A Comparative Analysis in the Context of Theater Translation: The Turkish Translations of Edward Albee's Who Is Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in Literary and Theatrical System

Theater texts being intrinsically both literary and performance texts have made concepts such as performability, playability, speakability, and intelligibility debatable. Translators have been observed to choose their strategies based on two perspectives: translation strategies oriented to performability (translating for stage) and reading by target readers (translating for page). Thus, faithful vs. free translation has mostly been attributed to their evaluation. Sirkku Aaltonen (1997; 2000) posits that translation is a purpose-oriented activity that requires design and planning, adding that translators strategies change pursuant to the literary and theatrical system they work in. The translations are expected to comply with the cultural, behavioral, or ideological customs of the target cukure.This study performed a textual analysis of the Turkish translations of Edward Albee's Who Is Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962) translated by Asude Zeybekoglu as Hain Kurttan Kim Korkar? (1985) and Tuncay Birkan as Kim Korkar Virginia Woolf 'tan? (1993) for performability, playability, speakability, and intelligibility, and the literary and theatral system within which they function. It sought to explain how Aaltonen, with his systems, goes beyond the faithful vs. free bipolarization. Consequently, it was observed that while Birkan's translation strategy is a translation for page within the literary system, Zeybekoglu's translation functions within the theatrical system as she translated for the stage.The study concluded that Birkan and Zeybekoglu translated the text based on their goals and the conventions of the system they applied and Aaltonen's system framework enabled to digress from this minimalist approach by going beyond the bipolarization.