The English translation of "The Stone Building and Other Places" (left) beside the original Turkish edition (right) by author and human rights activist Aslı Erdoğan.
Faculty Translators Bridge Languages, Cultures and Centuries
In an increasingly interconnected world, the ability to understand cultures beyond our own has never been more important. One of the most powerful ways to achieve that knowledge is through literature and cultural work. Accessing the stories, texts and art that reflect the daily lives and values of people across the globe makes one world legible to another and offers the potential to bridge divides.
Enter the translator, an artist who makes creative yet critical judgement calls. Something misunderstood is that translation involves more interpretation rather than a one-to-one exchange of words. It requires an interdisciplinary approach and deep cultural knowledge, whether that be immersing yourself in Caribbean Spanish sociolinguistics, researching 19th-century whaling vocabulary or delving into Greek mythology to translate a passage about the Milky Way Galaxy. Such answers can’t be found in the dictionary or Google Translate.
Experts’ Invisible Artistry
College of Arts and Sciences faculty members , and work across different languages, time periods and forms—literary fiction, opera, Renaissance scholarship— but each demonstrates that translation is among the most important yet underappreciated intellectual arts in the humanities in the world today. They agree that, if done well, this invisible work is rarely recognized for what it actually involves.
Surovi put it another way, borrowing a quote from Israeli writer Etgar Keret: “Translators are like ninjas. If you notice them, they’re no good.”
A Prisoner’s Story
Türkkan, an associate teaching professor in the Department of Writing Studies, Rhetoric and Composition, did not set out to publish a translation. She began translating “The Stone Building and Other Places,” a collection of three short stories by the Turkish author and human rights activist Aslı Erdoğan out of curiosity. She had no contract, no publisher and no deadline, but was teaching Erdoğan’s fiction and wanted to make it accessible to her students.
That all changed when the Turkish government arrested Erdoğan in 2016 and imprisoned her.
“I went out of my way to talk to publishers and say, this work is important,” Türkkan says. “Nobody will know about this writer if we don’t get it into English.”
publishers accepted the translation. When “The Stone Building and Other Places” appeared on shelves in 2018, it was a finalist for the . Erdoğan, still under a travel ban, could not travel to Amsterdam to accept a European Cultural Foundation award the book had earned. Türkkan went in her place and read Erdoğan’s acceptance letter before the audience.
“As the translator, I really was also her agent,” Türkkan says. “Working on her behalf, advocating on her behalf, receiving awards and reading her acceptance letter.”
The translation itself required months and months of intense work and careful thought around every decision—three months to produce a single version of the book followed by an eight-month revision. Sometimes, a successful day meant translating a single paragraph.
For example, Turkish uses a single third-person pronoun—“o”—where English requires he, she, it or they. In Erdoğan’s novella, that ambiguity is intentional. Türkkan had to decide, sentence by sentence, whether to clarify or preserve it. In another instance, she opted to leave “abla,” the Turkish word for “sister” in place as “a little reminder that this is an English translation from the Turkish language.”
A passage involving the Milky Way and the zodiac resisted every direct approach. Eventually, Türkkan turned to Greek mythology to find English language capable of matching the original’s poetry. Erdoğan later told her the English translation was the most poetic version of her books.
“I was like, ‘I passed the test,’” she says. “I see the translation as the metaphor of the original. I never claim that my translation is the last word on this book. I would like to see more translations of it. The sum total of multiple translations can help us understand the original better.”
Türkkan advocates for broader recognition of translators’ contributions and says translators should be credited as co-writers of the books they translate. She notes that translations account for roughly 2.7% of all books published in the U.S. each year. In Turkey, that figure is 85%. Unfortunately, she notes, only a small handful of colleges in the U.S. offer programs to train translators.
Türkkan was born in Bulgaria and moved to Turkey with her family when she was 11. Growing up, she was caught between two languages. In Bulgaria, her parents spoke Turkish to her at home to counter the Bulgarian she was absorbing everywhere else. When the family moved to Turkey, they switched and started speaking Bulgarian at home.
She never felt fully comfortable in either language. She spoke Turkish with a Bulgarian accent and Bulgarian with a Turkish accent, while her Turkish name marked her as an outsider in Bulgaria.
Türkkan started learning English at age 7 in Bulgaria, ironically from a French instructor her mother hired. She describes this as her “mom’s legacy,” as her mother believed that “language meant life” and wanted her children to have “multiple lives.” Later, Türkkan lived in Germany during her graduate program, picking up yet another “life.”
