Culture-Specific Items in Elif Shafak’s Novel Honour: A Translation Analysis Through the Theories of Rewriting and Cultural Transfer in English and Turkish

Translating culture-specific items becomes particularly challenging in cases of self-translation, where the author reinterprets their own cultural identity through another language. This study analyzes Elif Shafak’s novel Honour , and examines how Turkish cultural and folkloric elements are represented and transformed in the novel. The novel is originally written in English, and later retranslated into Turkish with author collaboration. Ten representative text units were specifically selected considering their cultural density and contextual significance, and examined through Peter Newmark’s classification of cultural categories. Raymond van den Broeck’s concept of translation norms and polysystem theory were employed to identify structural and narrative shifts, while Lawrence Venuti’s notions of domestication and foreignisation were applied to determine the translation strategies. The findings reveal that the Turkish version contains notable additions and omissions that extend beyond linguistic equivalence and point toward a deliberate act of rewriting. This phenomenon is further contextualised as self-translation and interpreted through the lens of André Lefevere’s rewriting theory. However, the limited samples suggest potential for broader corpus-based studies. The study argues that Honour exemplifies a case of culturally motivated self-rewriting, functioning as a medium of identity negotiation and cultural repositioning rather than a mere linguistic transfer.