Interview by Dr. Mohammad Miqdadi
Mehmet Hakkı Suçin, a university professor, has worked for years to reopen the closed windows of communication between Arab and Turkish cultures, since both draw from the same springs that once gave humanity a rare intellectual and spiritual fulfilment.
He chose the hardest road to this noble goal; yet, like a lover thirsting for union, he goes to the text and summons everything around it. He touches it, bends tenderly over it and converses with it to uncover what is hidden by the night, the sand, the flowers and the sea, and by the stars that accompany the text and light the path of its migration toward the distant and the unreachable; then he breathes into it something of his own soul that restores its pulse in its new cradle.
Dr. Mehmet Hakkı Suçin has a rich record to which he adds something new every day. After graduating from the Department of Arabic at Ankara University, he wrote his master’s thesis on the short fiction of Yahya Haqqi, and in his doctoral dissertation he discussed the problems and strategies of translation between Arabic and Turkish.
He chaired the committee for “Preparing Arabic Language Curricula” in Turkey. He received the Turkish Writers’ Union’s translation of the year award (2016) for his translation of Nizar Qabbani’s The Book of Love, and the translation of the year award from the book supplement of the Turkish newspaper Dünya for his translation of Adania Shibli’s novel Minor Detail (2021). He also won the Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation and International Understanding for his entire body of translation work, which comprises more than thirty works of classical and modern Arabic literature, beginning with the Mu‘allaqat and extending to Ghassan Kanafani, Mohammed Bennis, Naguib Mahfouz, Mahmoud Darwish, Adonis and Gibran.
Mehmet Hakkı Suçin, with whom we held this calm conversation, continues translating chapters of Arabic literature, aware of the weight of his responsibility and the importance of his role in linking Arab and Turkish cultures, so as to offer both nations a precious opportunity for the exchange of knowledge in this universal space open to every possibility of communication, in search of shared and noble human values.
Could we pause with you at the threshold of your first interest in the Arabic text: since when, how and why? And what are your observations on your predecessors who translated works from Arabic into Turkish?
In fact, choosing Arabic was not a deliberate choice. I enrolled in the Department of Arabic Language and Literature at Ankara University intending to change my major later. But after attending classes regularly and savouring the taste of Arabic, I gave up the idea of switching. During this period I read some books by Gibran Khalil Gibran and Naguib Mahfouz that had been translated from English; through these readings I came to love Arabic and grew more attached to it. That is how the love affair between me and the Arabic language began, and it continues without interruption.
Most of those who deal with the Arabic text complain of its heavy freight, especially poetic discourse, born as it is in an environment governed by a set of sociological relations in which many critical questions go unanswered. How far do you agree with this view? Is there anything you would add from your long experience in this field?
It is not easy to deal with Arabic in Turkey. There is a stereotyped view of this language from two groups: one loves Arabic, while the other keeps its distance from everything connected with it. The first group loves Arabic only because it is the language of the Qur’an and takes little interest in its literary, cultural and civilizational side. The second sees in Arabic something that leads to backwardness and extremism, without knowing that Arabic has a cultural and civilizational dimension. We, the specialists in Arabic language and literature, work to erase this ignorance on both sides by translating Arabic literature, introducing this culture and presenting it as it truly is, without evasion or ambiguity.
A text is a living being with its own paths across its own topography; its presence is embodied in its sap, energy, senses and visions. How does a translator deal with such a text? Can he, as an Arabist, give the text a spirit that enables it to adapt to its new host environment and reach the hearts of its intended audience of readers and scholars?
When I entered the field of translating Arabic literature from Arabic into Turkish, I found two basic obstacles on this path. The first concerned the “translations” in circulation at the time, which, owing to their extremely poor quality, had distorted the image of Arabic literature in Turkish: anyone reading Mahmoud Darwish, for example, in these poor translations met meaningless texts, as if the poet, God forbid, were merely babbling. The other was the stereotyped image of Arabs and their culture that I mentioned above. After retranslating some of these “translation scribbles,” whether in Turkish literary magazines or through publishing houses, I managed to draw the attention of the publishing world and the reading public in Turkey to these poor translations on the one hand, and to the power of quality and distinction that Arabic literature holds on the other. Thus, instead of searching exhaustingly for good publishers for my translations, distinguished publishers began suggesting that I translate certain works of Arabic literature. Works of Arabic literature were published by major houses with wide distribution networks throughout Turkey, not to mention the attention writers and critics paid to these translations in their articles in the most important Turkish literary magazines.
Some believe that the Arabist/translator has a “weighty” presence, in language and thought, that is reflected in the new text, so that if another translator were to back-translate it, a text different from the original might result. How true is this, and what is its effect on translation, in your personal experience?
