Gonca Özmen
The Translator’s Journey as a Stubborn Goat: Writing, Erasing and Re-writing
|
your body is like
one of those children’s green paper slates I can write on and erase and rewrite. Animals of Dawn, Talisman House, 2016, p. 20 |
When we read a text translated from another language, we often overlook the fact that the encounter that enables us, the readers, to engage with this product of another literary culture is provided not by the writer of the source text but by the translator. It might be said that translators are those quiet, and sometimes even uncredited, literary workers who endeavor to set up bridges and crossing points between languages, traditions, cultures and even nations. Since translation is an act of re-contextualization, translators should be seen as the active agents of this cross-cultural dialogue. For a long time, translation was seen as a simple act of linguistic transfusion, however we have come to realize that it is, in fact, a profound act of communication that carries within it deep linguistic, literary, social, cultural and political elements. This is because the translator rewrites, reproduces or recreates the literary text in another culture and language, and in doing so, is influenced by their own cultural background, personality, sensibility, taste, perspective, ideology and by whatever knowledge of and experience in this field that they may have accrued.
It is widely accepted that many different approaches to the study of translation were developed over the course of the twentieth century; each one of these asks us to think and explore in greater depth the relative autonomy of translation, the textual features, the translator’s strategies, the concepts of equivalence (accuracy, correctness, correspondence, license, fidelity) and function, in understanding how the translated text is connected to the target language and culture. Generally speaking, when the translator is recreating the source text not only should they remain ‘faithful’ to its content, its cultural context, its stylistic characteristics, and to the writer’s mode of expression, they must also try to bring across the foreignness and strangeness of the text while keeping in mind what is appropriate to the readership of whatever society they are translating for. Walter Benjamin argued, in his 1923 essay “The Task of Translator”, that translation is a ‘mode’ of ‘intention’ and a ‘mode’ of its own, therefore the translator “must expand and deepen his language by means of the foreign language. (…) The extent to which a translation manages to be in keeping with the nature of this mode is determined objectively by the translatability of the original.” (1) Alongside those who claim that the translator should develop their own distinct language are those who argue they should vary their language and style according to the poet/writer they are translating. There are also others, like the distinguished Turkish literary critic, writer, linguist, and translator Akşit Göktürk, who put forward the idea that literary translation is “merely guided by the original text” and is “a creative process marked by individual interpretation” and “for that reason the translation will bear the fingerprints of the translator” (2). Another Turkish writer and translator, Celal Üster, has written that he believes “the translator must needs be something of a chameleon.” He goes on to say that he has always thought “that just as the skin of the chameleon changes according to whatever situation or locale it finds itself in, the translator too should change as they dive into the world and soul of the writer they are translating”. He goes on to compare “the translator to that old soothsayer of Greek Mythology, Proteus who was able to take on whichever guise he chose.” (3) I believe that translators, especially translators of poetry, are akin to stubborn goats who forge their own paths by finding, with endless persistence, patience and passion, different strategies and solutions each time.
As an artistic activity, literary translation demands that the translator has a strong grasp of the source language and literary genre they are translating; in addition, they must have a thorough knowledge of the scope and range of their mother tongue and, furthermore, they must be able to apply all of this in practice. It is also essential that they bear in mind the nature of the readership that will eventually come to grapple with the text. As every translation has its own difficulties and obstacles and because every translator must make countless choices and adapt a number of different strategies, it is very difficult to lay down hard and fast rules, or set standards and methods for the act of translation. However, we are on relatively safe ground when we say that poetry should be translated by poets or, failing that, by dedicated readers or followers of poetry who have a deep knowledge of both the structure and technical characteristics of poetry as well as its various stylistic and expressive modes. If the translator is a poet, they can draw from their past experience to pay especial attention to the literal meaning, emotional resonance and sound of each word while attempting to capture the overall meaning, tone and syntax of the poem they are translating. To this we must also add the effects of the translator’s own method and approach to translation as well whatever they bring of what they have gleamed from the worlds of translation theory and criticism to their practice. Translation is a creative process, one that is learned by constantly writing, erasing and rewriting.
