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January-March 2010 JOURNAL OF EURASIAN STUDIES Volume II., Issue 1. _____________________________________________________________________________________ Another word that was used in the mouth of Rosella, was nisyan “oblivion”, in the sentence “...yavaş yavaş nisyan da başladı” (oblivion starts little by little) which, in Portuguese I translated by the literary “olvido” (cognate with the common Spanish word for “to forget” olvidarse). Nisyan is an ottomanism that comes from the common Arabic word for “forget” (< root nsy) “forgetfulness”. Pelin’s reaction to the word is very revealing, for she retorts “Pardon, ne basladı?” (“Sorry, what starts?”), indicating that she does not have a clue of what that word means. Rosella’s answers, unutuş, being promptly understood by Pelin, also tells us that that word, from an original Turkic root unut-, is the common one in modern Turkish. In chapter 3 occurs another difficult case of translation involving 3 words that basically mean the same thing: tecessüs, merak and the French curiosité, all meaning “curiosity”. The context is as follows: after using the word tecessüs (from the Arabic tajassus “espionage”), Pelin again does not understand and asks “Ne uyandırmakta?” (Awakens what?) and Rosella, who speaks German and French as well, answers using the French word (a common second language, by the way, in Turkey at the beginning of the 20 th century) curiosité. Pelin, in turn, uses the current Turkish word for “curiosity” merak, which is, ironically, an Arabic derived word as well. The solution devised by me was to use the French word curiosité in the place of the ottoman tecessüs, for her reaction was just as if she had heard a foreign word. Obviously, mutati mutandis, there is much less of an impact in hearing (or reading) the word curiosité as compared to its Portuguese cognate “curiosidade” than when hearing tecessüs as compared to curiosité. The fluctuation of acceptance is well illustrated by the use of the pair talebe vs öğrenci, both meaning “student”. The etymon of the first, however, an ottomanism, is the Arabic ṭalabat, plural of ṭālib. The second is derived from the Turkic root öğren- “to learn” and was coined in 1935. It is interesting to note that in chapter 4 of Dualar Kalıcıdır to similar questions are asked, one by each woman, and each using one of the words mentioned above: Pelin asks about Aldo, Rosella’s late husband “o da öğrenci miydi?” (Was he a student as well?), while in the following chapter Rosella asks about Dimitri, one of Pelin’s “suitors”: talebe mi o da? (Was he a student too?). Such use, perfectly understood by both women, corroborates Çelik’s finding (p. 8,16) in which there does not seem to have occurred any substantial semantic differentiation between the two variants and is indicative of Tuna’s sharp linguistic perception. Another curious pair is mektep x okul. The first, a genuinely Arabic word and enjoying a long tradition in Osmanlıca (Ottoman Turkish), was, without a doubt, one of the first words to be thought of being replaced, due to the centuries of association of school and Islamic studies that often went together in the Ottoman Empire. Its substitute okul, however, was harshly criticized by some sticklers to the rules of Turkish morphology, for it bear a striking resemblance with the French word école. But the point is that it coincides perfectly with the Turkic root oku- meaning “study, read” + a supposed suffix –l, which does not exist in Turkish, according to those _____________________________________________________________________________________ © Copyright Mikes International 2001-2010 150
January-March 2010 JOURNAL OF EURASIAN STUDIES Volume II., Issue 1. _____________________________________________________________________________________ purists 1 . That word is used by Rosella several times, as in the sentence: “Dükkânlar, sinagoglar ve mektepler yakılıp yıkılıyor...” (The shops, the synagogues and the schools were being burned down and destroyed…). Okul, in turn, the preferred word in contemporary Turkish, is doubtlessly used by Pelin, as in the sentence: Okuldaki bir Rock grubunda bas çalıyor (He plays the bass in a rock band at school). Another source of difficulty in the choice of words in Portuguese occurs in chapter 2 when Rosella says: Mütenevvi şeyler yaşamış bir insanın ifadesiyle bakıyorlar. (They (eyes) look like people who have lived several things). The point here is the word mütenevvi, an Arabic word meaning “several”, from the root nw c , and which Pelin does not understand and asks: Nasıl şeyler? (What kind of things?), to which Rosella replies: mancherlei… Çeşitli… The first is the German word for “several” while the second is the current word (of Persian origin, incidentally) for that concept in Turkish. The solution of using “diversas”, a more formal Portuguese word for “several” does not give the same nuance as mütenevvi, which is obsolete (described under that entry as eskimiş by the Türk Dil Kurumu). Another interesting occurrence is of the type İkinci Cihan Harbi, as Rosella says, and İkinci Dünya Savaşı, both meaning “Second World War”. The second phrase is not mentioned in the book, and surely it would be in the mouth of Pelin, but it is the current wording in contemporary Turkish. But it is noteworthy that, excepting ikinci “second”, which is of Turkic stock, cihan, meaning “world” comes from Persian, whereas harp, meaning “war”, is of Arabic origin. For “war”, nowadays, savaş is used, but it is not a neologism, but a very old Turkic word, which occurs even in the Turkish epic Dede Korkut (16 th century), as when Dirse Han says Savaşmadan urışmadın alı vereyim (I shall give them to you without a war or a combat). Rosella uses the word a second time when referring to the Turkish War of Independence as İstiklâl Harbi, whereas it is known in modern Turkish Kurtuluş Savaşı, having been completely turkified. Finally, dünya, in turn, is of Arabic origin too, which means that the phrase found its place by itself in modern Turkish, without the aid of purists. Needless to say that no matter which of the phrases are used in the work, the translation will always be the same into Portuguese: “Segunda Guerra Mundial”. Conclusion This article is the product of some ruminations during the translation process of Tuna Kiremitçi’s Turkish novel Dualar Kalıcıdır. It is a well known fact that no two translations of the same original will ever be exactly the same when done by two different translators, or even by the same one, at different times, but it was my attempt to show in this article that the Language 1 Lewis, 1999, 117-119. _____________________________________________________________________________________ © Copyright Mikes International 2001-2010 151
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