Literary translation is not a mechanical computer operation in which we back-translate to arrive at an identical copy in the source language. Back-translation may help us see how much meaning has been lost in translation, but it does not always apply to literary translation, which is a continuous process of re-creation in the target text, albeit “within the bounds” of the source text’s own creativity.
In this case, translation is a second-degree creation of the source text. So it is not enough for the translator to know his mother tongue or first language (the target language); he must be a creative writer in it, as well as a good reader and analyst of the language he translates from. There is a simile I like to repeat to my students: the translator is the one who carries the writer on his back, while carrying the reader on the writer’s back. It is the translator who takes the reader on a journey, but the reader thinks the writer is playing this role.
You have translated nearly thirty works of Arabic literature, divided between the classical and the contemporary. Do you favour either? And what have these translations brought to the Turkish reader?
In translating from Arabic I have made no distinction between contemporary and classical literature. I see Arabic literature as a whole, because in its new there is something old, just as in its old there is something new. Can we regard Imru’ al-Qays, al-Mutanabbi, Abu Nuwas or Abu Tammam as ancients when they were the innovators of their age and still are? Can we ignore Kalila wa Dimna and the tales of The Thousand and One Nights merely because they are old, even though they are founding texts of Arabic prose?
Nor do I distinguish by literary genre: I translate poetry and narrative, old and new alike. What matters is that the work be good and add something new to the Turkish library.
My experience shows that this approach is not mistaken. Varlık, a venerable magazine published without interruption since 1933, began some months ago to publish my translations of classical poets such as al-Mutanabbi, Abu Nuwas and Abu al-‘Ala al-Ma‘arri, and we will continue publishing translations of other texts, old and new. This is a window open to creative writers and to the literary public in Turkey.
Do you have criteria when choosing the texts you will devote yourself to translating? And do you take into account the inclinations of Turkish readers and academics as part of the factors that determine your choice of creative works?
Certainly I have criteria for selection. One is that the work I am about to translate be distinguished, worthy of the sweat I shed in translating it; another is a sense that the work must be carried over from the corpus of Arabic literature so as to add something to the literary system in Turkey. For when we translate a work, we not only introduce the source culture through it, we also add something new to the local literature. Turkish publishers, for their part, suggest that I translate a work they have found in one of the European languages; I agree if it convinces me and my academic workload allows. If these circumstances prevent me, I find a young translator able to take on the project, sometimes under my supervision. In this way we are gradually widening the audience for translation from Arabic literature into Turkish.
Some say that the closer the translator stays to the content of the original, the more he sacrifices stylistic beauty, and the more he indulges in elaboration and stylistic beauty, the further he strays from the content. How can the translator remain faithful to the original while achieving equivalence between the language of the text and the target language at the same time?
The obstacles a translator may face at the level of meaning can be tackled, overcome and surmounted in one way or another, since the content of the “source text” can be conveyed in some form. But the most important obstacles, in my view, lie in conveying the form of the “source text,” especially in classical texts. In the poems I translate from Abu Nuwas, al-Mutanabbi or al-Ma‘arri, I recreate their rhythm in Turkish so that they read as poetry on the one hand and keep something of an ancient flavour on the other. Since there is no need to recreate the Arabic metres in Turkish, we must compensate for rhythm in the “target language” by other means, such as the text’s internal rhythm, unforced rhyme and other rhythmic devices. Another obstacle concerns the language of classical texts, which can be understood only through commentaries; yet, despite their usefulness and importance, these commentaries may narrow or distort the meaning of the text more than they expand or clarify it, so the translator must be careful in drawing on and using them.
Is there anything to suggest that the original text loses some of its stylistic and structural features and the beauty of its internal rhythms? Or does creative translation entail going beyond and sacrificing these elements in order to preserve the essence of the text’s content and the meanings and connotations it holds?
Translation in itself is a form of crisis management. It is like a negotiation between writer and translator conducted on a “win-win” strategy; if one party loses, the negotiation loses this character. During negotiations both parties make mutual concessions to reach the best agreement for both alike. The translator is the one who does his utmost to preserve the content of the text, which is a red line for the writer whom we have assumed to be negotiating with the translator during the translation process; but what poses the real challenge for the translator is the form of the literary work, or its shape, which is often intertwined with its content.
What is required of the translator, ideally, is to recreate the “source text” in the “target language” without touching the content and, at the same time, without sacrificing the form of the literary work: its style, rhetorical devices, rhythm, symbols, double meanings and so on. But reaching such a result is not always easy. We are often faced with two choices: sacrificing content or sacrificing form; and the translator regards sacrificing form as “the most hateful of permitted things,” the lesser of two evils.
