"Live the questions now..."*
A blog on art/culture/music/etc.
17/04/2023
ODE TO A MASTER TRANSLATOR
Celâl Üster, Istanbul.
ON THE NATURE OF CHANCE ENCOUNTERS
Cover design: Erkal Yavi
Cover artwork: Abidin Dino
"Put your faith in yourself" my mother said. "Prepare. There is no such thing as a chance encounter. You alone control your fate." It was with that motivation that fifteen years ago, today, I telephoned Ferit Edgü’s office.
One of the most remarkable writers of the 20th century, Edgü is also a poet, a playwright, an aficionado, and collector of art. I handed him my portfolio of essays and poems and asked timid questions on forming my future career as a Turkish to English translator and writer. You may wonder why I called him and not someone else. For three reasons. Reason number one: When I was a little girl, my father had a copy of Ferit Edgü’s Ah Min-El Aşk (1978). Every now and then, I used to sit on his knee, and he would read to me poems from it; I recall its pale blue-grey paperback cover and after all those years, I can even smell it sitting here without it. Reason number two: Long ago, my mother’s art gallery in Narmanlı Han was across from the building where he had his office and though I never met him in person as a child, I got the sense he was the kind of person who could tell me what he really thought. Reason number three: I prefer the truth in all matters.
We had a brief meeting and he told me, “You know, I only speak French, not English, so I cannot comment on your portfolio, but I’ll pass it on to my editor and he will get in touch with you.” He then kindly signed my copy of Doğu Öyküleri (1995; now possible to read in English through Aron Aji’s translation; The Wounded Age and Eastern Tales, 2023) which I had brought along with me. On my way out, he walked me to the door of the art-deco apartment that housed hundreds of paintings all wrapped in sheets, hidden from sight. He asked me, “So, who is your favourite painter?” I turned and said, “Frida Kahlo”. He smirked and said: “Come and see me in a few years and we’ll talk again.” I don’t remember how I climbed down the dusty wrought-iron staircase. I don’t remember what I did next. I only remember that sinking feeling I had, one that told me no one would call me. It wasn’t because I didn’t trust him but because I was not confident.
Born in the 1980s, I grew up with the ridiculous rhetoric that I was a girl in a world dominated by men and if I wanted to get anywhere I had to be as tough as them. A time when men were demonised and resented by women, and both men and women mistreated women. It seems not much has changed in this aspect. How could a young woman with little experience in human relationships step on to any ladder, let alone climb it?
Herein lies a hidden message of gratitude to Ferit Edgü, for I have no words to describe how indebted I am to him for taking me seriously and giving me a chance.
THE NOVICE & THE MASTER
I was out. When the phone rang my mother picked up. It was a couple of weeks after my meeting with Ferit Edgü. My mother said, “A gentleman called you. He left his number; I couldn’t pick up his name.” With quickened breath and trembling hands I dialled the number. A man answered. I introduced myself. He said he had received my portfolio from Mr Edgü. I was so nervous; I couldn’t even ask him his name. He said that if I wished to retrieve my folder, I should go and see him. He gave me the address of Can Yayınları where he was Editor-in-Chief. Our meeting was in few days – a sunny day in May. I prepared. My fate was before me. I arrived at reception and told them I had a meeting with Mr Üster. Then, I sat and waited. Before long, I was asked to go upstairs to his office.
After a decade studying and working in the UK I had returned to Istanbul, my hometown full of childhood memories but memories were all that remained; the city had changed. I felt like a fish out of water. I knew it would be a rocky new start. I was still too young to believe that when one door closes another one opens. Ablaze with anxiety, I knocked on the white door and went in.
Cêlal Üster at his desk at Can Yayınları, 2008. The painting to the left is by Selma Gürbüz.