When reading different translations of the same source text, we often see that each translator recreates it in different ways according to whatever perspectives and problem solving methods shape their translation world view. While these differences, these various originalities, can be ascribed to the fact that every literary text hosts a plurality of meanings, in reality they stem from differences in translation strategy, interpretation, judgement and manner of expressing unique to each translator. The translator, taking into consideration both the mode of living, history and culture of the society from which the source text emanates and the those of the reader of the target text, endeavors to find some form of equivalence while transferring, in an appropriate manner, material from one language to another. It is expected that literary translation should display a certain linguistic fastidiousness and strive to create the same effect in the mind of the reader of the translation as that of reader of the source text while at the same time maintaining, what we might term, an air of foreignness. The reader of a poet whose work has been expertly translated should first become interested in any other book that poet may have published and then in the poetic tradition of that poet’s nation. This poetic dialogue with the other also corresponds to a form of colloquy with dead poets and this enacts a kind of literary resurrection that is capable of transcending all linguistic, cultural, historical and ideological limitations.
One of the most notable of these stubborn goats, Murat Nemet-Nejat is an innovative poet, a critical reader and a distinguished translator with a deep knowledge of the structures, depths and subtleties of both the English and Turkish languages. He has also acquired a profound insight into the cultures of both America and Turkey. He has brought all of these elements to bear on his many projects among which we can single out the “Eda” anthology, a comprehensive selection of some of the most original voices in contemporary Turkish poetry, from Ahmet Haşim to Orhan Veli; Behçet Necatigil to İlhan Berk; Cemal Süreya to Ece Ayhan; Gülten Akın to Enis Batur and Seyhan Erözçelik to küçük İskender and Didem Madak, his single volume translations of Orhan Veli, Ece Ayhan, Seyhan Erözçelik and Birhan Keskin, as well as the many prefaces and essays he has written on Turkish poetry and poetics and on translation. He is able to convey the richness of Turkish into English via translation. Nemet-Nejat is someone who has not only made Turkish poetry come alive in English but has provided a context for this deep-rooted and rich poetry, enabling the Anglophone reader to enter this unfamiliar world with more ease.
The care that Nemet-Nejat takes over his translations is clear from the selections of poets, poems and books that he has made. These choices indicate someone with a deep and comprehensive knowledge of contemporary Turkish poetry. It is also evident that he does not simply translate whatever might appeal to him or fit in well with his own aesthetic sense. Needless to say the criteria of ease of translation is one he does not entertain at all. The fact that he has successfully translated two books of the hermetic, ‘hard/tight’, and experimental poetry of Ece Ayhan, a poetry that challenges even the most dedicated native reader in its discordant use of language and ever shifting tone of voice, its dense web of image and disturbing atmosphere, its veiled homosexual allusions and slang, bears out the points mentioned above. There are few translators brave enough to tackle such work; fewer again who could do so successfully.