You chaired the committee that oversaw the preparation of Arabic curricula at the primary, middle and secondary levels. How do you see the state of Arabic teaching in Turkey?
There is no doubt that there has been considerable progress in methods of teaching Arabic in Turkey compared with previous years, but preparing curricula is not enough. We need textbooks prepared in line with these curricula, as well as trained teachers and a school environment suited to applying them, which is what we generally lack in Turkey at present. I believe the main reason the quality of Arabic teaching has not improved is the prevailing view of this language as the language of religion, with little attention paid to its communicative and civilizational dimension.
You received the “best translation” award from the Turkish Writers’ Union in 2016 for your translation of Nizar Qabbani’s The Book of Love, the 2021 “best translation” award from the Turkish newspaper Dünya, and the Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation for achievement, for all your translated works. What does this mean to you?
It means that the readership of Arabic literature in Turkey is steadily growing thanks to these translations, which I have produced systematically and spread over the years. Just as writers have readers who follow their work, translators too have readers who follow their translations. My translations have devoted readers who read everything I translate. Of course this is something I am proud of. And the awards did not stop at the two works you mentioned but extended to other honours: my translation of Mahmoud Darwish’s I Don’t Want This Poem to End was listed among the top 11 books in Turkey in 2016. After the publication of my translation of Darwish’s Almond Blossoms and Beyond, PEN Turkey declared Mahmoud Darwish “writer of the month” in August 2020; and a committee of 23 poets, novelists and short story writers chose my translation of the Mu‘allaqat into Turkish among the fifty best literary books, original and translated, in Turkey in 2020. These are unprecedented honours for Arabic literature in Turkey. As for the achievement award, it is an Arab recognition of my efforts to introduce Arabic literature in Turkey. Awards make you sharpen your strength to devote yourself to new translation and writing projects, for I have much still to do to reach a high level of literary and cultural exchange.
How do you see the particularities of current literary writing in Turkey?
At present there is a lively literary environment in Turkey, for many reasons: strict laws protecting copyright; the availability of books throughout the country thanks to large distribution companies; a high reading rate compared with other countries in the region; the vitality of book production, both translated and original; and the spread of creative writing workshops in poetry, prose and other genres. The generation of poets, novelists and short story writers of the 1950s is considered the “golden generation” of contemporary Turkish literature: the “Second New” movement emerged in poetry, and modernism in the novel, short story and drama. We still read the writers of this generation, but in the late 1960s and early 1970s writers appeared who were dominated by an individualist tendency closer to a postmodern current; their works, however, were not widely read until years after their deaths, in the 1980s, which led to the emergence of a new generation influenced by them while keeping its own particularity in writing. Turkish literature is well read at home, but it has largely failed to introduce its new writers through translation into foreign languages and through publishing excerpts of their work in literary magazines, especially English-language ones.
You launched the magazine Shurfa as a project devoted to publishing texts in Arabic and Turkish. To what extent did it help open channels of cultural exchange between the Arab and Turkish sides?
The magazine appeared monthly with the support of the Turkish Ministry of Culture. Our aim was to translate the “good” in Arabic and Turkish literature and distribute it in Turkey and in the most important centres of the Arab world. The team included the Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish and the Jordanian short story writer and poet Hisham Bustani, as well as literary figures from Turkey, to select texts from Turkish and Arabic literature. We published six issues; it was a project funded for six months, after which it stopped because no new funding could be obtained to continue publication.
You run a blog called Çeviri ve Ötesi (Translation and Beyond). Could you tell us about it?
The blog is the product of my individual effort. I launched it in 2014; through it I introduce my translations and writings and publish articles that have appeared about my work, as well as translations from Arabic literature into Turkish that I publish to attract the interest of Turkish readers in Turkey and abroad. The blog is an important reference for those interested in this field, and its followers now exceed seven thousand, which strengthens my resolve to keep working to spread knowledge in the field of literature and translation. The blog can be reached at: www.ceviriveotesi.org
Finally, writers and creative artists generally have their own rituals when engaged in the creative act. Do you have any such rituals when translating or writing?
I translate or write accompanied by calm classical music, or I draw close to the sounds of nature in all their purity and whispering (the murmur of water in streams and rivers, waves gliding over the blue of the sea, gulls busy embracing the shells and creatures left behind by the tide…!). These accompanying rituals help me concentrate, especially when I translate poetry.
Originally published as: Mohammad Miqdadi, “Mehmet Hakkı Suçin: The Translator Takes the Reader on a Journey Through the Texts of the Other,” Al-Nashir Al-Usbu‘i (Publishers Weekly, Arabic edition), no. 56, June 2023, pp. 6–13. Translated from the Arabic for this site.