I found a man, in his early sixties with a short greying beard and round metal frame glasses, sitting behind a desk mounted with a PC and heaps of books and papers. A quiet man who listened more than he spoke. I noticed he was smoking a cigarette in the fashion of someone who had smoked for a long time: yet he was still doing it for focus and pleasure. By this time, as a well-known translator of English to Turkish, he had translated at least 60 important works of literature from four corners of the world. All significant political and literary names in no particular order: Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao Zedong, George Orwell, Paulo Coelho, Iris Murdoch, George Thomson, Jorge Luis Borges, Mario Vargas Llosa, H.G. Wells, Julius Fučik, Jaroslav Hašek, John Berger, Robert Louis Stevenson and others. He was also experienced in arts and culture publishing as he spearheaded several magazines and wrote columns for numerous others. Intellectually, decades of personal development set us apart but he treated me like he would treat any of his peers. That’s how I knew he would come to occupy an important place in my life. I respected him for his knowledge, his talent and sense of humour – though, as many who know him well would attest, dry as stale bread – but most of all, for his egalitarian attitude towards people.
From 2008 to 2012, when I lived and worked in Istanbul, Celâl Üster became my close friend and my mentor. It was him who told me of a potential vacancy for an assistant editor at P Culture and Arts Magazine.
By 2009, I had met quite a lot of people in the arts and culture bubble of Istanbul. One of my friends was the culture editor of Hürriyet Daily News and asked me to write a review of Hussein Chalayan’s exhibition at Istanbul Modern. The day my review was published, Mr Celâl (those were the days when I used to address him as Celâl Bey) and I went out to celebrate and he asked me if I would consider writing for Cumhuriyet where he was the Arts and Culture Editor. A handful of people know this: My paternal grandfather used to buy the newspaper every day. He used to read it to me, and that’s how I really learned to read. I told my grandfather once, “Perhaps one day I will write an article for this newspaper”. The day my first article in Cumhuriyet came out, he had seen the article before me. I think he was proud, though I also think he didn’t expect it.
I wrote for Cumhuriyet’s arts and culture pages for just over five years. Browsing through the thousands of work emails between Mr Üster and I, I realise how much he inspired me, how he lifted me when I was defeated, how he always spoke the truth and shared with me his myriad of life experiences. When I decided to leave Istanbul for the UK, he told me I should stay. I left and he respected it. For this, and for demonstrating that there are no chance encounters in life, I will be thankful to him for as long as I live.
LIFE AS A “TRANSLATION RODENT”
Born in 1947 in Istanbul, Celâl Üster went to the same private middle-class primary school as me, Şişli Terakki Lisesi the founding origins of which extends back to the Mekteb-i Terakki established in Thessaloniki (one of the most important cities of the Ottoman Empire) in 1877. Following this, he completed his secondary education at English High School for Boys and Robert Academy. He studied at the Department of English Language and Literature of the Faculty of Literature at Istanbul University. He would later tell me he never graduated.
His interest in translation flourished in his teens. As an avid reader he obsessively tried his hand at trying to translate the English texts he was reading. In 1976, at the relatively tender age of 27 and two years after getting out of prison (read on for details), he translated George Derwent Thomson’s The Human Essence: The Sources of Science and Art. In 1983 he received the prestigious Azra Erhat Translation Prize for another translation of George Derwent Thomson, The Prehistoric Aegean (1948); the first and only prize he ever received for 50 years of service to literature in translation.
Since then, he has become a household name in contemporary Türkiye’s literary scene. He acted as the culture editor of Cumhuriyet newspaper from 1982-1993 and again from 2008 to 2014. He was also editor-in-chief of Cumhuriyet’s Literary Supplement in its initial years, P Culture and Arts Magazine, and from 2003 to 2008 at Can Yayınları. For a long time he wrote the column headed “Yeryüzü Kitaplığı” (Corpus Terra) across various newspapers such as Yeni Yüzyıl, Yeni Binyıl and Radikal Literary Supplement. From 2014 to 2017, he penned “Körün Taşı” (The Blindman’s Stone), another column for Cumhuriyet. Currently, he continues to write his weekly column for T24, once again under the heading “Corpus Terra”: a column of social critique through current affairs and the arts. In the fifteen years that I have known him, Celâl Üster has translated further 40 titles into Turkish, bringing his total number of translated titles to over one hundred. Quality over quantity they say. But what happens when someone offers both?
