Without translation so much of the fantastic literature that we write about in the Bosphorus Review would be unavailable to the world. With than in mind as part of the Istanbul Literature Festival we invited three Turkish to English translators to talk about their work and the art of translation. Alexander Dawe, Ümit Hussein, and Zeynep Beler are three of the best in the world and it was a real privilege to hear them talking about their art.

Zeynep: I’m Zeynep Beler Ive translated Harkan Günday’s More and Ece Temelkuran’s Turkey: the insane and the Melancholy.  

Alex: I’m Alex Dawe. I’m from New York. I’ve been living in Turkey for most of my life now. I’ve taught English at various language schools including the British council. I worked for a French pharmaceutical company for a couple of years. I’ve done some acting in television, serials, and movies and voiceover work. Currently I mainly do literary translations. I’ve translated quite a few books. They are some classics. They are Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar’s Time Regulation Institute, Sabahattin Ali's Madonna in a Fur Coat and a collection of short stories by Sait Faik [A Useless Man]. Those, I should say, were collaborations with Maurine Freely. Then I've done some contemporary translations. Some of those books include Ahmet Altan’s Endgame Ece Temelkuran’s Women Who Blow on Knots and a short book by Ercan Kesal [Fairy Soda], a couple of books by Iskender Pala [Legend], and Buket Uzuner [Two Green Otters, Water].

Ümit: Good evening, It’s lovely to see so many people here. My name is Ümit Hussein. I’m originally from Cyprus. That is my parents are from Cyprus. I was born and bought up in Tottenham in London. I’m currently living in Seville. Apart from being a literary translator, I’m also an interpreter,  mainly on the telephone. I’ve translated books by Nevin Halici, who is a cookery writer, Mehmet Yaşın who is a Cypriot writer, also Ahmet Altan and, more recently, three books by Burhan Sonmez. I’ve also translated Nermin Yıldırım. 

Luke: I’d like to start by asking you to tell us one word that you find hard to bring from Turkish into English. 

Alex: I have it. A lot of people say, they try to catch you and ask, “how do you translate kaçıncı?” 

Zeynep: That’s a good one. 

Alex: Kaçıncı is a word that we don’t have in English.

Ümit: The main thing I find difficult is not so much a word but the lack of a word, the lack of he or she. In Turkish quite often the writer wants to leave the gender vague and in English you can’t. That’s what I find quite difficult. 

Zeynep: I was thinking about this just today actually. For me it is is something like Kolay gelsin, which is on the surface you can translate obviously. But how do get the nuance. A word like this that you kind quite get the effect of it. It would sound condescending or something. 

Ümit: I’ve just got another one Başın sağolsun. That’s a very difficult one. When somebody dies it’s what you use to give your condolences. But it’s a very specific phrase that doesn’t exist in English. 

Luke: My next question, and maybe we could start with you Ümit, is can you tell me the first thing you translated and what did you learn from it? 

Ümit: Do you mean writing, not interpreting? 

Luke: Yeah writing.

Ümit: I think it was Mehmet Yaşın. It was his first experimental novel, which is called Soydaşınız Balık Burcu. It’s a very strange novel. I met Mehmet Yaşın through my tutor at university. I phoned him up to ask for advice and he said, “you know what, I’ve got this novel. How would you like to translate it?” I did. It was great. It was wonderful. It was the first thing  I’d ever translated that I was being paid for and … well… it was like diving into a very deep swimming pool that is full of pond weed pulling you down that you have to struggle against but then you come out at the other end and it’s wonderful. That’s how it felt. 

Luke: Alright, thank you. Alex what was your first translation and what did you learn from it? 

Alex: The first thing I tried to translate was a short story by Ahmet Hamid Tanpinar, called Summer Rain. I don’t know if you know the story, but it’s a very difficult one mainly because the language is rich, it’s ornate and distinct. It's very poetic and, of course, is filled with a lot of old Ottoman words, which is partly why I wanted to go there because I wanted the challenge of going in there and seeing if I could crack the story. It was hard. It was like suddenly jumping in at the deep and and suddenly realising, “Wow this is an incredible process.” Very difficult because I could see just how different the languages were both in sense of syntax and how you have to do all this arranging and rearranging in the translation. But also understanding how it’s in a very different cultural space. It has references and thematic material that are just so different. In many ways they are impossible to fully understand. So you’re always at a loss and not quite getting there. It was demoralising but also thrilling to see if I could render this story in English. I’m actually still working on it. It’s never been published 15 years later I’m still tinkering with it. 

