Idiom Translation Problems and Strategies From Turkish into Russian

Abstract

Language is the most important asset providing people's understanding. Thefeatures such as cultural structur, world - view, beliefs, warfares, usages of a societyare the factors reflecting to a language. Language as a system of communicationbetween people has literal and figurative meanings. While the literal meaning isthe direct reference of words or sentences to objects, the figurative sense is used forgiving an imaginative description or a special effect. Such a meaning characterizesnotions like metaphors, similes, proverbs and idioms. Idiom is an important part ofa language. Idioms play a significant role in intercommunication culture. There aremany works related to idioms, which have always take attention of linguistics in pointof learning and exploring, especially, lingusts have tried to determine and explainthem in regard to meaning and syntax. In this study, the translation strategies andproblems from Turkic into Russian have been presented. This work has been exampledon Turkish and Russian languages. Since there are great differences in history,culture, geographical environment, fairy tale, custom, religion and mode of thinkingbetween Turkic and Russian states, people who speak Turkish and people who speakRussian as their native language have different ideas for the same events. Thesecultural exclusiveness of Turkish and Russian idioms, which lead to great troublein translating. In this study, efforts have been made to meet two objectives. First, toshow the extent of translatability of idioms and their problems in Turkish - Russian.Next step is to explore the translation strategies of idioms. This paper aims to analyzecharacteristics, differences from the perspective of conceptual metaphor and try toprobe into some suitable translation strategies when translators are facing a varietyof difficulties in translation. Moreover, the results of the study led us to conclude thatan ideal translation strategy of translating an idiom by using another idiom in targetlanguage is not always possible. Further results also revealed that there are manyinteresting cultural similarities and differences between Turkish and Russian idioms.