Samah Selim’s translation of the Egyptian Marxist Arwa Salih’s Al-Mubtasarun (1996) commemorates her out-of-print memoir published in the maktabat al-’usrah series dating from the Mubarak era. It also revives a text that becomes a site of leftist Marxist resistance under Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anouar Sadat. This paper seeks transnational feminist and leftist political viewpoints to draw global South-South connections through translation. Indeed, translating Salih’s story as a leftist activist in the student movement of the 1970s reflects the complex realities of the members of opposition movements after the Arab-Israeli literal “defeat” of 1967. Writing and translating are political acts that delineate the beginning of Salih's personal healing journey. However, more importantly, it is a moment of political resistance and a work of memory, lest we forget. With the Islamization of Egypt in the 1970s and its aftermath, little has been written about the role of the leftist/Marxist student and worker movements. The Islamists co-opted the term “resistance” under Abdel-Nasser and increasingly under Sadat and Mubarak. I argue that translation allows Arwah Salih’s forgotten story to travel and be known to English readers, defying the State's silencing. In her text, Salih brings forward the politics of her time, her resistance combined with her narrative of disenchanted love that mirrors her political disenchantment. Ultimately, women who resist “crowds” and stand against the system may get thrown to the margins of society, as did Salih. Yet, through Selim’s translation, a new life is given to this exceptional woman who dared to think and fought for non-conformity at a time when her comrades gave up and preferred to conform to the state-sponsored nationalist propaganda. Both Salih and Selim, author and translator, have committed to resistance. Yet, Selim, the translator, has the merit of standing against forgetfulness by providing a text in English that is worth remembering.

Ghassan Kanafani (1936–1972) is perhaps the most important literary figure in Palestinian resistance literature. He was a novelist, a journalist, and the spokesperson for the PLO until his assassination by Mossad in 1972. In 1965 he was invited to attend a ceremony for the sixteenth anniversary of the establishment of the People’s Republic of China. He also visited India on this trip and published an account of his travels upon his return to Palestine, which has largely been ignored by previous studies of his work. Kanafani’s ... And Then Arose Asia provides an important case study for exploring how Kanafani envisions a Palestinian–Chinese solidary through his romanticisation of communist China and his admiration toward Mao Zedong, the Chinese communist revolutionary. This chapter provides a close reading of the Chinese section of ... And Then Arose Asia. I conceive this section as a form of cultural translation, rather than a purely linguistic one. I explore why it is important to consider cultural translation when we consider translation as an act of solidarity. In doing so, I will explore what it means that this particular instance of cultural translation, despite being used for solidarity-building, contains vestiges of the very colonial or Orientalist thought against which that solidarity is being built. In particular, I problematise Kanafani’s failure to evade the Orientalist gaze in his discussion of the bodies of Chinese women and his idealisation of Maoism. The chapter explores the complexity of translation’s uses in anti-colonial resistance and solidarity-building between the colonised self and the colonised other.

During its 3-year existence, the Istanbul office of Harlequin Enterprises (HQN) translated and published a single sheik romance, Sharon Kendrick’s 2011 Monarch of the Sands. The Turkish translator, Zeynip Arda (a pen name), told me she despised this novel, particularly for what she saw as its apologist approach towards state-mandated modest dress. She also admitted to adding new material to another romance she was assigned to translate. Such opportunities for rewriting were facilitated by Harlequin Türkiye’s small staff, who provided minimal supervision—only the translators ever read the novels in English. Harlequin Enterprises outsources international translation and distribution to national affiliates, relying on “glocalization” to bridge the gap between its Anglosphere romance novels and local preferences. However, rather than simply easing cultural transitions, loose translation practices may instead invite translators to make substantive modifications with confidence that such rewriting will remain invisible to editors and readers. By examining a culturally problematic HQN romance in English and Turkish, I can assess Zeynip Arda’s redactions, additions, word choice, and other changes, along with our interview, as a measure of the cultural disjunction she experienced. In other words, I am considering Zeynip as a reader and the translation as her commentary on both the original novel and the subgenre itself. My study will reveal how a well-educated, politically liberal Muslim woman rewrote the subgenre for women like herself. Of the various subgenres of Anglosphere popular romance, the sheikh romance seems least likely to appeal to a readership in the Middle East. The subgenre emerged over a century ago with E.M. Hull’s The Sheik (1919), growing more popular in the 21st century. Also known as “desert romance,” sheikh romance depicts “fictionalized landscapes of the Middle East” carefully decorated with Arabic names and terms (Jarmakani xvii) but stripped of religion and nationality. Recent scholarship has explored its Orientalist fantasies; its fixed features, including sand, harems, and an occasional oasis; its links to US military and economic interventions in the Middle East; and its imperialist feminism (see works by Jarmakani, Holden, Burge, and Deal). However, romance scholars have not examined the subgenre’s reception in the Middle East. I have a unique opportunity to do so, thanks to my work with Harlequin Türkiye, the interview with Zeynip, and a rare copy of the ephemeral novel she translated.