Zeynep: For me I have no real clear beginnings because originally I’m a visual artist and I did a lot of press releases and texts about art and art speak things. Then, at some point, I think it was about 2014, I started doing literary translation. I wanted to do something more lengthy and I could do that. I think it was Hakan Gunday [More] the first book. I would get part way then and then stop. So it wasn’t like I would finish that book. I started with More I think. It was the first translation of mine that got publish. I’m kind of on the fence about how I feel about that because now I look at the published book, there are a lot of things that I would do differently knowing what I know now. It taught me this, I guess. 

Luke: Thank you. Alex you translated Time Regulation Institute, which is one of the most famous books in Turkish literature. I guess it must have been an intimidating task because it was a book you really had to get right. The think I’m most interested in about that transition is how did you deal with the older style of Turkish? Did you try to bring it into modern English? Or did you try to put it into an older style of English? 

Alex: We went for the former. We went for a modern sounding language. That was upsetting for a lot of people. Even now, in retrospect, I think maybe we went a little bit to far. There are certain expressions that are maybe a little too modern sounding. That was the general approach that we wanted to be updated in that sense. Very much unlike the Huzur translation by Erdag Göknar, which is a great translation, but he did something very different in that book. There he tried to find equivalence for all those old words in English. I think it has a very interesting effect. I think sometimes it goes a little too far. So you have a word like mahiyet he would reach to for a word like quiddity thinking that mahiyet has a strange, exotic sound so lets go for something like quiddity. It’s hard to get that balance right. You might overshoot in that direction or the other. I remember somebody coming to me and saying “you have this expression in Time Regulation Institute where  a guy hawks a ball of phlegm, it sounds regional or Southern American or something like that.” It’s obviously hard to get the consistency that you are shooting for. 

Luke: Why did you chose to go for a more modern sounding English? What was the thought process there? 

Alex: Was there one? In some ways there might not have been. There was an original thought process. It was sitting together -because this was a collaboration with Maurine Freely- doing some brain storming. We sat down and said, “Whats the tone here, the music, the sound? How are these characters sounding? How do we perceive these characters?” We did some work there. But we didn’t sit down and ask “are they modern sounding?” We thought more about who are these people and we tried to get on the same page about them. 

Lucky, we were, more or less, on the same page and once we got that down it would, sort of, roll. It was not like we were checking saying, “Oh is this section a little old sounding or not?” It was more like, “this doesn’t sound right Hayri wouldn’t say that.” 

Luke: That opens up a bigger question that I would like to ask all of you. Which is, when you are thinking about word choice, do you go for fidelity of language? Do you chose a word with exactly the same meaning? Or do you try and go for a word with a similar feeling? Which is more important? 

Ümit: There is no hard and fast rule. It depends on what you are translating at the time, on what the word is, how literal an equivalent there is. If there is, then you do that, if there isn’t, then you have to see is there something that needs to be sacrificed and is that sacrifice worth it in order for the target audience to get a better understanding? Everything depends so much on what you are translating and what the word is. 

Luke: Zeynep do you have any thoughts on that? 

Zeynep: For me it is generally the latter really. Is has to convey the feeling better. It is often that English and Turkish at least many words that totally correspond but not one hundred percent of them. 

Ümit: For me one of the hardest things is dialogue. Turkish dialogue is so characteristic particularly if it is a character that is not very well educated. They might use very colourful language. To render that in English. I’m from Tottenham, in Tottenham you have very colourful language. But, of course, how do you translate that into English? It is so tempting to bring in the kind of language you would use in north London but you can’t because then you are making it regional. For me that is a very big challenge. To find colloquial language that isn’t regional, which would serve for somebody who’s from Turkey. 

Zeynep: I actually wanted to ask that. Do you have the urge to translate characters as if they were north Londoners? 

Ümit: I control that urge and I stamp on it. I really do have that urge yes. 

Zeynep: If you modified it a bit or something, would it work? 

Ümit: But there are words, which are so specific to that area that you can’t. 

Zeyep: Yeh, Then they would be north Londoners, for sure. 

Luke: Cool. My next question is, should translators have a voice of their own within the text? Or is that also something that you should stamp down on? 

Ümit: The answer is no. 

Luke: Translators shouldn’t have a voice? 