Back in 2002, two years before I moved back to Istanbul, someone dear to me gifted Üster's translation of Atlas by Jorge Luis Borges with Maria Kodama, a collection of the memories, observations and reveries from their travels around the world accompanied by beautiful black and white photographs. Looking back at my copy now, I see the sentences I underlined with pencil and inside, I find an elm leaf pressed between two leaf-shaped cut-outs of parchment paper carrying a message. It reads: "Here is a leaf that has dreamt for you, with both lines and speckles and in the most beautiful colours of autumn". Who could have known that this gift and this leaf would one day make me into friends with its translator?
Cover design: A. Necmi
Cover design: Utku Lomlu
The Turkish text on the parchment paper reads: "İşte sana hem çizgili hem benekli, son baharın en güzel renklerinde senin için düş kurmuş bir yaprak."
Atlas, Jorge Luis Borges with Maria Kodama, trans. by Celâl Üster, İletişim Yayınları, 2002, p. 20-21.
Cover design: Utku Lomlu/Lom Creative
More recently in 2018 a book titled, Celâl Üster İçin: Çeviri Uğraşında 50 Yıl (For Celâl Üster: 50 Years in the Toil of Translation) was published. Inspired by Ferit Edgü’s suggestion, it comprises articles written by renowned writers and thinker friends in Türkiye as well as artwork dedicated to him by artists such as illustrators, Kamil Masaracı and Semih Poroy, and conceptual artist Handan Börüteçene. A biographical interview with Aslı Uluşahin, the editor of this commematory collection, acts as an afterword to these insightful anecdotal pieces. Not many translators in Türkiye get this kind of good treatment; one has to be quite special.
In fact, it was Memet Fuat (Nazım Hikmet’s step-son) who saw the ore in him and introduced him in issue 64 of Yeni Dergi (January 1970) as “Celâl Üster, a student of English philology, whom we think will one day become a great translator if he continues to work hard.” I don’t think even Celâl himself could have foreseen the hundreds of thousands of hours he would spend at his desk, using mostly his left index finger to type. Most often, translation requires solitary devotion. Perhaps the only creatures that could share this solitude are cats. Over the years Celâl has cared for several cat companions, though most often, one at a time.
Simultaneaously, Körün Taşı: Kültür, Sanat ve Edebiyat Üzerine Güncel Denemeler (The Blindman’s Stone: Contemporary Essays on Culture, Art and Literature); a book of his selected newspaper and journal articles from 2014 to 2017 was published by Can Yayınları. His unapologetic observations of life and events of our times are truly unique; a sociologist in disguise.
Celâl Üster, Istanbul.
Cover design: Semih Poroy
If you asked me to try to define Celâl Üster, the man, I would say:
A life long love of literature, cats, rakı, coffee, tea, work, cigarettes, art, music, a few good friends and the space to be one's self. Perhaps these are some of Üster's most defining aspects.
Cover design: Semih Poroy
In January 2019, Bir Çevirgen’in Notları (Notes of a “Translation Rodent”) which he described as “notes that are mostly retained projections of a translator who set sail on restless seas for half-a-century in quest of literary endeavour” was once again published by Can Yayınları. I should note here that Can Yayınları is a private and well-respected publishing house founded in 1981 by Erdal Öz, Turkish writer and publisher who was arrested and tried in the aftermath of the 1971 Turkish military memorandum – at the same time as Celâl Üster’s incarceration and his subsequent imprisonment at Mamak Military Detention and Penitentiary (1972-1974) for being an illegal member of the Türkiye İhtilalci İşçi Köylü Partisi (Revolutionary Workers and Peasant’s Party of Turkey). He received a prison sentence of 20 years; with the amnesty granted in 1974, he served three years.
