Navigating Literary Boundaries: The Turkish Encounter with Pale Fire's Translation

Reception of translated texts has thus far elicited uneven attention in Translation Studies (TS), despite the application of reception studies theories over recent decades, initially concentrated within literary translation and subsequently extending to encompass various text types. This paper, guided by Bourdieu’s understanding of taste, literary field, and differentiated types of capital, aims to analyze the Turkish translation of Pale Fire by delineating its reader profile, elucidating the readers' role in determining meaning, and discussing their critiques and suggestions on macro and micro translational choices and strategies. Based on insights from authentic readers of Pale Fire, who integrate mental visualizations with their reservoir of experiences while engaging with the text, the study seeks to explore how authentic readers engage with both Vladimir Nabokov’s innovative novel Pale Fire and its Turkish translation, examining if Turkish translator Yiğit Yavuz's translational decisions resonate with the cultural inclinations of the readers. The research findings illustrate that although the interviewed Turkish readers engage with literary works in diverse ways, their viewpoints on literary translation and assessments of translational decisions in Pale Fire’s Turkish translation exhibit notable uniformity. All in all, the readers tend to adopt a critical viewpoint towards translated literature, emphasizing the identification of translation issues over aesthetic enjoyment. Finally, this research proposes that Bourdieu's suggestion regarding the field of restricted production, involving a cohort of readers with exclusive tastes, might encounter challenge and warrant a more nuanced evaluation within the sphere of readers of translated literature, even among those who engage with what is conventionally perceived as high literature.