International Conference Transottomanica “Translation and Transfer” — CNMS Marburg, 6 – 9 October 2021

The conference will take place in presence, but there is the opportunity for a (limited) online participation. For further details please contact Florian Riedler (florian.riedler[at]uni-leipzig.de).

Practices of translation between languages and the pragmatic transfer of translated texts into actual usage have emerged as the topic central to the majority of the sixteen research projects in the Transottomanica network. To discuss this topic in greater detail, we invite interested scholars to the medieval town of Marburg to share their expertise with us at a conference in October, 2021.

There are many aspects of the topic such as actual written translations in the Transottoman region and translators who earned their living through their expertise. Possible questions to be discussed at the conference include what functions these translations – full or partial, systematic or occasional – had and why people became translators with a broad or narrow functional focus. Within our Transottoman focus we are interested in multi-lingual brokers of languages who were negotiating and constituting the practical nodes of the shared social, commercial, diplomatic, political, or private worlds. 

The actual usage of translations by specialists in the military or administration, for example, but also in church structures or in everyday life in general constitutes a second main aspect of the planned conference. Here, themes around translated terminologies, genres, narratives, concepts or individual books and their usage in a new linguistic environment become relevant.

Programme
Thursday, 7 October
9:00–10:30, Panel 1: Elsine-i selāse Revisited: Appropriation and Dissemination of Knowledge in the Ottoman World and Beyond (1500–1700) – Part 1.
Hülya Çelik, Court librarian Sebastian Tengnagel’s collection of and work with Arabic, Persian and Turkish dictionaries. 
Nil Palabıyık,The Persian and Turkish dictionaries of the Leiden Orientalist Anton Deusing (1612–1666).
Ani Sargsyan,Three in One: The Persian-Turkish dictionaries and appropriation of knowledge of the “three languages” (elsine-i s̱elās̱e) in the Ottoman Empire in the 15th–16th centuries.

11:00–12:30, Panel 2: Elsine-i selāse Revisited: Appropriation and Dissemination of Knowledge in the Ottoman World and Beyond (1500–1700) – Part 2.
Philip Bockholt,Translating concepts of princely conduct within the Ottoman Empire and beyond: The Hümāyūnnāme as a case in point.
Aslihan Gürbüzel,Translations from Turkish to Ottoman Turkish: Elsine-i selāse and Ottoman imperial ideology.

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Gül Şen, News from the border: The interpreter Osman Agha and cultural brokering between the Habsburgs and the Ottomans.

13:30–15:00, Panel 3: Transfer through Translators.
Ayshe Dalyan,Was Ahteri a traveller?
Dirk Sangmeister,The travelling translator: Michael Kosmeli’s transfer of verses and prose.
Martin Rohde, Ahatanhel Kryms‘kyi and his translations between the Ottoman, Habsburg and Russian Empires [online].

15:30–17:00, Panel 4: Spiritual Translations.
Tobias Sick,On Ottoman translations of Persian Sufi literature: the Transottoman dimension of ʿAṭṭār’s Pandnāma.
Hasmik Kirakosyan,Persian scriptural translations in the cross-cultural practices: A case study of a Persian Gospel from the early 18th century.
Eliza Tasbihi,Translation and transformation: Windows into Rūmī’s poetry and Mevlevī commentators.

17:30–19:00, Evening lecture: Regina Toepfer, Functions of translation in the Early Modern period.

Friday, 8 October
9:00–10:30, Panel 5: Transottoman Western Europe.
Yusuf Ziya Karabıçak, Translating the French Revolution: A diplomatic history.
Andreas Helmedach, A polyglot army in polyglot lands: Translation and transfer in the Venetian army in the first Morea war, 1684–1699.
Roman Seidel, Transmitting, translating and transforming enlightenment literature: Mīrzā Āqā Khān Kermānī, his Persian adaptation of Bernardin de Saint Pierre and Fénélon in the Ottoman intellectual context.

11:00–12:30, Panel 6: Translations in the Western Balkans.
Munir Drkić, From a poet of divine love to a winebibber: The transfer of Hafez Shirazi’s poetry in the Western Balkans.
Jelena Radovanović, The mosque’s property: Translating waqf legislation in nineteenth-century Serbia.
Ana Sekulić, The mysteries of an Ottoman Gospel of Matthew in the Bosnian Catholic monastery.

13:30–15:00, Panel 7: Translation and Transfer between the Ottoman Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Alexandr Osipian,Translation and transfer of diplomatic and commercial documents between the Middle East and Poland-Lithuania: The Mediating role of the Armenian merchant network.
Jekaterina Merkuljeva, How Berezhany became a center for Turkish translations in the beginning of the 18th century.
Stefan Rohdewald, Cantemir, Müteferrika and Polish-Lithuanian Tatars: Translation/Language exchange in texts by Orthodox and Muslim scholars around 1700.

15:30–17:00, Panel 8: Translations and Meanings in Modern Times.
Or Pitusi, Tolstoy in the Ottoman-Arab Middle East: Islamic modernism, eastern enlightenment, and the Arab cultural revival.
Ali Kalirad, The myth of “Kaveh” and the spirit of revolution: A study on intracommunal intellectual exchanges in the modern Turco-Persian world [online].

17:30–19:00, Roundtable-discussion: With Sonja Brentjes, Johann Strauss and Barbara Henning, hosted by Ludwig Paul.

Saturday, 9 October

10:00, Excursion to the Ottoman collection in Bad Wildungen, with Hendrik Ziegler.