The book uses various forms of Turkish, “such as the heavily arabicised Ottoman Turkish and the purist, reformed Turkish” (thanks to The Untranslated blog) this making the work of a translator difficult, and begs the question of how to render these different styles in English? As you will see in my posts, the use of French, Middle English and English is the approach the translator has taken. Known as being “untranslatable” the work finally made its way into Dutch in 2011 and now finally it is available in English, albeit in a very limited print run of only 200 copies. First published in 1971 & 1972 (as two books due to the publisher not being able to fund a single release), it has entered the Turkish psyche and although the book wasn’t “discovered” until after Oğuz Atay’s death, it has now been reprinted in Turkey at least seventy times. In 2004 UNESCO listed Oğuz Atay’s “Tutunamayanlar” (“The Disconnecte d”) as an important literary work in need of an English translation. Like my irregular posts here about “Bottom’s Dream” I intend to post about my progress through another work described as “untranslatable”. I’ve added another “difficult” work to my reading agenda, not happy with slowly working my way through Arno Schmidt’s “Bottom’s Dream” I am now tackling the Turkish “Ulysses”, Oğuz Atay’s “Tutunamayanlar” (“The Disconnecte d”).
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