UE48 - Ottoman Translation Lab

Intervenant·e·s

• Marc Aymes [référent·e]   directeur d'études, EHESS - directeur de recherche, CNRS / Centre d'études turques, ottomanes, balkaniques et centrasiatiques (CETOBaC)
• E. Natalie Rothman   professeure, University of Toronto
• Henning Sievert   professeur, Universität Heidelberg

Also core team members :

Ömer Köksal, PhD (EHESS/Universität Heidelberg)

Renaud Soler, associate professor at the Université de Strasbourg (Groupe d'études orientales, slaves et néo-helléniques)

Translation is a critical facet of the study of the Ottoman Empire. Like most imperial formations, the Ottoman political and social system consisted of multiple linguistic jurisdictions. The Ottoman language commanded by the palatial elite, was a mixture of three languages, Arabic, Persian and Turkish. But other subjects of the empire communicated not only in different registers of the above, but in many other languages too, including Albanian, Aramaic, Armenian, Bulgarian, Greek, Hungarian, Judeo-Spanish, Kurdish-Kurmandji, Persian, Polish, Romanian, Serbo-Croatian, Zazaki... And for some of the more extroverted social segments, French, Italian, or lingua franca were de rigueur. Thus “translingual” practices were an essential feature of Ottoman social worlds.

This seminar focuses on “translation” understood broadly to encompass not only written works (the mainstay of Ottoman Translation Studies to date) but also other linguistic practices, often more anonymous and less authorized, in varied social domains, including administration and commerce. It posits that translingual practices—the circulations of linguistic elements and meanings across languages, sociocultural registers, and genres—were not simply endemic to Ottoman society, but, in fact, key to Ottoman government practices in its longue durée and across its expansive spatial footprint. Our aim is to approach translation as a sociological as well as a philological issue– i.e., to combine our philologically assembled evidence with a socio-historical framework of analysis of imperial practices of government. We will attempt to take stock of the multiple philologies (analogue or digital) that the study of these practices therefore requires.

Format-wise our “lab” combines hands-on experiments (workshop discussions) with more formal lectures. We invite colleagues involved (including doctoral students, computer scientists or developers) to present their work so as to better grasp the diversity of scholarship and tools at hand in the field.

Warning: This program is being updated in real time, so please consult it regularly.

October 27,  2023 : Introduction(s)

November 24, 2023 : E. Natalie Rothman (University of Toronto) - Translating the Ottomans: Understanding Dragomans’ Translingual Practices

December 8, 2023 : Hülya Çelik (Ruhr-Universität Bochum) and Ani Sargsyan (Universität Hamburg) - 19th-Century Ottoman Education via Armeno-Turkish Metalinguistic Texts: Dictionaries, Grammars, and Schoolbooks

January 19, 2024 : Henning Sievert (Universität Heidelberg) - Translating and interpreting: political communication in the eighteenth and nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire / Übersetzen zwischen Kontexten: politische Kommunikation im Osmanischen Reich des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts

February 2, 2024 : Chloe Bordewich (University of Toronto) - Malicious, Seditious, or Fake?: Ottoman Officials, Foreign Correspondents, and the Language of Fact in the Late 19^th Century​‌

March 1, 2024 : Jennifer Manoukian (University of California, Irvine) - What Can Translator’s Notes Can Tell Us About Ottoman Armenian Social Preoccupations?

March 29, 2024 : Marilyn Booth (University of Oxford) - Translating pedagogy: A French conduct manual for Egyptian girls’ schools (1879)

May 3, 2024 : Philip Bockholt (Universität Münster) - Adjusting Moral Norms in Turkish Translations of the Qābūsnāma in the Contexts of Iran and Anatolia
and Sacha Alsancakli (Universität Münster) - Remarks on the Majmūʿat al-Ṣanāyiʿ, an Indo-Persian manual of arts and crafts translated into Turkish in Bidlīs

May 17, 2024 : Arno Strohmeyer with Stephan Kurz and Yasir Yilmaz (Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften / Universität Salzburg) - How do digital methodologies and tools transform historical research and Ottoman studies? Preliminary findings based on the QhoD Project