The Investigation of Sabahattin Ali’s ‘The Devil Within Us’ Novel According to Polysystem Theory

Translation, the story of which extends to the existence of mankind, is an essential activity which brings societies and individuals closer and allows the creation of dialogue and all kinds of communication. Translation is a multifaceted, complex, and interdisciplinary phenomenon and one of the areas it is influential is literature. Regardless of the language they are written in, literary works become the common property of mankind thanks to translation. The translation of a literary text from the source language into target language is not simply a matter of transferring the vocabulary and grammar but it is also a process of transferring the culture in a comprehensible way. In this study, “The Devil Within Us”, a book written by Sabahattin Ali, who is one of the pioneers of realistic literature during the era of the foundation of the Turkish Republic, will be analysed in terms of the translation of “religious elements”, “idioms and proverbs”, and “proper nouns” into German following Itamar Even-Zohar’s polysystem theory. The author will investigate whether the translation of this literary text into German is “adequate” or “acceptable” in the light of polysystem theory