Talk:Oğuz Atay

The title Tutunamayanlar
Tutunamayanlar, ‘those who cannot hold on’, was probably a word coined by Atay in the way that the agglutinative nature of Turkish allows. If the only other current use, in mountaineering, existed when he was writing he may well not have been aware of it. The Germans have a fairly satisfactory equivalent, ‘Die Haltlöse’, but it presents difficulties in English. The author of the UNESCO piece cited in the wiki article gives the title as ‘The Losers’.

Titles for translated works are often not fixed: e.g. Hermann Hesse’s ‘Das Glasperlenspiel’ first appeared in English as ‘Magister Ludi’, then in a different translation as ‘The Glass Bead Game’; Griboyedov’s play ‘Gore ot Uma’ has had at least five English titles over the years. However, the equivalent used in the wiki article, ‘The Disconnected’, does seem necessary. An English translation was begun, with Atay’s approval and assistance, actually when he was writing the book. The agreed translation for the key word tutunamayanlar was ‘disconnected’, and it was in knowledge of this that when he needed a Latin equivalent for tutunamayan for a mock encyclopaedia article (page 149) he came up with Disconnectus erectus. The wiki article mentions an existing English version, which, if it appears, will be published as ‘The Disconnected’, and also a section which has featured in a prize competition under this title.

A recent reviser substituted the title ‘The Good for Nothings’, I am sure with a genuine wish to make an improvement. Even if we thought it was an improvement (as I do not), it could only lead to confusion. Litterateur (talk) 23:13, 20 November 2009 (UTC) litterateur 20-11-2009

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 14:22, 21 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Oguz atay.jpg