Ümit: We were talking about this recently. When I say we, I was at the London Book Fair and I was doing a little talk. I was complaining and whinging about the fact that nobody recognises the work of the translator. Whenever a reviewer is reviewing a translation, they pretend that it was written in English and they never credit the translator with having done a good translation. I was complaining about this and a reviewer was in the audience and she said, “what do you expect me to do? I read it, and if it reads well, that’s all there is to do.” I said, “If it reads well, that is because the translator has done a good job. It means you can’t hear the voice of the translator, which is the way it should be.” 

Alex: On that point specifically, I tend to disagree. I find it frustrating that in reviews you get a gratuitous one off complement and then shuffled onto the next thing. It feels like it is part of the formula, that it has to be there. Its almost never anything of serious critical substance. Just “it’s an excellent translation.”

Luke: Is that just because they [reviewers] don’t know the original language, so don’t know if the translation is good or not? 

Alex: One thing is that they are just instructed to do so. I think it is part of the tradition. It is a good thing because they are trying to acknowledge the translator, but I don’t know… sometimes the shoutouts ring a little empty. I would almost like someone to say it was lacking in this or it was lacking in that. It would be good for me. 

Zeynep: On amazon, where more laymen have access -I don’t know if I should call them laymen- you can see that. But I don’t know if you want to. 

Alex: There they really rip into you if they don’t like it. 

Ümit: I once did a translation. It hasn’t been published yet, but I sent it to my sister. She said, “I could hear your voice.” I was appalled. But then I comforted myself because that particular writer sounds like me. So I think the fact that she could hear me meant that what she could really hear is the writer in English. I would hate for somebody to read a translation of mine and hear me. I would hate that. 

Alex: I would also disagree there. Not to be contrarian or anything, but I think it is inevitable. I think about it a little more these days. At one point I though that ideally the translator should be this godly, self-effacing creature that goes in and has no ego. I even said that to my brother once. He is a composer. I said, “I wouldn’t care if they didn’t put my name on the Tanpinar book. It doesn’t matter. I’d do the work.” But then I remembered, with every translation I almost always insert in a little something that is my own. I think in Tanpinar I put in something like calling a person a weasel. I almost always used that word, it’s funny. A guy I used to play rock music with recognised it and said, “dude you put that in there! The Wessel.” Oh my god how irreverent.

Ümit: What was the original?

Alex: I wouldn’t remember. A rascal or something. 

Zeyenp:  Everyone has those opinions. Like this word should be this. It is also a very fluid language especial between Turkish and English. As I said earlier. Some words are the same in your opinion and in my opinion it is more like another word. You can discuss this forever for a lot of words. Especially if they don’t have a lot of common ground like Turkish and English. 

Ümit: An translator friend of mine and I were discussing this. She said, “A translator is like a pianist who is playing a piece of music. And what you have to do is render that music.” That’s the way I see a translation, you have to make the listener or reader feel it. You have to make them feel the music. You’re not composing it. 

Luke: That is an interesting way of putting it. 

Zeynep: Yeh, you’re interpreting it. 

Ümit: Yes precisely. 

Alex: The one I like. I think it was Seamus Heaney who said, “the text is trampoline.” I like that a lot. Very often what we do is jump on a text and use it as a springboard. Then we are often covert writers. Translators don’t want to admit that but they are often trying to express their own creative powers and writerly chops. Even think “I can do this a touch better than Tanpinar.” 

Often we are editors as well and we see gaps, or factual gaps. Like there were two people in the room and now there are three. 

Zyenep: We were actually talking about this earlier. I want to ask should a translator be an editor or should you suppress that urge? This is the first time I’ve had the chance to ask other translators because I met the two of you today. I actually never met other Turkish to English translators so it was good to ask. I think you both felt that you do have that urge and opinions on the text. But you have to suppress it because… 

Ümit: Oh no… 

Zeynep: Oh no? You can put notes in it for the consideration of the editor or the author but you can go in there and change it. 

Ümit: He’s [Alex] saying he does. He says he does change the text. He was saying that translators have to be covert writers. I think a translator has to be a writer. I think a translator is a writer. What you are doing is writing in a different language. 

Zeynep: But you are re-writing. 

Ümit: You can’t be a literary translator without also being a writer. There is no covertness about it. We are writers out there with our heads held high.

Zeynep: I always say, as just a footnote, I really like being a translator because it means I don’t have to go to the huge effort of  writing a novel; like researching it and then sitting down and writing it. It’s already written I just have to sit down and do it again. 