Here, I would like to present to you an extract I translated from the chapter Üster dedicated to the translations of The Communist Manifesto into Turkish in Notes of a “Translation Rodent”: “When it comes to the translation of The Communist Manifesto – co-translated with Nur Deriş [freelance conference interpreter and translator] in 1978 – the book was published in March 1979 by Aydınlık Yayınları. As I was in obligatory military service the translation was published solely under Nur Deriş’s name. The book came out on 5 April 1979 and was pulled off the shelves on 23 May 1979 by the 9th Magistrates Court of Istanbul. On 2 August 1979, the Press Office of the Public Prosecution Office filed a criminal complaint according to article 142/1-6 of Turkish Criminal Law. The 2nd High Criminal Court of Istanbul decided to transfer the courtcase to the Martial Commandership’s Military Court in Istanbul. Meanwhile, Nur Deriş who was imprisoned during the 12 March 1971 military memorandum and released with amnesty in 1974, left the country out of her own will for Geneva, Switzerland. This was the start of a decade long exile for Nur Deriş...” (p.160-161).
Bir "Çevirgen"in Notları sheds light on the political and social upheavals in Türkiye over the last sixty years through the looking-glass of an intellectual who continues to read, write and translate today. Üster tell us everything he can without self-censorship: from his early life to his imprisonment at Mamak Military Detention and Penitentiary, his love for literature and life, anecdotes about his closest friends and the true stories of how some of the most highly-prized works of literature came to be published in Türkiye.
I hope that before it’s too late, as it usually is, at the very least this autobiographical work by Celâl Üster will be considered for translation into English and other languages by international publishing houses. I, for one, truly believe that we ought to reward such “literary rodents” while they are still around.
ON THE NATURE OF LONG-LASTING FRIENDSHIPS
Portrait of Celâl Üster by Avni Arbaş
After my return to England in 2012, Celâl and I continued our correspondence. Though as time passed by I felt a wind of change, we spoke and wrote less often. Nonetheless, the vibrancy of our conversations never faded. It was a couple of years ago when he told me he would post me his newly published translations. While he is an arduous, precise and diligent person in his life and work, when it comes to organising things like sending a parcel it can take him ages. Like the time when we tried to reorganise his bookshelves to make space for literary works more dear to him; it took no shorter than human gestation. So when he said he would send me a parcel I knew by heart that it would take him quite some time.
One Saturday in the summer of 2022, the postman showed up at my door with a heavy box. I knew it was “the promised parcel”. Spur-of-the-moment, I called him to thank him for the bounty of translations he had done in the recent years and that if he would allow it I would like to write a piece on him. Although the idea of writing about him had been on my mind for some time, the practice of writing such a piece felt daunting because it required me to remain true to his essence; a huge responsibility especially when the subject is your friend, and your friend is a person who dedicated over fifty years of his life to the pursuit of enlightening himself as well as others through his immense mental and physical literary endeavour. People mostly consider translation as mental and intellectual work but actually, it is also physical as all the hours spent at a desk can cause all kinds of injury and illness. Here was a doyen of translation who deserved to be written about not only in Turkish but also in other languages. I thought that if I write a piece about him in English, others might also take an interest. I am sure there are several translators across our global intellectual realm who deserve to be written about. Perhaps this will be the brave new century when translators get their dues.
For those of you who are not familiar with the nitty-gritty of the publishing industry, I find it important to try to provide some insight just so you can make sense of my emphasis and follow my train of thought. Under normal circumstances, publishing houses look for the right translators to translate the books they want to publish. In Celâl’s case, the tables are turned: he is a translator who chooses his own translation projects; finding a publisher is not an issue. For him, it’s a labour of love, most of the books he has translated are ones he also enjoyed reading. For the publisher, bringing out a translation by Celâl Üster is an honour. To him, there isn’t a great deal of difference between writing and translating. Translation is – in great part – the art of rewriting a work of literature in another language. It requires patience, endurance, painstaking research and methodology as well as creative input. In my opinion and in that of many other translators, an apt translator must possess the backbone of a proficient writer and the outlook of a masterful editor. But above all, to be such an appreciated person one has to first and foremost be a decent companion to those with whom he lives and works.
