Söylem Filoloji Dergisi

Öz

With the sociological turn in translation studies, translation has been treated as a social action and product, and rather than the texts themselves, the focus of researchers has been on the agents that take place in the background of translation and shape the translation process. As a social agent, the translator is positioned within a social and cultural environment and reflects his/her preferences on the translation product. The aim of this study is to comparatively examine the English-Turkish translations of the famous gothic (horror) writer Stephen King's three short stories, “1408”, “L.T.'s Theory of Pets” and “Roller Coaster”, and to reveal the socio-cultural factors that affect the translator's decisions based on this analysis. In the comparative translation analysis, examples that can be attributed to the social and cultural differences of the target culture readers will be examined. The examples found will be analyzed on the basis of Pierre Bourdieu's concept of habitus and the effects of the social aspect of habitus on translation will be revealed. The reason for choosing horror literature as the object of research is that this genre is less common in translation studies and although the plot mostly consists of references to psychological elements, it is thought to have a social and cultural aspect as well. The three stories that are the subject of this study are included in the collection of Everything's Eventual, published in 2002. This work was translated by Canan Kim in 2002 and published in Altin Kitaplar.