Ümit: I wish that was true Zeynep. I really do. 

Zeynep: I feel like that. It’s much more fun than toiling. 

Ümit: The writer I’m translating is actually here. The first page of his novel took me an entire day. I spent the entire day researching the first page. It is about a lot of religious texts and the stories in that text. It took me an entire day I had to consult every religious person I know. I had to go onto religious websites and have live chats with people who give spiritual advice. 

Zeynep: Whaaaattttt?

Ümit: Seriously it took an entire day. I don’t write that much, but when I do, I don’t do anything like as much as I do when I’m translating. 

Luke: That opens up an interesting question. To what extent do you guys feel that you are trying to explain Turkish culture? When a specific point comes up, do you think, “maybe a British or American person wouldn’t understand that.” How much explaining do you have to do that isn’t in the original text? 

Zeynep: I think that this is also translation to give the feeling of a culture. 

Ümit: I’m not a fan of footnotes. When I’m reading a book and it’s got footnotes it interferes with my reading experience, so I try not to impose that. One thing I almost always do is a pronunciation guide at the end of the book, so the reader doesn’t have to look at it if they don’t want to and I also include a glossary. 

Zeynep: Cool. 

Luke: Is that how the rest of you deal with it? 

Alex: Yeh I think that’s a good way and I think it’s becoming more and more common to have something to refer to. I think that now with the internet people can always check things online, so a glossary might not be needed. To go back to your question of what translation is about and trying to bring across aspects of the culture. If it is just describing a scene, a wedding scene or something like that which is unusual, if it is an expression or idiom that is also new, that can be something that we think about a lot. So, how do we bring that across? A lot of times, you can say “well I’ll talk the English equivalent or I’ll create my own new idiom that will give the reader a sense of that Turkish idiom. That is actually a highly creative act.”

Luke: Ok. Ümit when we were communicating online you were telling me that you worked closely with Burhan Sönmez on the translations of his books. Did working with the writer make it easier or more difficult? 

Ümit: I haven’t just worked closely with Burhan Sönmez. I’ve worked closely with every single writer I’ve ever translated. When I say I’ve worked closely, we’ve exchanged up to sixty emails a day not just about the novel. We tend to chat and exchange things about our personal lives. It is  a whole process. I would not say how other translators should work. I can only say how I work. I can’t contemplate translating a novel without being in touch with the novelist. The bad side of that is that the novelist always knows if I’m working or not. I can’t pretend I’m sitting at home working when I’m not because they know if they haven’t heard from me for three hours, It means I’m out having fun . But no, I do tend to check things, comment on things. It is really important to me. Other people might feel it is not necessary and that it’s time consuming. I couldn’t work unless I’m exchanging. 

Luke: Is that a similar experience you guys have had working with other living authors? I know a lot of yours are dead Alex. That makes it a little difficult. 

Zeynep: That makes it easer. 

Luke: With your living writers, do you communicate with them? 

Alex: I never do. I prefer not to. I mean we will meet at the beginning sit down and have a chat about what we are doing and general things but then I like to be alone with the book. Occasionally, I might phone them up and ask them a question about something but even that I tend not to do that until the end. I think I want to be alone with the book in my space in my world. That may seem egotistical. I can certainly see the benefits of talking with the author and even going over things line by line it is a very different expense. I don’t think I’ve ever done it. I think I met with one author and they went crazy they said, “this is wrong and this is wrong, it’s ruined." 

Zeynep: I had the same thing once. 

Luke: What about you Zeyenp. Your writers are living do you talk with them? 

Zenyep: I don’t actually. Usually what happens is like a conscious decision. I just work better on my own without stopping to ask someone about something. Even if I'm not having a very productive day and I’m hungover or whatever I can highlight the passages that I’m doing and come back to them later because it is not good to stop for me. It does happen that when I’m working with the editor before the book is being published and they have a question about a passage. I say, “Well I don’t know because the writer wrote it this way I will get in touch with them and then get back to you.” This sometimes happens and it works pretty well. So far the writers are happy. There was one writer who I sat down with. It was at her request. Her English is really good so I had to say ‘ok’ to some of her points. It is her book after all. I had to say, “I wouldn’t write it like that but that’s her preference.”

Ümit: Can I just add something? Zeynep just said “it’s the writer’s book.” It is the writer’s book, but it is your translation. 

