Halide Edip Adıvar, Her Life and Translations

Halide Edip Adıvar, or by her maiden name Halide Edip, was born in 1884 into an upper-middle-class family in Istanbul. Graduating from prestigious schools and taking private lessons, she became interested in reading, writing, and language. Starting her literary career in 1897 with translations she made from home, she quickly rose in the ranks of many newspapers and schools. With her efforts increasing with the onset of the Balkan War and continuing in the Great War and the Turkish Independence War, she worked a great deal in translating military and other documents and peace conference attendees with her efforts helping Ataturk’s cause. After the war until her death, she made numerous contributions to Turkish literature and to English translation and analysis into Turkish, while holding many other significant positions in the Republic.

Her Early and Education Life

Halide Edip was born in Istanbul. Her father was Mehmed Edip Bey, one of the clerks of Ceyb-i Hümâyûn, and her mother was Mrs. Berifem. Halide, who lost her mother at a very young age, lived in the house of her grandmother, who was also a Mevlevi. The traditional Ottoman family impressions she received from this house were very rich. At a very young age, Halide Edip was enrolled in kindergarten by a Greek. In 1893, she entered the American College. Here, Halide Edip concentrated her attention on the Bible and English books. When she had to leave the college for a while, she spent her days at her father's house taking lessons in the Qur'an, Arabic, Persian, English, and music. Halide Edip started to attend American College again in 1899 and continued her private education at home. During the same period, she also took mathematics lessons from the mathematician Salih Zeki.

Start of Her Carrier

After graduating from college, Halide Edip married Salih Zeki in 1901. To help her husband, she translated the life stories of English mathematicians. In the meantime, she read French literature, especially Zola. She had two sons, Ayetullah and Hasan Hikmetullah Togo, from her marriage with Salih Zeki. In the meantime, she started to teach history at Istanbul Girls' High School. From 1908 onwards, she appeared on the editorial staff of the newspaper Tanin, published by Hüseyin Cahit. Threatened in the 31 March incident, the author went to Egypt. Later, she moved to London. Returning home in 1909, Halide Edip became a pedagogy teacher at the Girls' Teacher Training School. In 1910, she divorced her husband. Between 1910-12, her writings were published in Türk Yurdu Magazine. In the meantime, Halide Edip traveled to England again for a short time and returned home at the beginning of the Balkan War in 1912. She tried to organize the Teâlî-i Nisvan Society's aid and nursing branches for refugees and soldiers. Halide Edip also worked as an inspector in the Evkaf schools during this period and prepared important reports on education.

During the War Period

In 1916, Halide Edip traveled to Syria upon the invitation of Cemal Pasha. She made examinations in schools in Lebanon, Beirut, and Damascus. There, in 1917, she married Doctor Adnan Adıvar. With the evacuation of Syria on 4 March 1918, Halide Edip also left Syria. Between 1918 and 1919, she taught Western literature as a professor at Istanbul University. She took part in the Karakol organization, which was established as a preparation for the national struggle and led by Kara Vasıf Bey and Kemaleddin Sami Pasha. On 15 May 1919, when the Greeks invaded Izmir, she started to organize rallies. In 1919, she started to write regularly in Vakit Newspaper and also became the chief writer of Büyük Mecmua. On 16 March 1920, upon the occupation of Istanbul, she traveled to Anatolia with her husband. Following the First İnönü victory, she traveled to Eskişehir to visit the wounded on behalf of the Red Crescent. Later, she was elected president of the Red Crescent at its congress held in Ankara. In 1921, upon her request, Mustafa Kemal Pasha gave her the rank of corporal, and she joined the troops on the Western Anatolian Front. On 16 December 1922, Dr. Adnan was appointed as the Istanbul representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and returned to Istanbul.

