is the most employed strategy by both translators. Similar to the study of Zengin, the findings of this study show that repetition is the most widely used strategy in the translations of BBC articles. However, unlike her study that analyses the CSIs and their translations within the framework of Venuti’s (in)visibility concept (Venuti, 1995), this study analyses the CSIs and their translations with the classification of Aixela. Additionally, Shokri and Ketabi (2015) seek to find the strategies used in the English translation of the novel Shazdeh Ehtejab from Persian literature and they used the model of Newmark (1988) to examine the CSIs in accordance with the classification of Aixela. The findings of their study show that the most frequently used strategy was that of synonym. Moreover, unlike the aforementioned studies which focus on literary translation, this study aims to analyse and describe the texts of a media organization website. There are also some studies on the translations of CSIs in different text types. Narvaez and Zambrana (2014) focus on the translations of cultural elements in tourist promotion Aksoy & Tavil 132 campaigns and examine the role of the translator in the field of tourist promotion. They use the texts of the Spanish Tourist Board that employ CSIs as a sales argument to promote Spain worldwide as a tourist destination. They also support their study with a short survey of English mother-tongue speakers. The findings of their study show that the CSIs translation show a general tendency towards both exoticisation and assimilation. In another study, Tükenmez (2012) describes the translation strategies applied by the translator, to the translations of the texts, in a geography and science magazine. His descriptive study shows that naturalization, orthographic adaptation and intra-textual gloss methods were employed in the majority of translations. Considering only the text types as the data, it is possible to mention many more studies focusing on the translation of advertisements, subtitling or dubbing texts. However, this study takes only informative texts of the BBC website as data rather than other types of news. Polat (2015) compares the source texts and the target texts of the BBC Turkish Service and aims to find the extent to which translation contributes to the institutional discourse of the BBC Turkish Service. Besides the use of informative texts rather than news texts as data, this study also differs in that it analyses and describes only the translations of CSIs within the target–oriented approach rather than comparing the news texts for discourse analysis. 4. Conclusion In this study Toury’s translational norms have been used to make detailed analysis of the equivalence of translation, punctuation and sentence and paragraph structure. More importantly, the articles have also been analysed to find the tendency of the translator to create ‘adequate’ or ‘acceptable’ translations that leads the analysis to find the translator’s approach to translations i.e. whether it is source-oriented or target oriented. The findings showed that the translator uses many strategies before the translation process or during the translation process. This shows the effect of initial norms as her decisions have the tendency towards acceptable equivalence. That is, it could be suggested that acceptable equivalence has generally been employed throughout the translation process, in spite of some adequate equivalences in translations. The translator seeks the needs of the target readers to comprehend all the references or meanings without any shift, while aiming to provide understandable meanings in the translations. In other words, the translator chooses to employ translation strategies with a sense-for-sense approach, instead of their word-for-word equivalents. These findings show that the translator of the link Dergi has the tendency towards a target-oriented translation approach. Furthermore, the study seeks answers to the translation strategies that have mostly been used for omitting or translating the cultural elements. In the study, Aixela’s classification is used to describe the choice of the translator which shows ‘the degree of tolerance’ of the receiving society ranging from conservation (repetition, orthographic adaptation, linguistic translation, extra-textual gloss, intra-textual gloss) to ‘substitution’ (synonym, limited universalization, absolute universalization, naturalization, deletion and autonomous creation). Thus, as Aixela suggests, the strategies that are described allow the observation of the general tendency of translations ‘to be a representation of a ST’ and ‘to be a valid text in itself’ (Aixela, 1996, p. 60). The findings showed that the translator of the BBC Turkish Service mostly employed repetition, orthographic adaptation, extra-textual gloss and intra-textual gloss strategies relatively. On occasion, she also employed absolute universalization and deletion strategies for the translations of CSIs. Lastly, this study has the basis of Aixila’s classification for the translation of CSIs. He orders the scale based on the degree of intercultural manipulation (from lesser to greater). According to this scale, it is possible to see the general tendency of translations to ‘be a International Online Journal of Education and Teaching (IOJET) 2017, 4(2), 121-135. 