Interview by Aws Ya‘qub
The Turkish writer and translator Mehmet Hakkı Suçin is one of the foremost translators of classical and modern Arabic literature into Turkish, and he stands at the forefront of the Turkish translators who revived interest in Arabic literature in Turkey after a break of decades with the Arabic language and its culture. It is to his credit that his translations attract not only academic attention but have also achieved a wide readership among Turkish readers.
Suçin was born in Iğdır, Turkey, in 1970 and graduated from the Department of Arabic Language and Literature at Ankara University. His master’s thesis (1998) dealt with the short fiction of Yahya Haqqi, and his doctoral thesis (2004) with the problems and strategies of translation between Arabic and Turkish. He was a visiting scholar at the University of Manchester (2006) and is currently a faculty member in the Department of Arabic at Gazi University in Ankara. He chaired the committee that prepared the Arabic language curricula for primary, middle and secondary schools in Turkey in line with the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (2010–2012).
He has translated from Arabic into Turkish many books and poetry collections of classical and modern Arabic literature, among them the Mu‘allaqat, Ibn Tufayl’s Hayy ibn Yaqzan, and books by Adonis, Mahmoud Darwish, Nizar Qabbani, Naguib Mahfouz, Yahya Haqqi, Gibran Khalil Gibran, Ghassan Kanafani, Adania Shibli, Mohammed Bennis and others. He has also translated into Arabic classical figures of Turkish poetry such as Yunus Emre and Ahmed Yesevi, as well as figures from modern literature.
Suçin has received many literary awards in the field of translation, including the Turkish Writers’ Union’s translation of the year award in 2016 for his translation of Nizar Qabbani’s The Book of Love, and the best translation award of 2021 from the book supplement of the Turkish newspaper Dünya for his translation of Adania Shibli’s novel Minor Detail. He also received the Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation and International Understanding (Achievement category) in 2022 for his entire body of translation work, on the occasion of Turkish being included in the award. He was a member of the jury of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (the “Arabic Booker”) in its 2014 cycle, and in 2015 he served on the jury and as adviser to the steering committee of the Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation.
Here is our interview with him:
How would you introduce yourself to the readers of Diffa Thalitha?
Informally: the ambassador of Arabic literature and Arab culture in Turkey. Formally: an academic in the field of Arabic language and literature and a translator of Arabic literature.
What are your latest translations from Arabic into Turkish?
Over the last three years several of my translations have been published. First among them is the Mu‘allaqat, which I translated into Turkish as poetry; then I published a translation of Ibn Tufayl’s Hayy ibn Yaqzan, in which I took into account that it is a narrative text as well as a philosophical one. I translated a selection from the great Turkish Sufi poet Yunus Emre, which was also a unique experience for me. Recently, Adonis’s al-Kitab al-Khitab al-Hijab, Ibn al-Kalbi’s Book of Idols and, most recently, Ghassan Kanafani’s novel Men in the Sun have come out. I must not forget my translations of Adania Shibli’s novel Minor Detail, Adonis’s This Is My Name and Mahmoud Darwish’s Almond Blossoms and Beyond.
What was the first Arabic literary work you translated, and how did you choose it?
I began by translating poems and short stories from Arabic literature for literary magazines in Turkey. That is how I found myself translating and then sending my translations to literary magazines, which later asked me to translate more.
The first book I translated into Turkish was the novella The Lamp of Umm Hashim by Yahya Haqqi, whose fiction I had studied in my master’s thesis.
Do you have specific criteria for choosing the works you translate? And does anyone edit your translations once you have finished them?
Choosing a work to translate is truly a difficult process. My first criterion is that the literary work carry weight in the Arabic literary system, whether poetry or prose, classical or modern. The second is that the work I plan to translate find a reasonable reception in Turkey, because publishers will not take the risk of publishing a work that will not be read. Finally, I translate what speaks to my literary and cultural taste.
As for editing, a translation without revision remains incomplete. I am lucky in this respect for two reasons: first, I work with large publishing houses that have a rigorous editorial system; and second, at home there is someone who voluntarily reads what I write or translate: my wife, the poet Elçin Sevgi Suçin, is the first reader of my writing, just as I am hers.
You have translated a number of the great masters of Arabic poetry, yet you have given Adonis and Mahmoud Darwish a larger share than the other poets. Why?
In my view, Adonis and Mahmoud Darwish represent two essential sources of modern Arabic poetry, complementing each other in terms of Arabic poetics. Adonis represents in the Arabic poem modernity, thought, free opinion, boldness, and emotion blended with reason. In it I find horizons of freedom and criticism, which lead me to think, to reflect and to want to produce other poems. It is a modern poem in all its elements, in form and content. It is the poem that brings together mystical love and erotic love. Through his powerful language Adonis takes us to the pastoral melodies of Sappho, the songs of Ovid, and even to Baudelaire, Mallarmé and many Arab poets such as al-Mutanabbi, Abu Tammam, Abu Nuwas, Abu al-‘Atahiya, al-Ma‘arri and others; his poem is as much an Arabic poem as it is a modernist Western one. Darwish, for his part, writes an intelligent poem in which emotion is always to the fore. In his poem we read the poetry of music and the music of poetry at once, which is why it lends itself to dance and rhythm. It is a poem of resistance and revolt, but not a “shouting” one; it reconciles revolution and lyricism, reality and myth. It uses the traditional means of Arabic rhythm but constantly renews itself, which brought him close to the prose poem, especially in his late works. Like Adonis, he is an “intellectual” poet whom only an informed reader will understand, with the difference that the Adonisian poem is better suited to visual reading, while the Darwishian poem is better suited to reading aloud.
