Araştırma Makalesi

“Friday cannot be black!”: Euphemizing a religious taboo through translation

Sayı: 26 21 Şubat 2022
  • Mehmet Yıldız *
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“Friday cannot be black!”: Euphemizing a religious taboo through translation

Abstract

This paper is the first to describe Black Friday in Turkey as a taboo from the perspective of translation studies. It intends to analyze the euphemistic translation strategies employed by national and international companies that conduct business in Turkey and aims to find out whether their euphemisms potentially assist them in marketing their products. The corpus of the study consists of 15 euphemistic Turkish translations of ‘Black Friday’, which were retrieved from the websites of 27 national and international companies. The translations were analyzed in consideration of Warren’s (1992) classification of euphemism procedures. The analyses revealed that the companies predominantly adopted two strategies: overstatement and implication. 16 of 27 companies were observed to use overstatement and ten to employ implications concerning the describers (companies), the described (Friday), and the event (Black Friday). Only one company was found to have adopted the borrowing strategy. It was concluded from the analyses that euphemized translations of the ‘taboo’ phrase Black Friday proved beneficial in removing or replacing the socioculturally unacceptable components of the event and helped the featured national and international companies’ campaigns in Turkey be culturally and socially more acceptable as they increased their sales and profits just as the un-euphemized Black Friday did in the other parts of the world.

Keywords

Kaynakça

  1. Akcan, B., Gençyürek-Erdoğan, M., & Karaçok, S. (2020). Para Cuma. Selçuk Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Meslek Yüksekokulu Dergisi, 23(1), 43–53. https://doi.org/10.29249/selcuksbmyd.632034
  2. Akgüç-Çetinkaya, Ö., & Ceng, E. (2018). Türkiye’deki Black Friday Etkinliğinin Tüketici Sinizmi Bağlamında Bir Değerlendirilmesi. MANAS Sosyal Araştırmalar Dergisi, 7(4), 167–180.
  3. Al-Jumu’ah (1997). In The Qur'an (Saheeh International, Trans.). Saudi Arabia: Abul-Qasim Publishing House
  4. Al-Kurdi, S. (2020, November 29). America's Black Friday vs. MENA's White Friday. Albawaba. https://www.albawaba.com/business/americas-black-friday-vs-menas-white-friday
  5. Al-Qinai, J. (2005). Manipulation and censorship in translated texts. In Actas del II Congreso Internacional de la Asociación Ibérica de Estudios de Traducción e Interpretación Manipulation.
  6. Baker, M. (2006). Translation and Conflict: A Narrative Account. London and New York: Routledge.
  7. Cherrayil, N. K. (2016, November 16). ‘White Friday’ on November 25. Gulfnews. https://gulfnews.com/business/retail/white-friday-on-november-25-1.1930745
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Ayrıntılar

Birincil Dil

İngilizce

Konular

Dilbilim

Bölüm

Araştırma Makalesi

Yazarlar

Mehmet Yıldız * Bu kişi benim
0000-0001-9482-4358
Türkiye

Yayımlanma Tarihi

21 Şubat 2022

Gönderilme Tarihi

20 Ocak 2022

Kabul Tarihi

20 Şubat 2022

Yayımlandığı Sayı

Yıl 2022 Sayı: 26

Kaynak Göster

APA
Yıldız, M. (2022). “Friday cannot be black!”: Euphemizing a religious taboo through translation. RumeliDE Dil ve Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi, 26, 1117-1128. https://doi.org/10.29000/rumelide.1074530

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