An Exploration of Cultural Turns in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment Using Social and Political Approaches

Abstract

Both cultural and social factors are believed to play a role in translating a text; however, in the present study, social factors are going to be explored. More specifically, the purpose of this study is to examine how manipulating cultures has been done in Bassnett and Lefevere‘s (1990, cited Bassnett 1998) approach and its adaptability to the target culture. In this study, a qualitative research approach was employed. A case study research design was used to analyze the selected corpus. In this research paper, we are examining and comparing the difference between the translations pre and post-cultural turn politically and socially. It was found that the highest level belongs to the omission factor before the cultural turn, but after that time the most significant one refers to the rewriting factor. There is a tiny fluctuation between two other factors. Much more investigation can be done on other source texts to see whether or not they have followed the same result to be able to reach a firm conclusion of the procedure a translation has been taking through the time. In addition, translations could be assessed based on their success in building good communication among their audience.

Keywords: Cultural Turns, Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, Social Approaches, Political Approaches