This point is further borne out by the work that Nemet-Nejat has done around the concept of Eda, which he defines in his “The Spiritual Life of Replicants”, in the following way: “Not only trees or animals, but in this (the 20th century Turkish) poetry colors, objects, things, natural processes are in dialogue with each other, weaving their endless patterns. Eda is the structure of this pattern, the mesh of linguistic and geographic coordinates which go to its creation. Not the individual, but objects, colors, things are at the center of this endless transformation, the ego attached to it only tangentially, a detail, suffering and ecstatic. It is this peripheral relationship of consciousness to wider natural forces –subjective and objective, visceral and abstract– which gives Turkish poetry its stunning originality.” (4) In the preface to anthology that bears the same name he explains that Eda consists of three major elements: firstly, the agglutinative nature of Turkish syntax, secondly a form of spirituality, a kind of subliminal Sufism born of this ever shifting syntax and thirdly the presence of the city of Istanbul itself as the reference point of twentieth-century Turkish poetry. Nemet-Nejat states that: “As much as a collection of translations of poems and essays, this book is a translation of a language.” (5) A close reading of the anthology reveals this to be true. “Eda” is not simply a collection of various poets, it is an attempt to capture the spirit and shape of another language. Nemet-Nejat follows Walter Benjamin’s belief that what gives a language translatability is its distance from the host language. Eda is the term he employs to express that difference. It can also be viewed as the poetics of Sufism embodied in the very structure of the Turkish language. The core of the idea put forward is that the syntax of Turkish allows it to function as a language of process: a continuum that does not divide time up into discrete parts as happens in western languages. The voice, therefore, of the Eda poem is a line drawn between silence and emotion. The anthology, therefore, is an attempt to present this idea of Eda while bring voices from a country considered to be on the periphery, a country whose literary culture is too often ignored, to the fore. The publication of this radical anthology meant too that Nemet-Nejat joined that select list of translators whose name on the cover of any book assures us, the readers, that the text we are about to read is of a certain quality.
The fact that Murat Nemet-Nejat has been living in America for many years means he is now very familiar with Americans and all the guises they may wear and has acquired a sure grasp of the subtleties and intricacies of the language they use: its expressions, idioms and various forms of slang. In other words, he has a strong command of the language of the street and of certain realities that lie beyond language. This has allowed him to give voice to certain hidden meanings, references and evocations that lie just outside the text. Needless to say this is an essential skill when it comes to the actual interpretation of literary texts, which are, of course, the product of a single culture, as it allows the translator to establish cross-cultural connections and to provide what we might term equivalence in the translated text. Nemet-Nejat sees translation as a linguistic adventure. He has been known to begin translating a poem that excites him even before he has finished reading it in its entirety. However, he works with great care on every translation and it takes him many years to publish his work. He has said that it took him a whole year to finish the twenty pages of küçük İskender’s “souljam”, five years to complete his Orhan Veli volume; he spent three years on Ece Ayhan, five years on Seyhan Erözçelik, while his book of Birhan Keskin translations took him two years. Over the past four to five years he has been preparing a volume of translations of Sami Baydar. The “Eda” anthology, which might very well be his magnum opus, took him a full eight years to complete.
Murat Nemet-Nejat has put forward the notion that every translation begins with a misreading; that every translation is an interpretation and that the act of translation is an art, a craft. He maintains that translation is a way of reading a poem in a deep and critical manner, discovering its uniqueness and carrying this foreignness over into another language. Accomplished translations, those that have created their own space in the history of literature are those that manage to maintain an aura of strangeness within the target language. This strangeness, however, is one that ultimately points to new modes of expression, to a revitalization of the target language in question. These translations tend to dwell on the peripheries of the language, almost at a point outside it, on a tangential plane; they function as a sort of ideal reference point. In contrast, those translations that completely melt into the body of the target language are ultimately lost. These are translations that read like an original poem first written in the target language and are, according to Nemet-Nejat, inadequate translations. In his article entitled “Translation and Style”, he highlights this concept, which could be termed as ‘a lack of something’ in the target language and he points out that: “The translations sense a quality in the original language, reflected in the original poem, which the second language lacks. The translator is faithful to this conception and tries to recreate it in the second language. A translation in this sense starts with criticism and ends by pointing, not to the first, but to the second language. It explores the second language and, if successful, changes it by assimilating this lack. I define this kind of translation a transparent text.” (6) Therefore, he considers those translations that influence the target language, that change its course to be successful. He cites Chaucer’s translation from the Italian of Troilus and Criseyde, Sidney’s translations of Petrarch’s sonnets, the King James Bible and Ezra Pound’s translations of the Anglo-Saxon The Seafarer and Li Po’s The Exile's Letter’s which did from the Chinese, as examples of this kind of translation in English.
