{"id":67147,"date":"2013-03-07T09:46:46","date_gmt":"2013-03-07T07:46:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=67147"},"modified":"2023-04-06T00:21:47","modified_gmt":"2023-04-05T21:21:47","slug":"turkish-literature-and-translation-trapped-between-east-and-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2013\/03\/07\/turkish-literature-and-translation-trapped-between-east-and-west\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkish Literature and Translation Trapped Between East and West"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Roger Tagholm<\/span><\/h1>\n
\n

The challenges of translating Turkish into English and what you might call Turkey\u2019s dilemma \u2014 whether to choose the mosque or the mall, positioned as it is between East and West \u2013 were among themes addressed at the first ever conference devoted to Turkish literature, held at Oxford University last Friday.\u00a0 It was the first cultural activity organised by the Turkish government\u2019s National Organising Committee ahead of the country\u2019s position as Market Focus at next month\u2019s London Book Fair.<\/p>\n

Academics and scholars gathered at Ertegun House, surely the most appropriate of venues. It is named after the legendary record producer and founder of Atlantic Records Ahmet Ertegun, who was born in Turkey and whose widow, Mica, bequeathed money to the university to fund a graduate scholarship programme in the humanities. It was her thank you gesture to England after Led Zeppelin, whom her husband signed to Atlantic when they were virtually unknown, played a benefit gig in London following Ahmet\u2019s death in 2006. A whole lotta love indeed.<\/p>\n

The Pull Between East and West<\/h4>\n

Kicking off proceedings was the great bear-like figure of Professor\u00a0<\/span>Murat Belge<\/span>\u00a0of Istanbul\u2019s Bilgi University, left-wing scourge of the Turkish establishment and someone who has risked prison to speak out about the plight of Turkish writers over the years. He gave a fascinating history of Turkish fiction, observing that Turkish writers had a \u201clove hate relationship with the West. We want to be like the West \u2014 we have this envy of the west and its civilization \u2014 and yet we also dislike the west because this word \u2018civilization\u2019 can have imperialist overtones, which we don\u2019t like.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

He said this feeling was even expressed in the country\u2019s national anthem which includes the line \u201ccivilization: that monster with one remaining tooth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWriters with a mission continue, but they\u2019re mainly Islamists and the aesthetic is very weak.\u201d<\/div>\n

The early Turkish novelists of the \u201920s were \u201cnation builders, for whom the mission weighed heavier than the aesthetic,\u201d he said.\u00a0 In 1971, \u201cafter one of our numerous military takeovers\u201d (this, a nice bit of tobacco-dry humor), many women writers came to the fore, \u201cgetting into the texture of daily life and contributing greatly to the development of the Turkish novel.\u201d<\/p>\n

He hailed Seventies writer\u00a0Oguz Atay\u00a0as the \u201cJames Joyce of Turkish literature\u201d \u2014 but he\u2019s not translated into English \u2014 and said that today many trajectories for the Turkish novel existed. \u201cWriters with a mission continue, but they\u2019re mainly Islamists and the aesthetic is very weak. The post-modern novel is in vogue, with much allegorising of Turkish history. They\u2019re great fun to read, but sometimes you forget what they are about.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fellow academic Dr Duygu Tekgul of Yeditepe University, Istanbul, spoke on the Modern Turkish Novel in English Translation, including digressions on Even \u2013Zohar\u2019s polysystem theory (\u201cculture is a system and literature a system within that\u201d) and Arjun Appaurai\u2019s field theory (\u201cthe imagination has become an organized field of social practices\u201d).<\/p>\n

But before it became too abstract she put up slides of various jackets, including one for\u00a0Perihan Magden\u2019s\u00a02 Girls<\/em>(Serpent\u2019s Tail) that showed two images, one of two young women by a swimming pool, the other the minarets of a mosque.\u00a0 She raised the issue of western publishers opting for cultural stereotypes when creating cover art. \u201cThe cover of this novel features a mosque, even if there isn\u2019t a mosque featured in the story. But publishers think \u2018it\u2019s set in Turkey, quick, get the photo library, we need a picture of the Blue Mosque.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Agent Nermin Mollaoglu of the Kalem Agency in Istanbul grinned, but said she accepted the clich\u00e9s on so many covers. Many authors would accept this too, if that were what it takes to get published. Only Orhan Pamuk, it seems, has the clout to have his say on his jackets, sometimes designing them himself.<\/p>\n

Translating Turkish is Tricky, But More Are Up to the Challenge<\/h4>\n

Pamuk\u2019s translator, the US-born journalist and novelist Maureen Freely, said that translating Turkish to English was particularly difficult. \u201cIt\u2019s the voice, the music, the way Turkish writers play with time and structure, the aesthetic qualities of Turkish. The translator needs to find a way to capture this. It\u2019s not just the sense, but capturing the magic that is there. The Turkish mind has a greater understanding of time and tense. Anglo-Saxon minds are more closed. We always want to know who what where when, but you can go through a whole book in Turkish not knowing that.\u201d<\/p>\n

But of course great things\u00a0are\u00a0<\/em>happening in the field of translation, most notably the Turkish government\u2019s TEDA \u201csubvention\u201d program, which was established in 2005 and provides grants for the translation of Turkish literature outside the country. \u201cWe have had 1,400 applications so far and have published 900 books,\u201d said Professor Onur Bilge Kula, General Director of Libraries and Publications, Ministry of Culture and Tourism, and a driving force behind the Market Focus program. \u201cTurkish literature is now available in 57 countries and in 53 languages. In the United States, we have supported the translation of 93 books in English. Turkish literature is now opening to the world and we are very proud of this initiative.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the huge success of novels like\u00a0The Kite Runner<\/em>, Western publishers are aware that the next big property might come from this part of the world.\u00a0 Freely, who runs the Literary Translation Centre at Frankfurt, had some good advice for Turkish publishers.\u00a0She urged them not to worry overmuch about English or US sales, but use sales into European territories as a route in. \u201cEditors in the UK love to visit the French, German, Spanish, Italian stands at Frankfurt. They\u2019ll always ask \u2018what\u2019s going on?\u00a0 What\u2019s good? What should I know about?\u2019\u00a0That can be a way of reaching these publishers.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Turkish publishers, the next big opportunity to meet with US and UK publishers is just a few weeks away.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Roger Tagholm The challenges of translating Turkish into English and what you might call Turkey\u2019s dilemma \u2014 whether to choose the mosque or the mall, positioned as it is between East and West \u2013 were among themes addressed at the first ever conference devoted to Turkish literature, held at Oxford University last Friday.\u00a0 It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":25767,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2939],"tags":[3481],"class_list":["post-67147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cultureart","tag-turkish-literature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}