Zeynep: If they suggest something that is completely of the mark for me, I do say that. I do say, “Well it’s got my name on it and it’s really not good. Please trust me.”

Ümit: That’s right. 

Zeynep: But if it could be either, I’m like, “that’s alright. You know, have it your way.” 

Ümit: Burhan and I we work very well together. He knows a lot of English and he says to me sometimes ‘could we, maybe, possibly put it like this?’ If I think we could, I say yes snd if I think we couldn’t, I say no. 

Zeynep: Or you can find a compromise something in the middle. 

Ümit: That’s right. As I said, Burhan and I we don’t confront each other. We respect each other. If I really don’t think what he says will work I say, ‘absolutely not and this is the reason why.’ Then he accepts it. I would never say, “oh no its your work so your words,” unless what he says is reasonable. But if it is having my name on it then I have to think it’s reasonable. 

Zeynep: Of course. It might have to do with the fact that the book that I was translating was literary, but it was a political, and social history. It wasn’t fiction, so I had to sort of cave on some things because it wasn’t always a question of style. 

Ümit: I don’t just do literary translations. I also do other translations. I also do voluntary translations, for example, one organisation I work with is a peasants’ organisation. They asked me to do a long text about peasants’ rights. I did it and then somebody edited it. They knew lots of this particular organisation’s terms and corrected it. Then they corrected lots of other things. They did lots of things wrong and it was completely ungrammatical, so I told them to “please take my name off this. I don’t want my name to appear on this because that’s not what I wrote.” 

Zyenep: This is another reason why it is good to talk to other translators because I can be very deferential. It is because I am new at this in a way. You’ve got a lot more experience than me and it makes a difference. 

Ümit: Well, you [Luke] asked what the first thing I translated was. The first thing I published was a cookery book by Nevin Halici. She is an absolute celebrity here. This particular book was about Sufi cuisine. It was about the ingredients that Rumi used in his poetry. She made a compilation of all the recipes that included the ingredients that were available in Turkey in the 13th century. She knocked on old ladies’ doors and she collected recipes from them. She standardised them and she added all these couplets from Rumi. Now the couplets were in Turkish, but they were translated from Persian. I know nothing about Sufi philosophy whatsoever and they were translations from translations. She said to me very early on ‘don’t add a single comma without consulting me.’ Well, I don’t know if she lived to regret that. As I said, we exchanged sixty emails a day, not just about work. By the end of it, we knew everything about everything that we’d ever done. We knew if we went to the swimming pool, what we had cooked, who we had invited to a party and it was absolutely wonderful. It wasn’t just translating a book, it was a whole process and I think that adds to it. 

Luke: Ok lets move on. I wanted to ask you Zeynep about translating for Hakan Günday. I don’t know if you guys have read his books, but they are pretty nasty and there are some quite grim sections in there. I was wondering to what extent you were able to step back when you were translating that material? Was it an emotional process?

Zeynep: No i actually got really into it. I had fun because I wouldn’t write something so sordid. I think one of the things that’s good about translating is you can write vicariously through others. With everything creative its good to go to extremes sometimes. So I’ll be thinking about how can I get this? So obviously so of the pages were written to provoke so how can I render it in English as provocatively as I can? Or how can I make this a gorse as possible? So I enjoyed that. 

Luke: What about you Alex? You translated for him as well. 

Alex: Yeah. His books are edgy, dark, grim sometimes to the point of graphic, very extreme and in lots of detail. Yeah, generally I found it a bit frustrating mainly because that kind of over the top drama, the excessive violence it seems like English kind of buckles under that. Often what you do is you move into a space where you is think this might fly, this might work or people will perceive this as being ironic, which is strange because it’s not the authors invention. Or if I jack it up a little bit you get a feeling like you should go for this and you’ve got a situation with a sadist who wants to get beaten by a young woman. Then the young woman eventually castrates him all in great details and it’s quite extreme. It can be fun to do. Sometimes you do thing how far will this go? 

Zeynep: What am I doing? Who am I? 

Alex: But it was an interesting challenge. On thing I like is I got to use a range of words something that is quite different. Hakan  Günday has a distinct style and voice. 

Luke: Pretty different to Tanpinar? 

Alex: Different to Tanpinar. 

Luke: I was wondering to what extent do you think about the target audience when you are translating? Is that every a consideration for you? 

Ümit: The target audience is an English reader. 

Luke: But that’s quite a large category. 

