Dreaming Between Languages: A Writer’s Personal Account
We are all born into language, and sometimes, if we are lucky, we may be born into more than one. I was born into a Dutch-Turkish family in Cyprus. In time English became my third language and the one in which I wrote my PhD thesis at the Creative Writing department of Glasgow University.
I eventually translated my PhD novel from English into Turkish. From the get go I realized this was not the work of a translator who must be faithful to the text, but the work of a writer who changes, edits, plays and renovates as she writes. The “translation,” of my novel from English to Turkish was not so much a translation as it was an older text birthing a new one.
In this personal writer’s talk, I would like to answer some of the following questions: How do we choose our writing language? Is a text really ever the same in different languages? Are we different writers in different languages? What are the dynamics of self-translating? And do the stories we tell change in accordance with the language we write in?
Defne Çizakça I am a writer and editor who works in Turkish and English, specialising in literary fiction and magical realism. I have PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Glasgow. My historical novel in Turkish, Melankolik Cinler Kılavuzu, is forthcoming with the Istanbul based İthaki in June 2024. Ansuz – a collection of my stories in Turkish, English and Spanish – is forthcoming with Libros de Ciempies, based in Barcelona, in August 2024. Additionally, I have written three collector edition, feminist fairy tales for adults which were illustrated and published by the Poet House.