For many years, Turkish poetry was represented abroad by a single voice: that of Nazım Hikmet. Through the work of a handful of dedicated translators it can now be said that Turkish poetry is now somewhat better represented and that an awareness of its richness has been raised. One might claim that poetry is the vital force in the tradition of Turkish literature. However, it has taken a long time for this to be reflected outside Turkey. The work of Murat Nemet-Nejat is a vital cog in moving Turkish poetry away from what might be termed the ghetto into which many non-western literatures are forced. He has managed to present Turkish poetry as poetry and not as some exotic object to be poured over in the classroom. In doing this he has also brought radical ideas of translation to this poetry. As he states in his “Questions of Accent”: “The true power of language, its well of inspiration, for me, lie in its conscious or unconscious errors, cracks, imperfections.” (7) Rather than simply reproduce the original in English, Nemet-Nejat has sought to almost undermine the language itself, to turn it in on itself, to allow itself to question what it has become. This kind of radical stance asks the reader of the target language to view the poetry being presented to them as something worthy of their attention, as something they have always needed. In both the “Eda” anthology and his single poet volumes, i.e. those dedicated to Orhan Veli, Ece Ayhan, Seyhan Erözçelik and Birhan Keskin, he strains against the limits of the English language, making it strange, uncanny and new.
The achievements of Murat Nemet-Nejat are multiple. He has translated and edited an anthology of a language and a poetry, one still very much in movement. He has structured his translations around a specific world view, one that challenges the nature, structure and mores of the target language while also enriching it. In addition, he has devoted a lot of time in his essays and prefaces in attempting to put Turkish poetry in context. As Nurdan Gürbilek states: “Although the list of works translated from Turkish into English is long, these texts are somehow lost. Lost in the sense that they don’t have a context and seem to come out of nowhere. They are like free-floating stars without a galaxy, they do not make a constellation, either among themselves or among texts in other languages. They do not talk among themselves or with texts written in other languages. There is something missing there.” (8) Therefore, his single volume translations of some of Turkish poetry’s most original voices are vital tomes, signaling to the reader of English, that there is a life beyond the world of the anthology. If context must be given, then no better context can be offered to a poet than a single volume in translation dedicated to their work. It tends to be the fate of so-called minor literatures to be represented solely by anthologies. Having rewritten the rules on anthologies, Murat Nemet-Nejat’s dedication to producing single volumes is also hugely important. The free-floating galaxies are reined in a little and brought closer to earth. These texts are encouraged to talk among themselves and to talk, in an ‘accented’ English, with other texts from other languages in order to form a new constellation.
Today, it is not possible to talk about any literature that is not inspired and developed by translation or to ignore the central role that English plays in translation. Spivak has said that “translation is the most intimate act of reading. Unless the translator has earned the right to become the intimate reader, she cannot surrender the text, cannot respond to the special call of the text.” (9) As an ‘intimate reader’, a dedicated and a pathfinder poet-translator, Murat Nemet-Nejat, through his inspiring work, has been adding new limbs to both English and Turkish for many years now. While exploring new approaches and forging new paths he draws circles with language all the while inviting us to join in an innovative collaboration and a creative dialogue emphasizing, as Behçet Necatigil once did, that: ‘Every thing is a translation’.