Ümit: Yes. So you have to think that the person who is going to read it is going to be able to appreciate it. But is that thinking about the target audience or is it craft? Of course, you have to make it understandable to an English reader. Therefore, you have to… not tailer it, but you have to craft it. 

Alex: I try not to think about that. I try to get into the book, the spirit and try to move along with it naturally. But I think that inevitably you do start thinking about market trends. You’ve got a book. It’s going to go to a big publishing house. You do have at the back of your mind, “what is happening now? This might sit well in this sense.” I was doing İskender Pala, It’s quite dramatic stuff. The only way I felt that it would work was if I jacked it up and made it almost mock-heroic. So I had that in mind. `you also have in mind, unfortunately, -and that something that artists in general have to think about- is this following market trends? You end up thinking “ah, this is the kind of thing that will spark an interest.”

Luke: It just because the publishing industry thinks quite carefully about who the target demographics of a certain book is. The potential reader for Tanpinar is different for İskender Pala. So I was curious. Have you ever thought about that?

Ümit: When I was working for Nevin Halici she wrote about a recipe that was good for vegetarians because it was made with meat juice. I said ‘no, Nevin Abla, in England, a recipe with meat juice isn’t vegetarian.’ 

Zenyep: You can’t have meat, so you might as well use the juice. 

Ümit: In that case you think about the target audience. 

Luke: How do you translate titles? Because in Turkish literature I’ve seen some strange ones [translations] where you look at the original, you look at the translation and say “wait, those aren’t even similar.” The classic one is Mehmet My Hawk, which isn’t close to the original title. Are you guys involved in that and how do you think about it? 

Zeynep: I have a funny story about that. When I translated Ece Temelkuran, for some reason, I don’t remember, Turkey: The Insane and the Melancholy, I thought it was stupid and tried to chance it. But the publisher was like, ‘no, no, it’s way better than just Insane and Melancholy. We are going to keep it.’ I was like ‘ok.’ So that happened… 

Alex: With my Temelkuran book they wanted to call it What’s a Revolution if You Can’t Dance?, which is totally different. The book in Turkish is The Women Who Blow on Knots. I thought that it was wonderful and should go with that. 

Luke: Ümit what about you? 

Ümit: I always translate my own titles. They come to me just like that and then they don’t go away.  Actually I make it sound like I’m really clever. Most of the time they are really easy. Like one of the books I translated recently was Istanbul Istanbul. It wasn’t so difficult to do that one. 

Alex: You could change the order. 

Luke: Thanks for that… We’ve got to finish soon and I’ve got one more question. Can you give me one book in Turkish that doesn’t yet have a translation, but really should have one? 

Ümit: When you say a translation do you mean a published translation? 

Luke: Yeah. 

Ümit: Because I’ve done a translation of a fantastic book that hasn’t yet been published but it so needs to be. It is by Nermin Yıldırım. The book in Turkish is called Rüyalar Anlatılmaz. Ahh now this is an interesting title. Rüyalar Anlatılmaz in Turkish means you mustn’t or you can’t explain or talk about your dreams. I translated it as Secrets Dreamed in Istanbul. That particular titles hints about what the book is. I think it is an absolutely wonderful wonderful book. Wonderful because it is wonderful on a feminist level. It is very funny. It’s wonderful on a mystery level. It needs to be published. The translation already exists so it would be really easy. 

Luke: Fantastic. Alex what about you? 

Alex: For ages I've been talking about called Üç İstanbul by Mithat Cemal Kuntayits. It is a book I really enjoyed. I think it was written in the 1930s. The Üç refers to three periods in history, late ottoman period, during the republic and past republic. It’s a dramatic epic story with a great cast of characters. It’s got beautiful Turkish. It’s very easy to read. If you haven’t already, I recommend it because it is a gripping soap opera type book. That’s what comes to mind, 

Zyenep: I don’t know what should be translated. But I would be really honoured to translate Murat ``Uyurkulak it would be but it would be a very huge challenge. Also maybe something by Sule Gürbüz. I also have also had the desire to translate maybe someone like my friend Gözde Kurt. She is in the audience. I read her book and was proud. I thought it was a really magical little book that would be really fun to translate. That would be one occasion that I would work with the writer.

Luke: Ok cool. Thank you all for coming. 

Editors Note: we had a brief Q&A with the audience at the end of the panel. But, due to the poor recording, were unable to transcribe it.