LITERARY TRANSLATION OF CULTURAL IDENTITY AND CULTURE-SPECIFIC ELEMENTS: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF UZBEK AND ENGLISH TEXTS.

Literary translation is not merely the linguistic transfer of a text from one language into another; it is also an intercultural process through which cultural identity, historical memory, social values, traditions, and worldview are transmitted to readers who belong to a different linguistic and cultural community. This thesis examines the representation of cultural identity and culture-specific elements in Uzbek and English literary texts, with particular attention to the difficulties involved in transferring culturally marked meanings between the two languages. Culture-specific elements may include traditional customs, food, clothing, forms of address, religious references, historical realities, social institutions, geographical names, idioms, proverbs, metaphors, and culturally determined patterns of behavior. The study draws upon established concepts in translation studies, including cultural equivalence, dynamic equivalence, domestication, foreignization, cultural substitution, descriptive translation, and transference. The comparative analysis demonstrates that the translation of culturally specific material requires more than lexical correspondence because cultural meanings are frequently embedded in context, social relationships, historical experience, and literary symbolism. In Uzbek-English literary translation, preserving cultural identity while maintaining accessibility for target readers represents a central challenge. The thesis argues that a balanced, context-sensitive approach is generally more appropriate than the mechanical application of a single translation strategy. Preserving selected source-culture terms through transliteration or borrowing, accompanied where necessary by contextual explanation, can allow the target reader to encounter culturally distinctive meanings without losing textual comprehensibility. The study also emphasizes the translator's role as a cultural mediator whose decisions influence how one national literary tradition is perceived within another linguistic environment.