133 representation of a ST’ and to ‘be a valid text in itself’ (Aixela, 1996, p.60). The choice of the translator shows ‘the degree of tolerance’ of the receiving society ranging from ‘conservation’ to ‘naturalization’. The findings of the analysis showed that the translator mostly employs conservation strategies while translating the CSIs. This reveals her tendency to show the existence of the CSIs in the texts of the BBC Turkish Service and she does not find it necessary to hide the presence of CSIs. It also showed that the degree of tolerance of the target readers is greater according to this scale. These findings are supported with the translator’s interview; she stated that the target readers of the Turkish Service comprise of an educated and young population. That is, the findings showed that the translator mostly constitutes the CSIs in translations as she considers the specific target readers to be able to tolerate this kind of constitution or foreignization of CSIs in the translation. 5. Suggestions and Implications When the limitations of this study are taken into account, some suggestions can be made accordingly. Firstly, in order to present the translation strategies used in the cultural transfer of media organization websites, the texts to be analyzed were limited to the articles from the BBC website’s ‘Culture’, ‘Earth’, ‘Future’ and ‘Travel’ services and their Turkish translations in the link Dergi of the BBC Turkish website. A new study can be conducted with the texts of another media organization website to see the translation strategies employed during the translations of CSIs and also to present the acceptability and adequacy of their translations. Also, the study used both the STs and the TTs as the data and a translator interview was added to triangulate for more valid and reliable results. It is possible to design a new study by conducting online surveys with the target readers. Moreover, this study is designed according to the qualitative method and it describes the strategies used for the translations of cultural elements in light of the research questions. So, it aims to find ‘the most’ frequently used strategies in the translations of CSIs. However, a new study can be designed with a mixed type method using both qualitative and quantitative approaches and thus certain amounts of information can be found about the use of certain translation strategies for the transfer of cultural elements. Besides, Aixela’s classification of CSIs were applied to the articles of the BBC that were mostly categorized as informative texts. However, the classification of Aixela can be better applied to literary texts, such as novels or short stories, as they may involve more cultural elements than these types of informative website texts. Most of all, this study contributes to the literature of translation studies in its analysis and description of the translation strategies employed on the BBC Turkish Service text, as a known media organization website. As mentioned before, media organization websites have millions of readers all over the world and they offer many language options. Keeping this in mind, it would be better to suggest a few more research questions for further studies. For example, by using the question: To what extent are the translated texts of any media organization website acceptable equivalences of their source texts? a researcher can describe the translated texts of other global media organization websites and compare the findings with the conclusions of this study. Additionally, by combining the findings of this study with a few of others, a researcher can study the analysis of three or four different website texts to find the strategical differences or similarities of different media companies including the BBC. Moreover, by using a survey or questionnaire with the target readers, a researcher can seek answers to the following two questions: To what extent do the media organizations consider the age of their target readers while translating the original texts into their TL? and To what extent do the translations of CSIs interfere with the reading fluency of the target readers? Also, a few more studies can be conducted not only on the cultural transfer of media organization websites but also on the website texts of any commercial companies that offer Aksoy & Tavil 134 different languages to reach their international consumers and readers. In addition to these, ideological studies can be conducted to see whether the translated texts of any media organization website (or the BBC) or the translator of a website, intentionally manipulate the CSIs in the text. International Online Journal of Education and Teaching (IOJET) 2017, 4(2), 121-135. 135 References Abend-David, D. (2014). Media and translation. New York and London: Bloomsbury. Aixela J. F. (1996) Culture-specific items in translation. In R. Alvarez, & M. C. Vidal (Eds.), Translation, power, subversion (pp. 52-79). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd. Baker, M. (2001). Routledge encyclopaedia of translation studies. New York: Routledge BBC Türkçe’ de yeni sayfa. (October 1, 2014). 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