In Self-exile

In 1924, for political reasons, she traveled abroad with her husband. Following the twelve years she spent in England and France, she worked as a guest professor at the University of Colombia, as a professor at the Delhi Muslim University, and on lecture tours at Indian universities. Halide Edip, who published her novels, memoirs, and intellectual works during her years in France, was invited to America by the University of Colombia in 1932 and continued her lectures and conferences at Yale and Michigan Universities. Her work "Turkey Faces West," which lasted until 1939 and focused mostly on the intellectual and cultural issues between East and West, was published by Yale University in the USA and Oxford University in England. It has become one of the references to Turkey. "Conflict of East and West" was published by the Islamic University in Delhi, India.

Return to Turkey

Returning to Turkey in 1939, the author was appointed Professor of English Literature at the Faculty of Literature of Istanbul University. She held this position until 1950, when she was elected as an MP from Izmir. On 5.1.1954, she resigned from the parliament. After her husband Adnan Adıvar’s death in 1955, she returned to professorship. She died on 9 January 1964.

Translations

Although today in Turkey Halide Edip is known for her realist novels, she has also translated quite a few works into Turkish. She started her literary career with her translation of Ana, published in 1897. After she married Salih Zeki in 1901, to help her husband with his work, Halide Edip translated the life stories of various English mathematicians. In the Great War and the following Turkish Independence War, she translated people and official documentation. In one of her memoirs, she mentions;

At the end of September 1919, the King-Crane Committee arrived in Istanbul. They said that they wished to analyse the situation on behalf of America and, with great tact, listen to our complaints. They would also report our complaints to the Peace Conference in Paris. The representatives of Thrace asked me to go to the commission, present their complaints, and translate them.

Before and after her self-exile, as an English Literature professor, she translated and published articles on many works by renowned authors and even translated her works.

Hamlet

Hamlet, one of William Shakespeare's most impressive plays in which he deals with tragedy, has been translated into Turkish and published many times. The translation of Hamlet made by Halide Edip Adıvar and Vahit Turhan in 1941 as part of the English Literature Seminar at Istanbul University is an educational work with an additional informative section in addition to the translation.

The translation, which includes detailed information on the author of the source text, the work, and the character analysis of the text, was prepared as a corpus. Unlike other translations of Hamlet made at that time, they added notes to the work using this information. They preferred to be particularly visible with the first word they wrote in the translation, the footnotes they used, and various translation strategies.

Beyond the translation of Hamlet, the reader is given the impression of a Hamlet by Halide Edip Adıvar, one of the founders of the chair of English literature at Istanbul University. In addition to her identity as a translator, Halide Edip Adıvar also shaped the text with her identity as a writer.

Paradise Lost

Halide Edip Adıvar not only translated many works by Shakespeare into Turkish but also translated John Milton's poem Paradise Lost into Turkish for the first time. The manner and context of the publication of the translation are different from today's translations. Halide Edip, who worked as a professor of English literature at Istanbul University in the 1940s, wrote a three-volume book titled History of English Literature in the same period.

The third volume, titled "The 17th Century and Milton" and published in 1949, is largely devoted to Milton's life and works, and especially to Paradise Lost. In her foreword, Halide Edip describes her view of poetry translation in general and the strategy she adopted in translating Milton as follows:

... our translations are made according to very opposite ideas, not only in terms of language but also in terms of method. Since the classical ways of translation in English are mentioned in the book, I do not think it is necessary to dwell on them here. In short, two strict and beneficial ways can be expressed in translation as follows: The first is to translate work from one language into another language, as it is in terms of poetry technique and vocabulary, with a certainty that can be called a mask. The second is to rewrite a work in another language as one wishes, with no strings attached. Of course, there is some middle ground between these. And the translation of Milton has taken a path of its own.

Animal Farm

Halide Edip Adıvar not only translated old literary works but also the works of prominent writers in English literature of her time. One of these was her translation of George Orwell's Animal Farm in 1954. In this translation too, she used localization a fair bit while retaining the core of the text and names of the characters, such as Snowball. The translation decisions taken in this translation are functional in origin