So exciting! I can't wait to read these.
posted morning of Tuesday, September second, 2008
➳ More posts about Museum of Innocence
➳ More posts about Orhan Pamuk
➳ More posts about Readings
Just to excite you more, the first sentence is:
"Hayatimin en mutlu aniymis, bilmiyordum."
It was the happiest moment of my life, I did not know.
posted morning of September third, 2008 by Ayse
Thanks, Ayse!
I expect I would be excited to read that, except I would not understand it! Translation please? I will see if I can make heads or tails of it with online translation tools.
posted morning of September third, 2008 by Jeremy
The translation is:
"It was the happiest moment of my life, I did not know."
posted morning of September third, 2008 by Ayse
Oh, thanks! Somehow I thought you were saying, "[Reading this sentence] was the happiest moment of my [Ayse's] life." If I would have thought a little before replying, I would have figured it out. But I'm too excited!
Thanks very much for the sentence and the translation.
posted morning of September third, 2008 by Jeremy
Is this approximately correct?
* Hayatimin = "of my life"
* mutlu = "happy"
* aniymis = "moment"
* bilmek = "know"
* yordum = "I did not"
posted morning of September third, 2008 by Jeremy
Hayatimin = of my life
en = most
mutlu = happy
en mutlu = most happy, happiest
an = moment
aniymis = was the moment
bilmek = to know
bilmemek = not to know
bilmiyordum = I didn't know
Here also a link for the tv interview he gave on Tuesday. http://www.ntvmsnbc.com/news/457412.asp
Sorry it is in Turkish.
posted afternoon of September third, 2008 by Ayse
Thanks. I posted your translation and the interview link on the front page. -- A number of people seem to be visiting the blog today from Turkey, so it may come in handy.
posted afternoon of September third, 2008 by Jeremy
There is a readers' reviews site about the novel at themuseumofinnocence.com
posted evening of October 6th, 2008 by Serdar
Thanks, Serdar!
posted evening of October 6th, 2008 by Jeremy
The above translation is literal and not exactly correct.In Turkish the verb 'bilmek' does not need an object as it does in English.Therefore 'It was the happiest moment of my life,I did not know' feels like an incomplete sentence to an English speaker.Perhaps 'It was the happiest moment of my life though I didn't know it' would be a tad more elegant!!Although even that does not quite do it...
posted morning of June 21st, 2009 by neil p. doherty
Thanks, Neil. I find translation a pretty fascinating activity -- I'll be really interested to see how Göknar renders this sentence; the dialogue in this thread is contributing a lot to my anticipation. Last I looked the translation will be coming out in August -- can't wait!
posted morning of June 21st, 2009 by Jeremy
No, that's wrong -- Wikipædia says October 20th is the release date for the translation, and that Freely is doing it -- don't know where I got the idea Göknar was.
posted morning of June 21st, 2009 by Jeremy
Ah: got that idea from Autobiographies of Orhan Pamuk. I guess Göknar's proposal did not pan out.
posted morning of June 21st, 2009 by Jeremy
I hope that Maureen Freely is doing it.I don't think Goknar is a great translator.His choice of register is often poor(this is the trap that many fall into when translating from their first language into a second and something that has hampered Turkish translations for years!!) and I found his word selection to be off.As someone who can read Pamuk in Turkish I find this frustrating indeed.Benim adim Kirmizi in particular suffered a lot in translation!!
posted afternoon of June 22nd, 2009 by neil p. doherty
Ever though of learning Turkish?It opens up a large and mostly hidden literature.For many reasons,most of them political and historical, Turkish literature has never really had much limelight in the West.Unlike the literature of the old Eastern block and Greece it has received much attention.Let's hope this will change with Orhan Pamuk's nobel.
posted afternoon of June 22nd, 2009 by neil p. doherty
I like Freely's translations a lot too and had some problems with Göknar's word choices in My Name is Red, though I don't read any Turkish to be able to compare it to the original. How do you feel about Güneli Gün's translations? I had a lot of trouble with The New Life but have been meaning to read her version of The Black Book -- McGaha makes a fairly convincing case that it's a lot closer to the original than Freely's.
posted afternoon of June 22nd, 2009 by Jeremy
And yes, Turkish is one of the languages that I'd love to learn... if there were world enough and time... right now I'm struggling with Spanish. Out of curiosity, what was your path to learning Turkish?
posted afternoon of June 22nd, 2009 by Jeremy
My path to Turkish was a 10 year stay in Istanbul and marriage to a Turkish lady.I fell in love with the language (and of course also the lady!!) when I got there and just devoted myself to learning it,which I did.It really was like learning to walk again and nothing like the other languages I learned,or at least tried to learn, before.I am now back in Dublin (another city soaked in literature) and we still use Turkish as our home language.As for Guneli Gun's versions I think they don't read very well in English and again I would question her use of register,I remember a line on the first page of The Black Book where Galip says "you will suffer jealousy" which is akward and ungainly.Having said all that Orhan is not a prose stylist in Turkish.His use of language is often criticized in Turkey, so perhaps the Gun akwardness may be a better reflection of the original.But I really don't like them!!!
posted afternoon of June 23rd, 2009 by neil p. doherty
I have just noticed the..were there world enough and time.Nice!!!
posted afternoon of June 23rd, 2009 by neil p. doherty
Wow, that sounds like a great time. Thanks for the comments! I'll take a look at Turkish sometime... Can you recommend any short Turkish poetry? The Spanish seemed to really start coming along a little once I started reading Neruda -- that was sort of the key that started to unlock the language.
posted evening of June 23rd, 2009 by Jeremy
The master of short Turkish poetry is Ozdemir Asaf though I'm not sure if his work is available in English,though I can check it out.The same applies to Sabahettin Kudret Aksal whose late poems are all short meditations.You will find the poems of Orhan Veli in English and these are also worth checking out.Translation is the problem that bedevils Turkish literature,especially poetry.
posted morning of June 28th, 2009 by neil p. doherty
Thanks -- I see the site Türkçe Şiir has a number of Asaf's poems in Turkish here and in translation here; I will try taking a look at them side-by-side.
posted morning of June 28th, 2009 by Jeremy
