Sıddık Ertaş
Among the books published in 2015, one that caught my attention was Şiir Şiir Ayetler (“Poetic Verses”). In fact, one could call Mehmet Hakkı Suçin’s work the book of someone who took on a very difficult task, both technically and in terms of content. A translation of the Juz’ ‘Amma (the thirtieth part of the Qur’an), this book aspires to be both a meal (an interpretive rendering) and poetry.
I will not, of course, go into the problems of translation as a field of literature. But it must be admitted that translating sacred books carries an extra difficulty – all the more so if poetic language, a special language in its own right, has been chosen for the transfer into the target language. This choice doubles the difficulty: the text is being translated both into Turkish and into the language of poetry.
Our concern becomes clearer when we consider that in the existing meals we mostly encounter a host of errors resulting from an insufficient command of Turkish. Merely looking at the translations of verse 37 of Surat Yunus (Yunus 10:37) would probably suffice to show how far translation errors stemming from a poor command of Turkish can lead to distorted meanings in the target language: translations so clumsy that, while meaning to say that a book was sent down by God and not fabricated by anyone, they end up saying that the Holy Book was fabricated by God…
Thankfully, Suçin commands Turkish as well as he commands Arabic. Viewed as a meal, the book must be said, in all fairness, to be quite successful. In many verses, rather than giving the primary meanings of words, he has tried to convey the intended meaning in keeping with the context of the verses, and has found correct equivalents for idiomatic Arabic expressions. His rendering
“Kahrolası Ebu Leheb! Kahroldu gitti” (al-Masad 111:1)
instead of the conventional
“Ebu Leheb’in elleri kurusun; kurudu da.” (al-Masad 111:1)
may be cited as an example.
By translating the Meccan suras, the translator aimed to carry their remarkable sonic qualities into Turkish. There is no doubt that these suras lend themselves better to the sonic qualities of poetry. Suçin says: “Of course the Holy Qur’an is not a book of poetry. But the poetic rhythm is immediately felt, especially in the Meccan verses. In the Turkish meals produced so far, this quality of the verses has generally been ignored, which has turned the meals into texts that are both hard to understand and devoid of rhythm.” The following verses can, I think, be cited as examples of how he has managed to convey the sonic qualities and the high tempo without missing the meaning:
“Gönüllere fıs fıs fısıldayan” (al-Nas 114:5)
“Vay haline iftira atanın
Ayıp kusur peşinde olanın
Servet üstüne servet katanın” (al-Humaza 104:1–2)
“İnsanın küçük kelebekler gibi uçuştuğu gündür
Dağların rengârenk yün topaklarına benzediği gün.” (al-Qari‘a 101:4–5)
Can such a translation of the verses be called poetry, then? To my mind, it hardly seems possible to claim this fully. Indeed, Mehmet Hakkı Suçin means exactly this when he says of his book: “With this translation I did not aim to show how poetic the Qur’an is. With the reduplication ‘şiir şiir’ in the book’s title, I wanted to refer to the lovely meaning of the Turkish expression ‘şiir gibi gözler’ (‘eyes like poetry’).” What is emphasised is poetic language.
Given that the divine book itself states that the Holy Qur’an is not poetry (Ya Sin 36:69 and al-Haqqa 69:41), it should probably also be noted that the Holy Book cannot be translated as poetry. At least that is what I believe. For although there is an important affinity between the language of poetry and the language of religion, rendering a text that is not poetry fully into the special language of poetry requires all but re-creating it. In that case, the translated text will be considerably transformed as it passes into the target language.
We certainly acknowledge the closeness of Qur’anic language to the language of poetry, and that it has a fluent style close to poetry. Is not the most distinctive feature of our Exalted Book, the greatest miracle of our Prophet, the power of its artistic language and narrative technique? Yet we see that this effect has diminished in the great majority of translations made so far. Is it not possible to write a translation in a fluent and artistic language – that is, in a language close to poetry? This book shows us that the answer is “yes”. For this aspect alone, Şiir Şiir Ayetler is a work that deserves to be introduced.
One drawback of translating a divine book into poetic language is, I think, this: the addressee of sacred books is all of humanity. Hence, alongside certain verses of high artistic quality, there is a great number of verses whose language can be understood by broad masses – for sacred texts are texts of invitation. Poetry, however, usually addresses a more select audience; that, at least, is exactly what modern poetry is. Naturally, the poetic language of the book under discussion turns out to make the text harder for broad masses to read. The translator himself points this out and states that he wrote for a particular readership.
We know that the desire to translate the Holy Qur’an into the lyrical language of poetry was the dream of Mehmet Akif Ersoy. Indeed, when one examines the meal published as a section rescued from Akif’s translation, a poetic effect can be seen here and there. In Suçin’s translation we meet this in a more systematic way. It is a work strong enough to serve as a guide for future studies.
I congratulate Suçin on this work.
Originally published in Turkish in Hece, no. 230, February 2016, p. 115. Translated from the Turkish for this site. Quotations from the Qur’an are given in Mehmet Hakkı Suçin’s Turkish translation.
Also available on this site in Turkish.