Adania Shibli’s novel Minor Detail (Küçük Bir Ayrıntı) has been published in Turkish by Can Yayınları. We spoke to its translator, Mehmet Hakkı Suçin, about the book.
How did you decide to translate Minor Detail?
The translation was proposed to me by Cem Alpan of Can Yayınları. The offer actually came at a time when I was extremely busy. But once I read the book I saw how right a choice it was, and I said to myself: “A book like this should reach readers in the best and clearest possible way, and however busy I am, I should translate it.” So I accepted.
Could you tell us briefly about yourself as a translator? What kinds of books do you translate? Writers are often asked this, so let us ask you as a translator: do you have a translation routine?
While I was studying for my undergraduate degree in Arabic Language and Literature, I was translating Khalil Gibran for myself. Our library also had some issues of Fikrun wa Fann [Thought and Art], the Arabic-language magazine published by the Goethe-Institut. In the 1990s, when there was no internet, this magazine was an important resource for me. With my patchy Arabic I followed its articles on contemporary Arabic literature, and sometimes I tried my hand at translating the short pieces and poems that appeared in it. That is how my relationship with translation began. Notebooks and papers I came across by chance while moving house remind me that I also made attempts at translating Adonis and pre-Islamic Arabic poetry.
Around the time I finished my degree there was a magazine published in Ankara called Son Duvar, and from time to time I translated Arabic literature for it. During my master’s studies, when I was working on Yahya Haqqi’s short stories, I also translated one of his novellas into Turkish. Alongside the heavy load of non-literary translation I did to earn a living, I found myself in this line of work through the literary translations I did either for myself or on request.
As for the kinds of books I translate, I can say that I don’t distinguish between genres. I can translate any kind of work — poetry, short stories, novels, non-fiction — that I enjoy reading and that I think gives the reader something. Whether it is classical or modern makes no difference either. Indeed, my body of translations includes pre-Islamic poetry and the Qur’an. From the Andalusian period I have translated The Ring of the Dove (Ibn Hazm) and Hayy ibn Yaqzan (Ibn Tufayl), and from contemporary Arabic poetry, Adonis, Mahmoud Darwish and Nizar Qabbani. There are also dozens of poems and stories by today’s writers that I have translated and published in magazines, as well as novels, as with Yahya Haqqi and Adania Shibli. But when I look back, I realise that I have translated poetry books more than anything else.
Still, I am unfortunately unable to have a translation routine, because I don’t have the luxury of devoting all my time to translation. Academic and administrative work at the university and supervising many graduate theses take up a great deal of time. This shouldn’t be taken to mean that I don’t love being an academic. I feel very lucky to have a job in which I am constantly learning, and teaching as I learn. But without the activities beyond learning and teaching, I could devote more time to my own writing and to translation.
Let’s turn to the translation of Minor Detail. What was the process like, how long did it take, and what difficulties did you encounter?
As I said, the offer came from Cem Alpan, editor of Can Yayınları’s contemporary series. I was very busy at the time, translating the pre-Islamic Muʿallaqat, the Seven Suspended Odes. Despite that, when I read the novel I said, “I have to translate this book,” and accepted. The translation took about two months. Because it was during the pandemic, I had the chance to devote time to the work, so I was able to finish it quickly.
The novel consists of two parts. The first part has a style marked by a rather “distanced” third-person narration and by repetition in the protagonist’s actions. Here “the other” is narrated coolly, in a “cinematographic” way. The second part is told in the first person, mostly in the present tense, and, unlike the first, its style is full of ebbs and flows and hesitations. It was very important to convey successfully in translation this quality of a text in which a single story with a strong texture is created out of two separate stories told from two completely different perspectives. Then again, Arabic syntax unfolds forwards while Turkish syntax unfolds backwards. So if the Turkish translation is not balanced carefully, it can become cumbersome and hard to read. This is a consequence of the structural difference between Arabic and Turkish. Apart from that, I can’t say I had great difficulties.
Was Adania Shibli a writer you had read, liked and were familiar with before translating her? Or did you get to know her after deciding to translate the book?
Years ago, while talking with an Italian colleague at a conference, I heard that she had translated some of Adania Shibli’s stories. After that I read her stories published in various literary magazines. I even translated one of them, but at that time my computer crashed and unfortunately I couldn’t publish it. Years later Adania appeared before me again — but this time with a novel.
What kind of writer is Adania Shibli in her original language, in your view? What are the distinctive features of her use of language and her style?
I think she uses Arabic very successfully. She has a style that affects and shakes the reader, and she does this without stooping to emotional manipulation. Her choice of words, the way she uses them, the associative relations she builds between words, and the way she blends all of this with plot and characters to create an atmosphere show her meticulous attention to detail. She structures every component of the novel in balance, “leaving it just right”. What is more, she has a sincere language, and this greatly heightens the authenticity of the text.
As a translator, is there a passage in the book that particularly moved you? If so, which one or ones?
[Suçin chose one passage from each part of the novel. From the first part: the scene in which the soldiers make the captive girl wash herself with a hose in the desert while they look on (pp. 31–32 of the Turkish edition). From the second part: the narrator’s reflection on her inability to distinguish the boundaries between things, and on how small, seemingly needless details — the “fly droppings” on a painting rather than the painting itself — may be a way of reaching the truth (pp. 58–59). The passages are quoted in full, in Turkish, in the original interview; in English they can be read in Elisabeth Jaquette’s translation of Minor Detail.]
Originally published in Turkish as “Çevirmenine Sorduk: Mehmet Hakkı Suçin ve ‘Küçük Bir Ayrıntı’” in Parşömen, 16 November 2021. Translated into English for this site.