Clear azure skies, snow-capped mountains, early morning frost on olive green grass. Outside life is brimming with all its colours and sounds, and here atop the translator’s desk wise words from old books take to flight. Since that first translation I put on paper sixteen years ago, I have come across hundreds of forking paths and headache-inducing mental exercises. So far, this journey through poetry and prose, fiction and non-fiction has taken me to places and periods I have never occupied in person. I am a sentimental spirit endlessly yearning for a time and a place that is not my own. I’ve always wanted to translate works by late-Ottoman authors into English. At first, it was simply an insurmountable task because I myself was a work in progress. For years, I trained my mind and senses by translating non-fiction titles on art and literary works by contemporary Turkish writers. Some published and some not. 

During the summer of 2022 just before my move to Italy, I happened to meet Nefise Kahraman online and found out about Translation Attached, which she had co-founded with her partners Karolina Dejnicka and Yasemin Mangal. They were just about to bring out a collective translation of Refik Halit Karay’s Gurbet Hikayeleri (“Stories of Exile”). Our conversations over email about Turkish to English literary translation and whether I would be interested in translating a novel for them paved the way for us to start talking about Hüseyin Rahmi Gürpınar. At the time, I vaguely remembered reading some of Gürpınar’s works when I was in secondary school. As well as being one of his earliest works, Gulyabani (Ghoulyabânî, first published in 1913) is undoubtedly one of Gürpınar’s more well-known stories as it has had several print-runs by different publishers across decades, often in simplified modern Turkish. In 1976, it was also adapted to the screen as “Süt Kardeşler” (“Milk Brothers”) featuring some of the most famous actors of Turkish cinema such as Adile Naşit, Kemal Sunal and Şener Şen.  

I was asked to translate Gulyabani from the unsimplified Ottoman-Turkish edition edited by Nilüfer Tanç and published by the TDK in 2021 (The Turkish Language Association). This in itself posed a great challenge because by the time I was finished with translating the work into early 20th century English (in both style and sentiment), I had referred to three editions of the same novel (including simplified versions) from three different publishing houses just to make sure I was being coherent in my translation. Although I can comprehend Ottoman-Turkish (written with the modern Turkish alphabet) to some level and have studied works early 20th century English literature, I would still classify myself as a student in both subjects. In your work as a translator – as in life – you are always merely a student. Each work you attempt to translate guides you through another interpretation of history or an alternate reality, a different culture or way of thinking. I have a curious mind and research is what forms the backbone of a good translation. For all of these reasons and more, translation is my labour of love.

I spent my first foggy winter and luminous spring in Piedmont, Italy researching and translating Gulyabani. One of the dilemma’s that I pored over was Gürpınar’s use of the word “peri”. I asked myself, “A fairy is a ‘peri’, but is a ‘peri’ a fairy?” To my former juvenile mindset, a fairy is a peri, a magical creature that resonates kindness and grace. The kind you come across in children’s stories such as Cinderella, or Pinocchio. However, Gürpınar’s fairies were tricksy and vicious, they possessed people, they were claimed to have murdered servants in a nobleman’s house. For this reason, for a very long time, I decided to translate “peri” as “pixy” because  pixies are known to be mischievous. They live in moorlands, or close to forests (as is in the story), but they are also very small and humanlike, with pointed ears and often wearing a pointy hat, too. They are also usually blue or green. How was I to decide between fairy and pixy when Gürpınar did not really offer a detailed description of the creatures he referred to as “peri”. 

After, many séances with the “fair folk”, hours of research into the occult, and several correspondences with my editors, I decided to change “pixy” to “fairy” for two reasons. Firstly, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare had also depicted fairies (especially Oberon, the King of the Fairies) as powerful creatures capable of performing tricks and wreaking havoc. Secondly, Gürpınar ambiguously mentioned that his “peri” were human-height, and he did not mention them being blue or green, or having pointy ears. Thus, after considering other options such as goblin, goblinoid, sprite, oaf and changeling and eleven months of working on Ghoulyabânî I finally made up my mind changed all the “pixies” to “fairies”, and here and there, I peppered the text with suitable alternatives such as “evil spirits” or “evil creatures”. Perhaps a very insignificant and even an unrecognisable detail for the reader, for me this was as critical as deciding to commit an act of loanword adaptation and transcreating the title of Gulyabani as Ghoulyabânî. All of a sudden, I felt lighter.

March 8, 2024 marks the 80th death anniversary of Turkish writer, civil servant and politician Hüseyin Rahmi Gürpınar who placed great importance on logic, reason and science. I hope that this first translation of his tragicomedy Ghoulyabânî – which provides an equally observant and humourous social critique of the late-Ottoman era – leads to further translations of his work into other languages and one auspicious day, to the rightful recognition of his literary talent in the international arena. 

Ghoulyabânî written by Hüseyin Rahmi Gürpınar and translated into English by Hande Eagle, is due to be published by Translation Attached in March 2024.