It is widely accepted that many different approaches to the study of translation were developed over the course of the twentieth century; each one of these asks us to think and explore in greater depth the relative autonomy of translation, the textual features, the translator’s strategies, the concepts of equivalence (accuracy, correctness, correspondence, license, fidelity) and function, in understanding how the translated text is connected to the target language and culture. Generally speaking, when the translator is recreating the source text not only should they remain ‘faithful’ to its content, its cultural context, its stylistic characteristics, and to the writer’s mode of expression, they must also try to bring across the foreignness and strangeness of the text while keeping in mind what is appropriate to the readership of whatever society they are translating for. Walter Benjamin argued, in his 1923 essay “The Task of Translator”, that translation is a ‘mode’ of ‘intention’ and a ‘mode’ of its own, therefore the translator “must expand and deepen his language by means of the foreign language. (…) The extent to which a translation manages to be in keeping with the nature of this mode is determined objectively by the translatability of the original.” (1) Alongside those who claim that the translator should develop their own distinct language are those who argue they should vary their language and style according to the poet/writer they are translating. There are also others, like the distinguished Turkish literary critic, writer, linguist, and translator Akşit Göktürk, who put forward the idea that literary translation is “merely guided by the original text” and is “a creative process marked by individual interpretation” and “for that reason the translation will bear the fingerprints of the translator” (2). Another Turkish writer and translator, Celal Üster, has written that he believes “the translator must needs be something of a chameleon.” He goes on to say that he has always thought “that just as the skin of the chameleon changes according to whatever situation or locale it finds itself in, the translator too should change as they dive into the world and soul of the writer they are translating”. He goes on to compare “the translator to that old soothsayer of Greek Mythology, Proteus who was able to take on whichever guise he chose.” (3) I believe that translators, especially translators of poetry, are akin to stubborn goats who forge their own paths by finding, with endless persistence, patience and passion, different strategies and solutions each time.
As an artistic activity, literary translation demands that the translator has a strong grasp of the source language and literary genre they are translating; in addition, they must have a thorough knowledge of the scope and range of their mother tongue and, furthermore, they must be able to apply all of this in practice. It is also essential that they bear in mind the nature of the readership that will eventually come to grapple with the text. As every translation has its own difficulties and obstacles and because every translator must make countless choices and adapt a number of different strategies, it is very difficult to lay down hard and fast rules, or set standards and methods for the act of translation. However, we are on relatively safe ground when we say that poetry should be translated by poets or, failing that, by dedicated readers or followers of poetry who have a deep knowledge of both the structure and technical characteristics of poetry as well as its various stylistic and expressive modes. If the translator is a poet, they can draw from their past experience to pay especial attention to the literal meaning, emotional resonance and sound of each word while attempting to capture the overall meaning, tone and syntax of the poem they are translating. To this we must also add the effects of the translator’s own method and approach to translation as well whatever they bring of what they have gleamed from the worlds of translation theory and criticism to their practice. Translation is a creative process, one that is learned by constantly writing, erasing and rewriting.
When reading different translations of the same source text, we often see that each translator recreates it in different ways according to whatever perspectives and problem solving methods shape their translation world view. While these differences, these various originalities, can be ascribed to the fact that every literary text hosts a plurality of meanings, in reality they stem from differences in translation strategy, interpretation, judgement and manner of expressing unique to each translator. The translator, taking into consideration both the mode of living, history and culture of the society from which the source text emanates and the those of the reader of the target text, endeavors to find some form of equivalence while transferring, in an appropriate manner, material from one language to another. It is expected that literary translation should display a certain linguistic fastidiousness and strive to create the same effect in the mind of the reader of the translation as that of reader of the source text while at the same time maintaining, what we might term, an air of foreignness. The reader of a poet whose work has been expertly translated should first become interested in any other book that poet may have published and then in the poetic tradition of that poet’s nation. This poetic dialogue with the other also corresponds to a form of colloquy with dead poets and this enacts a kind of literary resurrection that is capable of transcending all linguistic, cultural, historical and ideological limitations.
