Objectives

The junior research group aims to develop a comprehensive insight into Arabic-Persian-Turkish translation processes in the Eastern Mediterranean (ca. 1400 to 1750) using an innovative approach that brings together Middle Eastern studies, translation studies and material philology. The research will incorporate the late Mamluk Empire and Anatolian principalities (beyliks), which will be considered against the background of the formation of the Ottoman Empire. The focus is on the concrete geographical, socio-cultural and political location of translations, as well as their relationship to long-term processes of confessional polarisation. All sub-projects pose questions on four main facets of the relevant source corpus:

1. What concepts of translation and translation terminology did the actors involved in the translations of a given work from one of the three languages mentioned into another (and especially from Arabic and Persian into Ottoman Turkish) use? How is the underlying understanding of translation reflected in the introduction, main text or epilogue, or in the codicological and paratextual parameters that were associated with the production of a manuscript (either the original or a copy)? Answering these questions should contribute to a critical reassessment of terms associated with the concept of translation in research (tarjama/terceme/tercüme). This includes highlighting connections to other terms of a larger semantic field (such as talkhīṣ/khulāṣa, abbreviated version), which is the only way to grasp the actual dimension of the translation processes adequately.

2. Which actors were involved in the translation of works and their transmission, and what exactly was their role? Who commissioned and read (copies of) translations, and what regional and socio-cultural differences can be identified in these practices from a diachronic perspective? In this research, the contexts of use within various social groups are being examined (courtly milieu, urban notables, Sufi brotherhoods), as are confessional differences such as the question of Sunni-Shia tendencies in translation processes and the general participation of women as translators and readers in a male-dominated field.

3. What is the relationship between the original text and its translation(s)? Is the structure retained, or are there changes (“adaptations”, “manipulations”) in chapter division and text based on content? Are there recurring patterns that can be traced back to specific places/regions and eras as well as genres? These questions focus on the time- and place-related significance of a translation for the textual history of a work and the development of a literary genre within the context of its intertextual relationships.
4. How did the visual organisation of multilingualism (format and layout), which, among other things, provides information about regional conventions of (reading) aesthetics, occur?  How are the multilingual parts in translations into Ottoman Turkish structured in comparison to the Arabic- or Persian-language originals in terms of the colour of the ink, illuminations and illustrations? Was there a standardised formal and/or visual repertoire for specific genres within which developments can be identified? Here, the focus is on questions about the materiality of translations that are of great importance and without which any discussion of the above categories would remain incomplete.