Translating swear words: a fucking difficult task. An analysis of Sam Garrett's American English translation of Turks Fruit

Jan Wolkers’ Turks Fruit (1969) was and remains a sensational novel, famous for its explicit sex scenes and use of crude language. March 2017 saw the publication of the first American English translation of the novel, titled Turkish Delight. So far, no scholar has analysed this new translation by Sam Garrett and even though many articles have been written about swearing in translation, e.g. Crisafulli (1997) and Santaemilia (2008 and 2013), little to no research has been done into the Dutch and English language pair. The main question that I have addressed in this thesis is this: “What was Sam Garrett’s translation strategy while translating Turks Fruit (1969) with regard to taboo language and swearing?” In answer to this question, taboo language in the ST and the TT has been analysed in this research using Pinker’s (2008) pragmatic categories of swear words and the translation procedures used in the TT, Turkish Delight, have been analysed using Vinay & Darbelnet’s (1958) theory on...Show moreJan Wolkers’ Turks Fruit (1969) was and remains a sensational novel, famous for its explicit sex scenes and use of crude language. March 2017 saw the publication of the first American English translation of the novel, titled Turkish Delight. So far, no scholar has analysed this new translation by Sam Garrett and even though many articles have been written about swearing in translation, e.g. Crisafulli (1997) and Santaemilia (2008 and 2013), little to no research has been done into the Dutch and English language pair. The main question that I have addressed in this thesis is this: “What was Sam Garrett’s translation strategy while translating Turks Fruit (1969) with regard to taboo language and swearing?” In answer to this question, taboo language in the ST and the TT has been analysed in this research using Pinker’s (2008) pragmatic categories of swear words and the translation procedures used in the TT, Turkish Delight, have been analysed using Vinay & Darbelnet’s (1958) theory on translation strategies. Greenall’s (2008) theory has been used to determine a difference in swearing constraint between the Dutch and American cultures. The analysis ascertains three main points. Firstly, Garrett stays fairly faithful to the ST; he has mostly used a direct translation strategy (66%) and never changes the type of swearing used in the ST. Secondly, the most striking exception to this direct translation strategy is that he has added taboo language and swear words to the TT that were not present in the ST. Thirdly, this irregularity can be explained by a difference in strength of the swearing constraint between the ST readership and the TT readership. Sam Garrett’s translation strategy with regard to taboo language and swearing in Turks Fruit (1969) seems to have been to create a translation with an equivalent attention-getting effect.Show less

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Translating swear words: a fucking difficult task. An analysis of Sam Garrett's American English translation of Turks Fruit