NEAR E 280: Central Asian Turkic Literature in Translation
WIN 2012
The goal of the course is to acquaint the students with the nomadic and sedentary cultures of the Central Asian Turkic peoples through the medium of their oral and written literature of the 8th to the 21th century. Attention will be paid to their rich oral literature, which influenced the written literature greatly even up to the present time. We will also locate the oral poet/singer in Turkic nomadic society as a highly respected healer, leader and advisor. This unique social status was transferred to the poets and writers of the modern era. While reading their works in English translation, it will be necessary to look into the reliability of the translators. Have they been truthful to the original texts? This question is particularly important for the Central Asian
Turkic Literature written during the years 1917-1986, when the Turkic peoples lived under Soviet colonialism. Censorship and the doctrine of “Socialist Realism” altered not only original texts but also their translations into Russian from which subsequently English
translations were made. We will give examples of such distortions, but otherwise we will only use verifiable translations into English made directly from the language of the original text.
