EurasianStudies_0110..

January-March 2010 JOURNAL OF EURASIAN STUDIES Volume II., Issue 1.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
DE PINTO, Marco Syrayama
On the Difficulty of Translating into Portuguese the Ottomanisms x
Neologisms in Tuna Kiremitçi’s Dualar Kalıcıdır
Abstract
The present study has two main driving factors: one literary, and the other linguistic. The
first one deals with the largely unexplored territory of the vast archive modern Turkish
literature, in the words of Turkish scholar Azade Seyhan. Besides, as this author states, the
scarcity of translations (especially into Portuguese, but to a lesser extent into English and
German, for example) and the widely held perception of the Middle East, in the words of
Victoria Holbrook, “as an exclusively sociological area where humanities never happen”. The
second factor, and also main one in the study, is the rather unsurveyable stage in which the
lexical development of Turkey’s Turkish is currently. This topic doubtlessly deserves more
attention by linguists, for the Turkish language underwent in a few years (lexical) changes that
sets it aside as a special case in the history of languages in general. In this study, we shall
discuss the ways we found most suitable to translate the various pairs of ottomanisms x
neologisms in Kiremitçi’s work.
Keywords: Tuna Kiremitçi, neologisms, ottomanisms, Turkish language.
The Plot of Dualar Kalıcıdır
First, in order for the reader to get a general glimpse of Kiremitçi’s work and its linguistic
peculiarities to be discussed below, we shall summarize its plot. The book has been translated
into English as “Prayers Stay the Same” by Çiğdem Aksoy in 2008 and was translated by myself
and will be published in 2010 in Brazil. The story deals with a woman, called Rosella Galante,
who, as the un-Turkish name suggests, is Jewish, had found refuge in Istanbul during World
War II and Pelin, a young Turkish girl studying in Germany, where both of them live.
Mrs. Galante, a refined lady who is fluent in French and German as well as Turkish, after the
death of her husband, decides to hire a Turkish speaking “servant” whose only duty is to talk to
her in Turkish. Pelin, a university student, after reading the ad and going to be interviewed by
Galante, lands the job and then goes almost every day to her house just to talk. Their
_____________________________________________________________________________________
© Copyright Mikes International 2001-2010 147