One of the most notable of these stubborn goats, Murat Nemet-Nejat is an innovative poet, a critical reader and a distinguished translator with a deep knowledge of the structures, depths and subtleties of both the English and Turkish languages. He has also acquired a profound insight into the cultures of both America and Turkey. He has brought all of these elements to bear on his many projects among which we can single out the “Eda” anthology, a comprehensive selection of some of the most original voices in contemporary Turkish poetry, from Ahmet Haşim to Orhan Veli; Behçet Necatigil to İlhan Berk; Cemal Süreya to Ece Ayhan; Gülten Akın to Enis Batur and Seyhan Erözçelik to küçük İskender and Didem Madak, his single volume translations of Orhan Veli, Ece Ayhan, Seyhan Erözçelik and Birhan Keskin, as well as the many prefaces and essays he has written on Turkish poetry and poetics and on translation. He is able to convey the richness of Turkish into English via translation. Nemet-Nejat is someone who has not only made Turkish poetry come alive in English but has provided a context for this deep-rooted and rich poetry, enabling the Anglophone reader to enter this unfamiliar world with more ease.
The care that Nemet-Nejat takes over his translations is clear from the selections of poets, poems and books that he has made. These choices indicate someone with a deep and comprehensive knowledge of contemporary Turkish poetry. It is also evident that he does not simply translate whatever might appeal to him or fit in well with his own aesthetic sense. Needless to say the criteria of ease of translation is one he does not entertain at all. The fact that he has successfully translated two books of the hermetic, ‘hard/tight’, and experimental poetry of Ece Ayhan, a poetry that challenges even the most dedicated native reader in its discordant use of language and ever shifting tone of voice, its dense web of image and disturbing atmosphere, its veiled homosexual allusions and slang, bears out the points mentioned above. There are few translators brave enough to tackle such work; fewer again who could do so successfully.
This point is further borne out by the work that Nemet-Nejat has done around the concept of Eda, which he defines in his “The Spiritual Life of Replicants”, in the following way: “Not only trees or animals, but in this (the 20th century Turkish) poetry colors, objects, things, natural processes are in dialogue with each other, weaving their endless patterns. Eda is the structure of this pattern, the mesh of linguistic and geographic coordinates which go to its creation. Not the individual, but objects, colors, things are at the center of this endless transformation, the ego attached to it only tangentially, a detail, suffering and ecstatic. It is this peripheral relationship of consciousness to wider natural forces –subjective and objective, visceral and abstract– which gives Turkish poetry its stunning originality.” (4) In the preface to anthology that bears the same name he explains that Eda consists of three major elements: firstly, the agglutinative nature of Turkish syntax, secondly a form of spirituality, a kind of subliminal Sufism born of this ever shifting syntax and thirdly the presence of the city of Istanbul itself as the reference point of twentieth-century Turkish poetry. Nemet-Nejat states that: “As much as a collection of translations of poems and essays, this book is a translation of a language.” (5) A close reading of the anthology reveals this to be true. “Eda” is not simply a collection of various poets, it is an attempt to capture the spirit and shape of another language. Nemet-Nejat follows Walter Benjamin’s belief that what gives a language translatability is its distance from the host language. Eda is the term he employs to express that difference. It can also be viewed as the poetics of Sufism embodied in the very structure of the Turkish language. The core of the idea put forward is that the syntax of Turkish allows it to function as a language of process: a continuum that does not divide time up into discrete parts as happens in western languages. The voice, therefore, of the Eda poem is a line drawn between silence and emotion. The anthology, therefore, is an attempt to present this idea of Eda while bring voices from a country considered to be on the periphery, a country whose literary culture is too often ignored, to the fore. The publication of this radical anthology meant too that Nemet-Nejat joined that select list of translators whose name on the cover of any book assures us, the readers, that the text we are about to read is of a certain quality.
The fact that Murat Nemet-Nejat has been living in America for many years means he is now very familiar with Americans and all the guises they may wear and has acquired a sure grasp of the subtleties and intricacies of the language they use: its expressions, idioms and various forms of slang. In other words, he has a strong command of the language of the street and of certain realities that lie beyond language. This has allowed him to give voice to certain hidden meanings, references and evocations that lie just outside the text. Needless to say this is an essential skill when it comes to the actual interpretation of literary texts, which are, of course, the product of a single culture, as it allows the translator to establish cross-cultural connections and to provide what we might term equivalence in the translated text. Nemet-Nejat sees translation as a linguistic adventure. He has been known to begin translating a poem that excites him even before he has finished reading it in its entirety. However, he works with great care on every translation and it takes him many years to publish his work. He has said that it took him a whole year to finish the twenty pages of küçük İskender’s “souljam”, five years to complete his Orhan Veli volume; he spent three years on Ece Ayhan, five years on Seyhan Erözçelik, while his book of Birhan Keskin translations took him two years. Over the past four to five years he has been preparing a volume of translations of Sami Baydar. The “Eda” anthology, which might very well be his magnum opus, took him a full eight years to complete.
