On the Translation of Turkisms from Bosnian into German in Hamza Humo’s Novel Grozdanin kikot
Sanela MešıćThis paper analyzes the translation of Turkish loanwords (i.e., Turkisms) from literary works in Bosnian to German. The contemporary Bosnian language is rich in Turkisms that were mostly adopted during the Ottoman reign. The corpus for the analysis was selected from the novel Grozdanin kikot [Grozdana’s Giggle] by Bosnian writer Hamza Humo (1927). The German translation of the novel title was not a literal translation of the original, as the translator Manfred Jähnichen (1958) instead opted for the title Trunkener Sommer [The Drunken Summer], and the novel was a success in German-speaking regions, with many positive reviews subsequently being published in newspapers. The Turkisms in this novel mostly refer to objects and persons, and some of the lexemes have been labelled as archaic, while others are still in everyday use. However, all of these lexemes are considered part of the Bosnian and Herzegovinian culture. Translating culture-specific concepts is often a challenging task. Therefore, this paper aims to analyze the translation strategies that were employed when translating Turkisms from Bosnian to German in this novel. The first phase of the analysis identifies all the lexemes and phrases of Turkish origin and accounts for them in monolingual and bilingual dictionaries. Finally, the study compares the findings to their translation equivalents in the novel. A semantic analysis provides answers in terms of whether Turkisms in Bosnian and Turkisms in German represent false cognates. This research also yields a glossary of Turkisms from this novel with their translation equivalents in German.
Zur Übersetzung von Turzismen aus dem Bosnischen ins Deutsche am Beispiel des Romans Grozdanin kikot von Hamza Humo
Sanela MešıćDieser Beitrag analysiert die Übersetzung türkischer Lehnwörter – Turzismen – aus dem Bosnischen ins Deutsche in literarischen Werken. Die bosnische Gegenwartssprache ist reich an Turzismen, die hauptsächlich in der Zeit des Osmanischen Reiches übernommen wurden. Als Korpus für die Analyse dient der Roman Grozdanin kikot (Grozdanas Kichern) des bosnischen Schriftstellers Hamza Humo. Die deutsche Übersetzung des Romantitels ist keine wörtliche Übersetzung des Originals. Der Übersetzer entschied sich für den Titel Trunkener Sommer, und der Roman wurde im deutschsprachigen Raum ein Erfolg mit vielen positiven Zeitungsberichten. Die Turzismen in diesem Roman beziehen sich hauptsächlich auf Gegenstände und Personen. Einige der Lexeme werden als archaisch bezeichnet, während andere immer noch im täglichen Gebrauch sind. Alle diese Lexeme gelten jedoch als Teil der bosnisch-herzegowinischen Kultur. Die Übersetzung von Kulturspezifika ist oft eine schwierige Aufgabe. Daher zielt diese Arbeit darauf ab, die Übersetzungsstrategien zu analysieren, die bei der Übersetzung von Turzismen aus dem Bosnischen ins Deutsche in dem oben erwähnten Roman verwendet werden. In der ersten Phase der Analyse wurden alle Lexeme und Redewendungen türkischen Ursprungs identifiziert und anschließend in ein- und zweisprachigen Wörterbüchern überprüft. Abschließend wurden die Ergebnisse mit ihren Übersetzungsäquivalenten im Roman verglichen. Eine semantische Analyse lieferte Antworten darauf, ob Turzismen im Bosnischen und Turzismen im Deutschen falsche Freunde darstellen. Diese Recherche ergab auch ein Glossar der Turzismen aus diesem Roman mit ihren Übersetzungsäquivalenten im Deutschen.
This paper analyzes the translation of Turkish loanwords (i.e., Turkisms) from literary works in Bosnian to German. The contemporary Bosnian language is rich in Turkisms that were mostly adopted during the Ottoman reign. The corpus for the analysis has been selected from the novel Grozdanin kikot [Grozdana’s Giggle] by Bosnian writer Hamza Humo (1927). Earlier research has indicated his works as a good choice for analyzing this topic due to being rich in Turkisms. The German translation of the novel’s title is not a literal translation of the original, with the translator instead opting for the title Trunkener Sommer [The Drunken Summer]. The novel would go on to be a success in Germanspeaking regions, with many positive reviews subsequently being published in newspapers. The Turkisms in this novel mostly refer to objects and persons, and some of the lexemes are labelled as archaic while others are still in everyday use. Still, all these lexemes are considered part of the Bosnian and Herzegovinian culture. Translating culture-specific concepts is often a challenging task. Therefore, this paper aims to analyze the translation strategies employed when translating Turkisms from Bosnian to German in this novel. The paper has been organized as follows. The theoretical section explores the ways and means by which Turkisms had entered the Bosnian language by relying on the findings in the field of Oriental studies as well as those by Best (2005), who wrote about Turkisms in the German language. The number of Turkisms in Bosnian is significantly higher than the number of Turkisms in German and they are so deeply rooted in everyday language that many speakers are unaware of them, while Turkisms in German are still considered exotic. In Bosnian, Turkisms usually refer to some culture-specific concept. These lexemes are particularly intriguing, which is why one section of this paper is entirely devoted to the issue of translating culture-specific concepts from one language to another. Another topic in the study’s theoretical section involves the different kinds of translation equivalence as adopted by Koller & Henjum (2020). The first phase of the analysis identifies all the lexemes and phrases of Turkish origin that are accounted for in monolingual and bilingual dictionaries and compares these to their translation equivalents in the German version of the novel. German electronic databases were utilized as well to further explore the lexemes’ meanings and frequency of occurrence. The corpus of this study consists of original Turkish words as well as those that entered Bosnian through Turkish. Dictionaries were used to help establish which lexemes in the corpus from languages other than Turkish had entered Bosnian through Turkish. Some of the lexemes were adopted as they were, while others were adapted, and some are marked in Bosnian, while others are not. The most important part of the paper is the equivalence analysis. A semantic analysis provided answers in terms of whether Turkisms in Bosnian and Turkisms in German represented false cognates and was able to confirm many such pairs. This can be explained by how transferring a lexeme from one language to another may keep the meaning in one particular receiving language while changing it in another. The findings here indicate that many lexemes had been mistranslated, which implies translating Turkisms into German to be a challenging task, especially if the translator wants to also transfer the stylistic markedness. This paper recommended better translation options wherever possible and also established that certain Turkisms can be translated using the Turkisms present mainly in older German literary texts, as well as some newer newspaper texts. Some of the archaic lexemes had been translated using archaic German lexemes. The study has also established that the translator used hypernyms for certain lexemes, with some parts being translated with more freedom and information not present in the original text, while other lexemes were not translated at all, despite having available options. In addition to the lexemes referring to objects and persons, this study’s corpus of Turkisms also comprises several exclamations and a small number of idioms. The idioms were particularly interesting to analyze because they represent a specific reflection of the culture. This research has also yielded a glossary of Turkisms based on this novel, as well as their translation equivalents in German. The glossary also contains many of the solutions the translator Manfred Jähnichen (1958) had offered while also providing better options for some.
