MESA Banner
Translation as Planning and the Elasticity of “Kütübḫāne”: Abdullah Cevdet’s Publishing Project
Abstract
Abdullah Cevdet’s publishing project spans between 1904 and 1932, if we limit ourselves to his journal and publishing house İctihād. His publishing project, however, seems to reach beyond that. Abdullah Cevdet serializes part of his own translation of Gustave Le Bon’s Les Lois psychologiques de l’évolution des peoples in his journal in 1905 and publishes it himself in 1907 as part of his book series Kütübḫāne-i İctihād (Library of İctihād). In 1905 in the journal İctihād, he already announces the future publication of Le Bon’s Psychologie Des Foules in translation, which appears only in 1909, published by a different printer and as part of a different book series. At the time of this publication, its translators Köprülüzade Mehmed Fuad and Sadreddin Celal are only 19 years old. Not only does Abdullah Cevdet appear here as a mastermind facilitating the publication of a work without calling attention to himself, but he also seems to encourage, if not commission, young generations to produce translations. My first inquiry appears here: Is there any value in imagining Psychologie Des Foules as part of Kütübḫāne-i İctihād? Another curiosity relates to the elasticity of the term “kütübḫāne”. As seen in a seal on the title page of a book printed in Egypt, Abdullah Cevdet also runs a bookstore in Cairo, selling publications that are printed by others: also called “Kütübḫāne-i İctihād”. What further complicates this specific aspect is that there exists another bookstore in Istanbul with the same name, owned by another publisher-printer: Ahmed Ramiz. And a final complication is their shared pool of authors and the thematic overlaps in their publications. This is why I broadly ask what the uses and the limitations of the concept of “kütübḫāne” are. At this point, a valuable primary source, a publisher’s catalogue printed by Abdullah Cevdet himself, is worth discussing to further elaborate on “kütübḫāne”: Fihrist. Printed in 1908, this catalogue draws categorizational distinctions among Abdullah Cevdet’s publications and reveals how they were imagined by him. I apply sociological approaches to translation, positioning translators as “agents” and presenting translation as a form of active “planning” that creates “repertoires” for a receiving cultural system to inform the treatment of Abdullah Cevdet’s publishing project in this paper. A supporting toolkit is borrowed from the field of bibliography that treats books as physical objects and explores their mobility.
Discipline
History
Geographic Area
Egypt
Europe
Ottoman Empire
Sub Area
None