Sunday, December 26, 2010
HATİCE UTKAN
ISTANBUL – Hürriyet Daily News
Turkish translators’ lives remain difficult, Yerguz says
İsmail Yerguz has been translating books for almost 30 years but he has never tired of it.
He is known as the on-trial translator of books from Sel Publishing House, which was charged for publishing a book with sexual content, but Yerguz has not limited himself to only the books of one publishing house.
Yerguz stood trial for translating a book by French writer Guillaume Apollinaire. He was acquitted at the trial.
“It is really strange because this book was written 100 years ago,” Yerguz told the Hürriyet Daily News’ City Brief in an interview.
“At the trial I told the prosecutor that a Turkish person who knows French can read this book, but apparently it is forbidden for a person who speaks only Turkish to read Apollinaire’s book,” he said.
“Everything aside, Apollinaire’s book is a part of the world’s cultural heritage. During the trial, several literary translators’ associations came to the courtroom and supported me,” said Yerguz.
However, protecting the rights of translators and supporting them is not enough, he said. “Every time I sit and talk with an owner of a publisher’s house, they say that it is essential to have a stable translator staff. But they never do anything to create one.”
There will be a new law to protect translators, but it is still not clear how it will evolve. “Some said that in the preparation of this law, the parliamentary deputies did not get any input from translation associations,” said Yerguz.
“I was in France, in Arles, last year and there was a workshop for translators. We met with French publishing houses and translators, and I realized that there are problems in protecting translators’ rights even in France,” he said.
According to Yerguz, the relationship between translators and publishing houses has always been problematic, and the issues are endemic.
“For 30 years I have translated books from French to Turkish. I realized that it is impossible to work with only one publisher,” he said.
Publishing houses do not provide permanent jobs for translators. “Publishing houses only give us books [to translate] when they receive books. They have their own financial concerns,” said Yerguz.
Earning good money from literary translation is a pipe dream, according to the interpreter.
“I always suggest to young people that it is madness to think of supporting yourself by only translating books. It is not possible.”
Yerguz also criticized the trial translation texts that publishing houses give to translators. “The trial texts are given to evaluate the level of the translator but it is not effective. A person can give it to a friend to translate or someone else. In short, we cannot rely on trial texts to evaluate the language level of a translator.”
Yerguz has translated many books from French into Turkish, including Andre Breton’s “Nadja,” Emile Zola’s “Germinal,” and texts by Julien Gracq, Robert Pinget, Romain Gary, Denis Guedj, Luce Irigaray, Christophe Andre-François Lelord, David Le Breton, Emmanuel de Waresquiel, Philippe Gavi and Benoit Laudier.
Even though Yerguz loves to translate, especially the solitude of the job, he also saves times to write and create.
“I have some essays and works to edit and publish but I have to spend more of my time on writing and less on translating,” he said.