How receptive are Turkish readers to translated Arabic poetry?
There were fabricated, catastrophic translations that damaged the reputation of Arabic poetry in Turkey. My translations, published after this poetic disaster, “restored the standing of Arabic poetry,” in the words of the accomplished translator Ahmad Zakaria. After these translations, Turkish readers began to arrive at the original taste and true flavour of Arabic poetry. The evidence is readers sharing these translations on social media, and what poets and critics have written about them in Turkish literary magazines: to name only a few, articles by the poet Haydar Ergülen, the critic Doğan Hızlan, the critic Zeki Kırmızı, the poet Ömer Erdem, the poet Enver Topaloğlu, the critic Burcu Alkan, the critic Suad Baran, the novelist Mustafa Orman, the translator Ülker İnce and many others.
These translations had a great impact on the Turkish literary scene. For example, Mahmoud Darwish’s I Don’t Want This Poem to End was listed among the top 11 books translated into Turkish in 2016 by the weekly book supplement of the newspaper Cumhuriyet. The same supplement made Mahmoud Darwish its “cover figure” on the publication of my translation of Almond Blossoms and Beyond. And PEN Turkey declared August the month of reading Mahmoud Darwish’s works throughout Turkey on the occasion of this translation.
In addition, my translation of the Mu‘allaqat was listed among the 50 best books in Turkey in 2020. At the beginning of this year Adonis was the cover figure of an issue of Cumhuriyet’s weekly book supplement on the publication of al-Kitab al-Khitab al-Hijab. And the translation of Nizar Qabbani’s The Book of Love received the Turkish Writers’ Union’s translation of the year award in 2016. All of these are meaningful indicators.
What are the obstacles to translating classical and modern Arabic poetry into Turkish?
In fact, we have no general recipe that applies to every case. Every translation is in itself a unique case that must be dealt with in its own way, which is why every translation is singular and particular. Each case obliges the translator to adopt an approach specific to it, whether the Arabic poetry is classical or modern. Despite this generalization, there are obstacles that face the translator of classical poetry in particular, such as semantic and stylistic change, changes over the centuries in the ways poetic rhythm is created, the translator’s need to “suggest” to the reader that the text before them is a classical one, and other challenges.
To what extent did the Nobel Prize in Literature awarded to Naguib Mahfouz and Orhan Pamuk play a key role in the translation of Arabic literature into Turkish and of Turkish literature into Arabic?
Their Nobel Prizes drew publishers’ attention to Arabic and Turkish literature. Orhan Pamuk has been luckier than Naguib Mahfouz: most of his works were translated directly from Turkish into Arabic, thanks to the great Syrian translator, the late Abdulkader Abdelli. Mahfouz, by contrast, had most of his works translated into Turkish through English rather than directly from Arabic.
How do you assess the state of Arabic literature translated into Turkish over the last decade?
In this period, translations of modern Arab authors have appeared, for example Adonis (7 works), Mahmoud Darwish (4), Ghassan Kanafani (3), Nizar Qabbani (2), Tayeb Salih (2), Bahaa Taher (2), Khaled Khalifa (2), Jokha Alharthi (2), and one work each by Abdelrahman Munif, Sonallah Ibrahim, Nihad Sirees, Radwa Ashour, Ahlam Mosteghanemi, Ahmed Saadawi, Amir Tag Elsir, Hoda Barakat, Mohammed Bennis, Nouri al-Jarrah, Ahmed al-Shahawi, Khulud al-Mualla, Mazen Maarouf, Malak Mustafa, Taiseer Khalaf and Reem al-Saqr, in addition to the Mu‘allaqat, The Ring of the Dove and Hayy ibn Yaqzan from classical literature. This quick look at ten years of translations tells us that the works translated from Arabic literature are very few compared with literature translated from English, French and Spanish, for example.
What occupies you these days? What is your next book?
At the moment I have a great passion for translating classical Arabic literature: I am busy translating a selection from the divan of the great Arab poet al-Mutanabbi, “who filled the world and kept people busy,” whose poetry has not been translated into Turkish until now. I have published some of his poems in Turkish literary magazines and received good impressions from poets and readers.
I want to recreate in Turkish an Arab poet who rivals the great classical poets of the world.
Originally published as: Aws Ya‘qub, “Mehmet Hakkı Suçin: I Am the Ambassador of Arabic Literature in Turkey,” Diffa Thalitha, 13 June 2023. Translated from the Arabic for this site.