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Chamisso prize. This prize was different from the
other two. It was awarded by the Robert Bosch
Foundation to the child of an immigrant family of
non-German origin or to those who wrote works in
German having learned German in a different medium
of language and culture.
Life is a Caravanserai Has Two Doors I Came in
One I Went Out the Other
Through the eyes of a child narrator, the novel
describes life in Turkey in economically and
politically disturbed circumstances. Westernization,
especially Americanization, has started, but people are
unhappy and joblessness has become a big problem.
So migration to another country for better conditions
is a solution.
The narrator of the novel is an observant young
girl of seventeen. Hence her language is an inventive
language, which means it is also the language of
someone learning German. She does not have a full
command of the language and cannot understand the
differences of register. For this reason, the incidents
and details that affected her are focused on. In fact,
the title of the novel, Life is a Caravanserai Has Two
Doors I Came in One I Went Out the Other, also
supports this language and style. It is too long for a
title, it is given in sentence fragments rather than
words, and the prepositions “in” and “out” add
meaning to the title.
The novel focuses on source culture. The daily
life of a six-member family in search of new lives in
different parts of the country projects fascinating and
lively insights into another culture. The narrator’s
childhood and youth, which pass in Malatya, İstanbul,
and Bursa, and her life until she moves to Germany
confront the reader with the realities of Turkey.
Actually, the origin of the novel is not a life story.
The writer wants to narrate people who lived and
affected her during her childhood and beyond, but
then the book turns into a novel that talks about
Turkish culture. Turkey’s customs, traditions,
superstitions, religion, idioms, expressions, myths,
fairy tales, human relations, and the lives of women
constitute the backbone of the novel. In fact, the writer
wants to draw the attention of the Germans to the
Turkish culture. In other words, she wants to talk
about “the other,” as the Germans call it. She achieves
her goal, because the novel receives two prizes and
raises an echo in German literary circles.
The Translation of Life is a Caravanserai Has Two
Doors I Came in One I Went Out the Other
First written in German and acclaimed by German
readers, the novel was translated into Turkish by Ayça
Sabuncuoğlu and published by Varlık Publishing
House in 1992. Recently, the novel was translated
from German into English under the title Life is a
Caravanserai Has Two Doors I Came in One I Went
Out the Other. It was published by Middlesex
University Press in London in 2000. The translator,
Luise von Flotow, is an academic at Ottowa
University in Canada. The novel is 380 pages in
German, 264 pages in Turkish, and 296 pages in
English. In Saliha Paker’s words, “the novel is written
in a German hybridized with Turkish: an intriguing
case of self-translation” (2004: 11).
Flotow, in her article titled “Life as a
Caravanserai: Translating Translated Marginality, A
Turkish-German Zwittertext in English,” considers
Özdamar a successful migrant writer who, contrary to
migrant writers treating the themes of alienation,
cultural loss, and exile, has focused on the problems
of Turkey. Rather than adapting to a foreign-country
source, the culture problems of Turkey are
emphasized (2000: 68).
For Flotow, even though the novel is narrated
through a child narrator who is learning German,
when translated into English it does not create the
same effect it does in German. In other words, the
broken German language is not expressed in English.
If the translation were given in broken English as it
was written in broken German, would it create the
same effect To solve this problem, the translation is
done literally. Especially the culture-specific features
related to children’s jingles, songs, proverbs,
superstitions, religion, are translated literally.
To give some examples to express superstitutions:
Saniye lutschte und spuckte mit und
erzählte mir, was ich nicht im Leben tun
sollte, damit das Kismet unserer Familie
sich nicht wieder knotet:
Nicht in der Nacht die Fingernägel
abschneiden
Nicht im Stehen Wasser trinken
Bei Vollmond keine Fremden besuchen
Bei Vollmond nicht nähen, nicht stricken
Nie zwischen zwei Männern laufen,
sonst
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