ADVICE FOR AN ASPIRING TRANSLATOR
Although Celâl Üster would probably be the last person to ever tell anyone what they should do or how they should do it; I can’t help but share this extract from Bir "Çevirgen"in Notları for those who wish to set sail in these precarious literary seas:
“If I were to have a conversation with a young person who has just embarked on translation as a profession, inspired by Mario Vargas Llosa’s Letters to a Young Novelist, I would – without intending to discourage – first ask, ‘Is this a fleeting interest or are you ready to face a long adventure?’ I would then elaborate and say: ‘Doubtlessly it is hard for you to make a firm decision right now. Time will tell everything. Still, don’t have great expectations; and don’t pay much heed to that thing they call ‘success’. Sure, you will do everything you can to become a good translator but once you get to know this world close-up, you will realise that the awards you will be rewarded, the praise you will receive from here and there and the best-selling translations for which you have earned money are but an illusion. We live in a world of injustice, and surely you too will get your share of that. You will think you deserve an award for your translation but perhaps that award will be given to someone else who doesn’t deserve it as much as you. Oh woe! Let your most magnificent award be the pleasure and enjoyment you feel when you are working on that translation, when you behold the depths of that writer, when you explore the reciprocity of the words written in other languages in your own language! During this interminable adventure you may time and time over again observe that society does not adequately value this tiresome and challenging endeavour. So what! Beware, don’t be overcome by the worry that you are wasting your life. So long as you feel more grounded and more at peace with yourself during your pursuit of translation” (p. 173-174).
Celâl Üster.
Coffee, cat and the translator's bad habit.
TRUE PASSION NEVER DIES
Celâl Üster at home, in his study.
In our recent email correspondence, Celâl wrote to me: “...If you were to ask me about my recent favourite translations in particular, I would say George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, Rita Guibert’s Seven Voices and James Joyce’s Dubliners.
I must mention an amouse-bouche here. In Türkiye, when George Orwell is mentioned Celâl Üster immediately comes to mind as his translations of Orwell are held in highest regard. We often spoke about the dystopian world depicted in 1984 and how relevant it still is in our time. As a man who spent three years in a state prison for his political views, one can understand why his translation in particular is so highly valued. For, how can you translate oppression and suffering if you have never known it yourself?
In the same recent email, he points out to me: “Homage to Catalonia (Selam Olsun Katalonya’ya) hints at Animal Farm (Hayvan Çiftliği) and 1984. If he hadn’t written that, neither Animal Farm nor 1984 would have existed. In my opinion, the Spanish Civil War is one of the turning points of recent history. This war in which Orwell participated as a journalist on the side of the Republicans against fascism, played a big role in shaping his ideological and political approach. Not just in view of fascism but also of totalitarian socialism in Spain due to the position of the Soviet Union and the Communist Party of Spain.”
Translating Orwell in Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Türkiye must be similar to Karl Marx writing the Communist Manifesto in post-Industrial Revolution England. For, freedom of expression has never been more valuable. Now as ever, almost 76, Üster stands his ground with integrity at a time when quick, cheap and dirty has slowly but surely become the norm in both the publishing industry and life at large. After over fifty years dedicated to honing his art, he still wakes up in the early hours of the morning, before the sunrise, makes himself a Turkish coffee and gets to work on his translations. Still using those index fingers and typing on a F-type keyboard.
To Celâl Üster, freedom of expression has been of uttermost importance; polyphony in literature, politics, art, music and life. Surely, among those who fought hardest for freedom of expression in the last century are writers, poets and thinkers from South America. He writes to me: “I also translated Seven Voices (published by Can Yayınları, December 2021) with great pleasure. This collection of long interviews which Guibert made in 1971 with Gabriel García Márquez, Octavio Paz, Pablo Neruda, Jorge Luis Borges, Miguel Ángel Asturias and Julio Cortázar gave me the opportunity to get to know some of the greatest writers and poets of Latin American literature not only through their literary and political thinking but also their outlook on life and their private lives.”
