Vernacular language in the English translations of Sevgi Soysal’s Yenişehir’de Bir Öğle Vakti and Şafak
As a female writer with social realist inclinations from Turkish literature, Sevgi Soysal portrays characters from different walks of life by maintaining an equal distance from varying categories of social difference, potentially turning into a label within society. Soysal incorporates vernacular language, shaped by local linguistic elements and containing important clues about indigenous ways of thinking from the Turkish context, into her works, ensuring the representation of several voices within her narrative universe. This study aims to discuss how elements of vernacular language are recreated in the English translations of Sevgi Soysal’s Yenişehir’de Bir Öğle Vakti and Şafak in the light of the concept of foreignizing translation as an ethical act. This study comprises four parts. The first two parts draw on the main outlook of vernacular language and its potentiality in translation. In the third part, the interrelationships between Soysal’s tendency to form a social realist perspective and her use of vernacular language in her selected novels are examined. The fourth part provides an analysis of paratextual elements and examples of vernacular language from the English translations of Sevgi Soysal’s Yenişehir’de Bir Öğle Vakti (2016) by Amy Spangler and Şafak (2022) by Maureen Freely. From an ethical perspective, it is concluded that Spangler and Freely show a limited extent of vernacularization based on their tendency toward foreignization in the English translations of Sevgi Soysal’s novels, leading to lesser chances of promoting openness, dialogue, and cultural hybridity between the source and target cultures.