Murat Nemet-Nejat has put forward the notion that every translation begins with a misreading; that every translation is an interpretation and that the act of translation is an art, a craft. He maintains that translation is a way of reading a poem in a deep and critical manner, discovering its uniqueness and carrying this foreignness over into another language. Accomplished translations, those that have created their own space in the history of literature are those that manage to maintain an aura of strangeness within the target language. This strangeness, however, is one that ultimately points to new modes of expression, to a revitalization of the target language in question. These translations tend to dwell on the peripheries of the language, almost at a point outside it, on a tangential plane; they function as a sort of ideal reference point. In contrast, those translations that completely melt into the body of the target language are ultimately lost. These are translations that read like an original poem first written in the target language and are, according to Nemet-Nejat, inadequate translations. In his article entitled “Translation and Style”, he highlights this concept, which could be termed as ‘a lack of something’ in the target language and he points out that: “The translations sense a quality in the original language, reflected in the original poem, which the second language lacks. The translator is faithful to this conception and tries to recreate it in the second language. A translation in this sense starts with criticism and ends by pointing, not to the first, but to the second language. It explores the second language and, if successful, changes it by assimilating this lack. I define this kind of translation a transparent text.” (6) Therefore, he considers those translations that influence the target language, that change its course to be successful. He cites Chaucer’s translation from the Italian of Troilus and Criseyde, Sidney’s translations of Petrarch’s sonnets, the King James Bible and Ezra Pound’s translations of the Anglo-Saxon The Seafarer and Li Po’s The Exile's Letter’s which did from the Chinese, as examples of this kind of translation in English.
For many years, Turkish poetry was represented abroad by a single voice: that of Nazım Hikmet. Through the work of a handful of dedicated translators it can now be said that Turkish poetry is now somewhat better represented and that an awareness of its richness has been raised. One might claim that poetry is the vital force in the tradition of Turkish literature. However, it has taken a long time for this to be reflected outside Turkey. The work of Murat Nemet-Nejat is a vital cog in moving Turkish poetry away from what might be termed the ghetto into which many non-western literatures are forced. He has managed to present Turkish poetry as poetry and not as some exotic object to be poured over in the classroom. In doing this he has also brought radical ideas of translation to this poetry. As he states in his “Questions of Accent”: “The true power of language, its well of inspiration, for me, lie in its conscious or unconscious errors, cracks, imperfections.” (7) Rather than simply reproduce the original in English, Nemet-Nejat has sought to almost undermine the language itself, to turn it in on itself, to allow itself to question what it has become. This kind of radical stance asks the reader of the target language to view the poetry being presented to them as something worthy of their attention, as something they have always needed. In both the “Eda” anthology and his single poet volumes, i.e. those dedicated to Orhan Veli, Ece Ayhan, Seyhan Erözçelik and Birhan Keskin, he strains against the limits of the English language, making it strange, uncanny and new.