A father of two, he has also translated several children’s titles by Roald Dahl, Maurice Sendak, Howard Griffifths, Oliver Jeffers and James Joyce. In the parcel of books he sent to me was also his translation of The Cat and the Devil (Kedi ve Şeytan) inspired by a letter James Joyce wrote to his grandson Stephen. A little present for my then three year-old daughter who thoroughly enjoyed it and asked me questions such as “What is the Devil?” and “What happens when we die?” I must remember to thank Celâl for these wonderful questions that caught me completely off-guard next time I see him in person. In the same parcel, he also sent me his translations of The Illiad and The Odyssey by Homer, editions published for teens. They have taken their place of pride in my daughter’s bookshelf. I am sure that I will be put to test on these works, too. After all, life is worth living as long as you can ask questions.
But now he is onto Dubliners, due to be published in autumn 2023 by Can Yayınları. In his email to me, Celâl writes: “Dubliners, James Joyce’s first notable literary work, tells – through 14 different stories and lives – the story of one life lived in Dublin; an ordinary, broken and defeated one lived in the bleak streets of the city. In Charles Dickens’ novels there are countless, masterfully denoted characters but it is said that the protagonist in all his works is the city of London. Dickens’ London. In Dubliners, many of the characters live their small lives, they wander, they are the living dead. Yet, there is in fact only one character, Joyce’s Dublin. This aspect of the book made a deep impression on me.”
THE FUTURE IS NOW
Cover design: Ayşe Çelem Design
I have the feeling that soon my dear friend will also be publishing a collection of recollections of his life in Istanbul; part of which will surely be set on Büyükada, the island where he and I grew up, three decades apart. Then, one day in the near future, someone – perhaps an AI writer - will be "thinking" and "writing" about Celâl Üster’s Istanbul. Will it have the human touch? For sure, with his meticulous translations spanning half a century, my dear friend Celâl Üster has touched many lives – both past and present. Will an AI writer or translator be able to write and translate the pain, the joy and the existential limbo we homo sapiens can?
Come what may, I sincerely hope that both his writing and his translations will continue to be published in their original format, without falling victim to neither paper shortage nor political correctness or censorship. For I know deep down, any other way would be inconceivable and unacceptable to him and to his loyal readers.
Selected extracts from, For Celâl Üster: 50 Years in the Toil of Translation, ed. Aslı Uluşahin, Can Yayınları, 2018.
“Every so often I think, what would happen if there were no translators. Let alone providing an answer to this question, the mere thought of asking it is terrifying. To what do we owe these ants, these bees of universal culture, named as translators? My singular response is: my all” Ferit Edgü, p. 15.
“Our friendship goes back to the olden days, it extends back to the mid-1960s when we were 'studying' the same subjects. Our shared curiosity has often brought us together in various places and across time and transformed our closeness into a brotherhood of sorts. To a brotherhood of solidarity and mutual support on a multitude of subjects” Cevat Çapan, p. 17.
“The work we define as translation wanders arm in arm with solitude. It’s not an easy thing to put up with that solitude. All that remains with you – other than the author of the work you are translating – is your knowledge of grammar, your curiosity, faith in yourself, your perseverance and patience. Translating a work of literature is not to relay it in another language, it is to render a world, a person intelligible to another world, to another person. The return on your endevour, your solitude, your skill and your effort is a big question mark. In an environment where noone sees one another for who they really are, someone like Celâl rarely emerges” Zeynep Avcı, p. 23-24.
“In your preface to your translation of Julius Fučik’s Notes from the Gallows, you recount the story of how the book was re-translated by the same translator forty years later. Your encounter with Fučik’s work during the military dictatorship of 12 March 1971, how you found yourself translating the book on your Olivetti typewriter during those days of curfew and oppression and how, forty years later, you happened to come across your own translation (which you buried in the ground due to the harsh political conditions of the time) published under a different name, and how you re-translated it upon a proposal from Yordam Kitap after all those years just to try to gain back a piece of your past which you lost during the military regime... Your personal history of the book prepares us for Fučik’s account of his imprisoning by the Gestapo in Prague as he awaits execution in a box of a cell” Ayşe Sarısayın, p. 29.