Dede Korkut travels overseas: Turkish tales in Brazil

“Dede Korkut Oğuznameleri,” the legendary tales of Turkish literature, have been translated into Portuguese by Marco de Pinto, a philologist born in São Paulo, Brazil, after a very intense process of hard work. “It took me over six months, almost a whole year,” says de Pinto in an interview with Today’s Zaman. “That’s because I was responsible not only for the translation itself, but also for the lengthy introduction and the numerous footnotes, over 250.”

The way to Turkish

Having majored in Arabic language and literature at the University of São Paulo and currently a doctoral candidate in romance philology and Portuguese language, the 30-year-old de Pinto has conducted a very elaborate study for his translation. “The introduction and notes were the hardest parts, for I had to peruse several academic articles, dictionaries, other translations and their introductions. The most essential tools in the process were Ettore Rossi’s valuable introduction and Semih Tezcan’s ‘Dede Korkut Oğuznameleri Üzerine Notlar.’ In addition, I gave special treatment to the proper names of the characters and place names as well, by preserving, through a system of phonetic notation, their original spelling -- that is, original in the sense that even people who don’t know how to read Turkish or are familiar with the Turkish language, along with a few words from Arabic and Persian as well, will still be able to pronounce them correctly.”

De Pinto has visited Turkey twice and been to various places such as İstanbul, İzmir, Selçuk, Ephesus, Kuşadası, Konya and Cappadocia. However, his acquaintance with Turkish goes back to the year 2000. “I first came into contact with the Turkish language through a course that was offered at the University of São Paulo,” explains de Pinto. “At the time, I’d already started studying Arabic, so after recognizing some Arabic loanwords in Turkish, I decided to study it more thoroughly. Then a few years later I married a Turk, and the interest was only intensified after that.”

Before Dede Korkut, de Pinto worked on other prominent figures of Turkish literature. “I’d written some academic papers, among which were some poems by Nazım Hikmet and Karacaoğlan,” says de Pinto. “Then there is also my unpublished master’s degree dissertation which was about Arabic loanwords in Turkish and the Turkish language reform.”

Dede Korkut in Portuguese

“The idea first came up when the Globo Publishing Company asked me which were the most representative works of Turkish literature,” de Pinto said, explaining how it was decided to translate “Dede Korkut Oğuznameleri.” “I then listed, for example, ‘Kutadgu Bilig,’ Nasrettin Hoca and the ‘Dede Korkut Oğuznameleri.’ The matter was settled easily enough when we pondered. The first one is too poetic and has too few translations abroad. Even though this is not a sign that the work is to be neglected, far from it, but it indicates that the readership will be minimal. As for the second example, though it is known that he was most probably a Turk, we can still find translations, even in Portuguese, of his tales, though not from Turkish. The “Dede Korkut Oğuznameleri” was the perfect choice, given its importance in Turkey as well as for the Turks of Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. Other factors came into consideration, such as the number of translations into diverse languages, such as most of the European languages, some important Asian representatives, such as Persian, Azeri and, notably, not into either Spanish or Portuguese -- languages that are akin to each other. Most notable is a lack of translation into Spanish, a language that is famous for translating a lot. So we decided to fill this gap and do the first translation ever from Turkish into Portuguese.”

As in many folk tales of different cultures, “Dede Korkut Oğuznameleri” also have some universal features and common points. “There is especially one tale in the ‘Dede Korkut Oğuznameleri’ that attracted my attention,” says de Pinto. “The story of Depegöz [or Tepegöz, as it is called in modern Turkish]. It is known that it bears striking resemblances to tales from around the world, from countries as diverse as Scotland, Spain, Portugal and Chile, to name just a few. Well, the fact is that there is a character typical of Brazilian culture called Caipora. This is the name of a mythological Tupi [a native people of Brazil] entity that is associated with the forests, woods and game animals that often frightens people and even kills them. In one story, we find similarities between Basat and the hunter of the story, Caipora and Tepegöz, and even how they are killed [through the only eye they have on their foreheads]. Of course, the transmission of legends and myths can be traced back hundreds of years, and most likely it came from the Portuguese colonizers to Brazil, and not directly from the Turkish tale, which also bears many similarities with the Polyphemus tale found in Homer’s Odyssey. It is interesting to see how cultures, myths and legends can travel!”

Who is a Turk?

Cultures do travel, but not that easily, particularly today -- despite the high-tech tools allowing communication and interaction. The world is said to have globalized and shrunk; however, distances still remain. “Sadly, facts about Turkey and the Turks are not very well known in Brazil,” says de Pinto. “This is mainly due to historical reasons, for when some Arabs [Lebanese and Syrians] fled from the Ottoman territories at the beginning of the 20th century to Brazil, they entered Brazil with a Turkish passport, thus being known as ‘Turks’.” Consequently, according to de Pinto, this has persisted to our day, leading to a strange situation where Arabs are still called and mistaken for Turks. “It often strikes me when the subject of the Turkish language comes up in a conversation with a Brazilian that they always ask me, amazed: “Oh, can you read those strange [Arabic] letters?” That is, they think that even the alphabet that Turks use is the Arabic one…”

In this respect, the publication causes quite a lot of astonishment among readers in the country. “The reaction of the readers is one of surprise and even shock, as a Brazilian journalist so shrewdly commented to me,” says de Pinto. “Surprise because it is the very first translation to be done directly from Turkish into Portuguese. It often strikes me to think that the Portuguese colonizers went as far as Japan in their travels in the 16th century, but had so little contact with the Ottoman Turks. Well, when we think that our president, Lula [da Silva], was the first president to go on an official visit to Turkey in 2009, it is shocking enough.” This statement from de Pinto sounds truly astonishing, as de Pinto recalls that before Lula, the last Brazilian head of state to visit İstanbul, which was then still the capital of the Ottoman Empire, was an emperor and Brazil was not yet a republic.

Yet, there’s one figure that Brazilians are familiar with: Orhan Pamuk. “Because he won the Nobel prize,” says de Pinto. “Even so, his books were translated not from the Turkish original, but from English and French editions.” De Pinto believes that the increase in translation traffic between the countries will help to expedite mutual relations. “Translations have an importance that people often take for granted,” says de Pinto. “Not only can we learn about our own history through novels, but, and most importantly, we can also learn from other distant cultures as well, some which we may never have the opportunity, for various reasons, to visit in person. Along this line, I find it especially enlightening that Selim İleri comments in his afterword to Adıvar’s ‘Ateşten Gömlek’: ‘What I know about the trials of our recent history, I learned mostly from novels.’ Apart from history itself, I share Azade Seyhan’s opinion that translation is the most direct route into the lives and realities of others.”

De Pinto intends to continue his studies in this field and seems quite enthusiastic about it. “I have already translated ‘Dualar Kalıcıdır’ by Tuna Kiremitçi, soon to be published in Brazil by the Sá Publishing Company,” he says. “Oya Baydar is also on the list of books to be published, along with other eminent representatives of modern Turkish literature. An anthology of poems by Nazım Hikmet is on the way, too.”