The achievements of Murat Nemet-Nejat are multiple. He has translated and edited an anthology of a language and a poetry, one still very much in movement. He has structured his translations around a specific world view, one that challenges the nature, structure and mores of the target language while also enriching it. In addition, he has devoted a lot of time in his essays and prefaces in attempting to put Turkish poetry in context. As Nurdan Gürbilek states: “Although the list of works translated from Turkish into English is long, these texts are somehow lost. Lost in the sense that they don’t have a context and seem to come out of nowhere. They are like free-floating stars without a galaxy, they do not make a constellation, either among themselves or among texts in other languages. They do not talk among themselves or with texts written in other languages. There is something missing there.” (8) Therefore, his single volume translations of some of Turkish poetry’s most original voices are vital tomes, signaling to the reader of English, that there is a life beyond the world of the anthology. If context must be given, then no better context can be offered to a poet than a single volume in translation dedicated to their work. It tends to be the fate of so-called minor literatures to be represented solely by anthologies. Having rewritten the rules on anthologies, Murat Nemet-Nejat’s dedication to producing single volumes is also hugely important. The free-floating galaxies are reined in a little and brought closer to earth. These texts are encouraged to talk among themselves and to talk, in an ‘accented’ English, with other texts from other languages in order to form a new constellation.
Today, it is not possible to talk about any literature that is not inspired and developed by translation or to ignore the central role that English plays in translation. Spivak has said that “translation is the most intimate act of reading. Unless the translator has earned the right to become the intimate reader, she cannot surrender the text, cannot respond to the special call of the text.” (9) As an ‘intimate reader’, a dedicated and a pathfinder poet-translator, Murat Nemet-Nejat, through his inspiring work, has been adding new limbs to both English and Turkish for many years now. While exploring new approaches and forging new paths he draws circles with language all the while inviting us to join in an innovative collaboration and a creative dialogue emphasizing, as Behçet Necatigil once did, that: ‘Every thing is a translation’.
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[Every thing is a translation ]
Every thing is a translation Different is the translation of the same thing Examples: Whether his eyes were open or shut he could see it Eyes open or shut With eyes, he could se- His eyes…… he could see it In between a change, such as this: Let’s say he could see it With what could he see? Let’s say with his eyes. Every thing is a translation We turn everything (in)to/wards ourselves According to the self every thing Changes fragments Let’s say ‘He kept seeing it’ is what we mean This we may render in different ways Examples: Whether his eyes were open or shut… Eyes open or shut… Even if his eyes were shut… He opens his eyes, he shuts them, and yet… His eyes…… He kept seeing it (and so on) In between, forms change Depending on our taste, Turn the armchair this way or that It’s the same old chair But Still Some things have changed! I turn everything (in)to/wards myself There’s difference in the details How we view a news flash, an anguish or an expression of love Is one thing to your mind’s eye, quite another to mine. Behçet Necatigil Translated by Saliha Paker (10) |
References
- Walter Benjamin, “The Task of the Translator, The Translation Studies Reader, ed. Lawrence Venuti, Routledge, 2000, p.22.
- Akşit Göktürk, Çeviri: Dillerin Dili, YKY, 1994, p. 104.
- Celal Üster, Bir “Çevirgen”in Notları, Can Yayınları, Ocak 2019, p. 172.
- Murat Nemet-Nejat, The Spiritual Life of Replicants, Talisman House, Massachusetts, 2011, p. 49.
- Murat Nemet-Nejat, Eda: An Anthology of Contemporary Turkish Poetry, Talisman House, 2004, pp. 5/6.
- Murat Nemet-Nejat, “Translation and Style”, Talisman Magazine, 1991 (Spring 6), p. 99.
- Murat Nemet-Nejat, “Questions of Accent”, The Exquisite Corpse, Baton Rouge, 1993.
- Nurdan Gürbilek, “Excerpt from a Talk”, trans. Şehnaz Tahir Gürçağlar, Aeolian Visions / Versions: Modern Classics and New Writing from Turkey, ed. Mel Kenne, Saliha Paker and Amy Spangler, Milet Publishing, 2013, p. 11.
- Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “The Politics of Translation”, Outside in the teaching machine, New Yok: Routledge, 1993, p. 183.
- Behçet Necatigil, Translated by Saliha Paker, Turkish Poetry Today 2016, Red Hand Books, pp. 53-54.