Enlightenment texts, particularly those authored by Fénelon and Voltaire, served as a common foundation for the modernizing literatures of the Ottoman Empire. Starting from the early decades of the nineteenth century, in order to accelerate the process of modernization, Arab, Armenian, Greek, and Turkish translators in the empire favored translating the primary texts of Enlightenment into their own languages. Before the end of the 1850s, Enlightenment works such as Fénelon’s The Adventures of Telemachus and Voltaire’s Zadig, and Micromégas had been translated into non-Turkish languages within the empire. Although all these literatures had idiosyncratic features, there was a common trend of translating literary works with philosophical backgrounds throughout the modernization period. Ottoman Turkish translators followed this trend, and particularly those who were sent to Europe to attain Western-style education translated the major works of Enlightenment upon their return to the empire. In this respect, 1859 was the year that the first translation attempts from European languages into Ottoman Turkish yielded results. Three pioneering figures of the time, Yusuf Kamil, İbrahim Şinasi, and Münif Mehmed shared similar translation preferences and successively published works of Enlightenment. This paper proposes examining Enlightenment translations made into Ottoman Turkish that were often associated with the term “hikmet”, which refers to wisdom and was interchangeably used for “philosophy”. Accordingly, this study analyzes Terceme-i Telemak (1862, translated in 1859), which was recognized as a “book of wisdom” (kitab-ı hikmet-nisab), Muhaverat-ı Hikemiyye (1859), a compilation of philosophical dialogues from Enlightenment philosophers, and Micromégas, which was titled a “philosophical story” (hikâye-i hikemiyye) and was retranslated for different purposes. Since “hikmet” was a term with religious connotations used in Sufi doctrine, and recognized as an esoteric form of knowledge, the association of the term with Enlightenment texts led to criticism regarding the mystification of Enlightenment thought. Concerning these critiques, this paper argues that the meaning of “hikmet” underwent a transformation, becoming a term referring to universal truth, and being secularized to facilitate the dissemination of Enlightenment philosophy within the empire. Therefore, this study focuses on the networks of Enlightenment texts in the Ottoman Empire and aims to examine the reasons behind their correlation with existing concepts such as “hikmet”.

According to critical consensus, Mehmed Rauf’s novel Eylül (“September,” 1900-1901) holds a significant place in Turkish literary history as the first “psychological novel” and as Mehmed Rauf’s masterpiece. However, literary criticism has long considered this novel as derivative of French literature. This paper aims to reevaluate Mehmed Rauf’s novel by examining his innovative use of translingual modes of representation, in particular, free indirect discourse, psycho-narration, quoted monologue, and gendered textual strategies. Highlighting how translated narrative devices are productively distorted, I demonstrate how they acquire their own meaning in Ottoman Turkish, with the understanding that they are at once connected to both Ottoman and European narrative practices, but at the same time distinct from them. Central to the use of translingual narrative devices is the narrated subjectivities of protagonists Necib and Suad. Through their perspectives, Mehmed Rauf explores desire and anxiety, both conscious and unconscious, and how they relate to the effect of the dominant power relationship between the sexes. In my analysis of Eylül, I attend to Mehmed Rauf’s stylistic choices at pivotal moments in the novel, particularly in the representation of Necib’s inner struggle with his forbidden desire for Suad and how his desire is deeply entwined with his idealization of her. Much of the novel is focalized through Necib’s perspective, articulating a male subjectivity. But the novel also includes Suad’s perspective, which is crucial for understanding the gender power dynamics and the emergence of female subjectivity in modernity. By giving voice to Suad, the narrative construction of her subjectivity complicates the projected idealized images of her, which has historical importance, as it threatens to disrupt established societal expectations within the patriarchal order. This complex dynamic not only sheds light on Eylül, but it points to the broader gendered and translingual condition of Ottoman modernity.