ÇEVİRİ UĞRAŞI

Translations, especially those of literary texts, are as important and valuable as the original texts. Thereof, we can say that: the translator has, in a sense, the responsibility of being the pen of the author. There are some authors, who have writing faculties in a form that can be called sacred. The works of those authors, being read only by the people of their own language community, can create a feeling of being downtrodden for the rest of the world people. Unfortunately, we all do not have a chance to learn the language of the author, as deeply as to understand him/her impeccably. Therefore, we believe that none of us can deny the necessity of translation. At this point, the subject that we need to think about is, whether we should expect the author's ability from the translator. The primary task of the translator is “to transfer”. His/her concern is first to understand the text, and then to be understandable. A translator can both translate the text from the original language into another language, and translate it from his/her own language into another. In a sense, his/her task is not a primary, but a secondary one. Although the task is a secondary one, his/her work is a few times more difficult than that of the author. This is because he/she has to have many concerns together, while making the transfer. The translator has to have a brilliant comprehension of own native language; inter-regional dialect differences of it; cultural structure of the society; different usages of languages due to inter-personal, cultural and educational disparities; and the sentence structure, syntax and vocabulary set of the language. That is crucial and sine qua non for the translator. Having the responsibility to translate a text from the source language into the target language; the translator has to have as much brilliant comprehension of the other language as his/her native language. However, it is hardly possible to increase the number of those languages. Let alone the culture, quite a long process is required to learn just the world-view and the language of a society. Is it possible for the translator to succeed about leaving the effect of the work of an author, who belongs to a completely different geography, culture and a language community, over the reader? More importantly, is it necessary for him/her to achieve that? What should be principle of the translator? While trying to answer all those questions, discussing the concepts of "culture", "value", "equivalence", "competence", "context", "status", "denotation", and "connotation" will form method of our article. "Meaning" definition of Ferdinand de Saussure, who is recognised as the pioneer of linguistics, is limited to sentence; on the other hand, it substantially paves the way for the ensuing scientist to add "discourse", "context", "status", "form", "substance", etc. to the definition of "meaning". Opposition of the word "old" is "new". However, the value of the word "old" will be different, when the relationship of the word with other words in the system, where it takes place, is considered. If the word "old" in the statements of "I lost my old friend," and "I sold my old car" is evaluated; in one of the statements, the opposition of "old" will undergo a change, while it remains the same as "new" in the other: the word "old" in "my old friend" eludes from the old/new opposition and different meanings of "precious, valuable, intimate" are attributed to it. Humboldt stated that "The universe is perceived by everyone in their own language". We can refer here to perception and interpretation at personal level. Each individual has a unique world-view. That can be political, cultural and ideological or can be due to the natural characteristics of the region, where he/she lives. The individual reflects that feature in all aspects of his/her life; and certainly in his/her language, as well. Although his/her language is the same, it differs in a sense, at the level of words: to illustrate; one of two translators having different world-views terminally translate the French word "réponse" into Turkish as "answer" (cevap in Turkish), while the other translate that word into Turkish as "response" (yanıt in Turkish) due to the same reasons, as well. Similarly, while a translator of an approach is attentive to translate the word "Dieu" -creator of the universe according to religious beliefs- into Turkish as "Allah" (Allah in Turkish), another translator of a different approach will have the attention of similar rate to translate the same word into Turkish as "God" (Tanrı in Turkish). After A Martinet added the rings of morpheme, lexical morpheme or the grammatical morpheme to the ring of meaning, which was opened up by Ferdinand de Saussure at the level of word; it reached the level of surface structure/deep structure (that analysis was conducted in an excellent manner by N. Chomsky) with Hjelmslev. The unit of that is a sentence. Again, Louis Hjelmslev, Roman Jakobson, Emile Benveniste and Antoine Culioli raised the unit of the meaning, to the level of discourse. Since that phase, the idea that; sense of discourse can be made according to the relationship of situation and context, where it had happened to be; and even a discourse can make sense if and only according to enunciation; and the same discourse will undergo a change of meaning, when the enunciation changed; has gained importance (Kıran, 1986, pp. 12-15). We want to indicate that; the studies about the impact of the translator on the translation persist, and they will go on in the future. On the one hand, it is extremely difficult for the translator, to catch "the meaning of the meaning" and translate it into another language without loss; on the other hand, translations will continue to be made. The action ultimately, is not "meaning detection", but is "re-interpretation". Additionally, the action of interpretation does not occur from the words' themselves independently, but occurs from their relationships of usage and coexistence together with the other words.