Some Idioms Used in Ferhengname-yi Sadi Tercumesi and Their Persian Equivalents
Funda ŞanFerhengnâme-yi Sa'dî Tercümesi is a didactic text translated into Turkish by Hodja Mes’ud bin Ahmed in 1354/1355 (H.755) from Sa'dî's Persian text Bustan written in 1257. Bustan, on which selective and parallel texts have been written both in its period and later on, is an important mesnavi in Persian literature that gives advice on many topics such as morality, education, marriage, and state administration. While Bustan is composed of 4044 couplets, Ferhengnâme-yi Sa'dî Tercümesi has just approximately one thousand couplets. Hodja Mes’ud remarks in the introductory part of the work that he did not use any foreign words in this translation. The text indeed manifests the richness of Turkish vocabulary in the Old Anatolian Turkish period. However, although Hodja Mes’ud claims that he avoided using foreign vocabulary, he also mentions to have stayed with the original script in terms of meaning and structure and the work has traces of some Persian structures and patterns, as it is a translation from Persian. One of these structures is the use of idioms to strengthen expression in the work. In this study, the idioms in the text of Hodja Mes’ud are identidied and similarities between these idioms and their Persian equivalents are shown.
Ferhengnâme-yi Sa'dî Tercümesi’nde Kullanılan Bazı Deyimler ve Deyimlerin Farsça Karşılıkları
Funda ŞanFerhengnâme-yi Sa'dî Tercümesi, Hoca Mes’ud bin Ahmed’in 1354/1355 (H.755) yılında Sa'dî'nin 1257 yılında yazdığı Bostan adlı Farsça eserinden Türkçeye tercüme ettiği didaktik bir eserdir. Bostan, ahlak, eğitim, evlilik, devlet yönetimi gibi pek çok konu hakkında nasihatlerin bulunduğu hem kendi döneminde hem de sonraki dönemlerde üzerine müntehâblar (seçkiler), muhtasarlar ve nazireler yazılan Fars edebiyatı için mühim bir mesnevidir. Hoca Mes’ud tarafından 14. yy’da yazılan eser ise 4044 beyitlik Bostan’ın yaklaşık bin beyitlik tercümesidir. Hoca Mes’ud eserin girişinde bu tercüme sırasında mümkün olduğunca yabancı kelimelere yer vermediğini belirtmiştir. Eser hakikaten de Eski Anadolu Türkçesi döneminin Türkçe söz varlığının zenginliğini ortaya koymaktadır. Ancak Hoca Mes’ud her ne kadar yabancı kelimelere yer vermediğini belirtmiş olsa da aynı zamanda mana ve biçim bakımından mümkün olduğunca ana metne sadık kalmaya çalıştığını da ifade etmiştir. Bu sebeple eser Türkçe yazılmaya çalışılmış olsa da Farsçadan tercüme bir eser olması dolayısıyla bazı Farsça yapı ve kalıpların izlerini taşımaktadır. Bu yapılardan biri de eserde anlatımı güçlendirmek için kullanılan deyimlerdir. Çalışmada Hoca Mes’ud’un eserindeki deyimler tespit edilmiş ve bunların Farsça karşılıklarına yer verilerek aralarındaki benzerlik ortaya konmaya çalışılmıştır.
Ferhengnâme-yi Sa’dî Tercümesi (The Translation of Ferhengname-yi Sadi) is a didactic mesnevi written in the 14th century in Old Anatolian Turkish. The writer, Hodja Mes’ud bin Ahmad acknowledges that he translated his work in 1354/1355 (H.755) from the Persian version called Bustan by Sadi dated 1257. Although Bustan has 4044 couplets, Ferhengnâme-yi Sa’dî Tercümesi has just around one thousand couplets.
In the introduction, Hodja Mes’ud implies that he did not use any foreign words in his translation work. The text actually portrays the richness of Turkish vocabulary in the Old Anatolian Turkish period. However, although Hodja Mes’ud claims that the work has been written in pure Turkish, he also tried to keep the original form and the structure. When we compare his translation and the original text, we can easily say that they are written in a very similar form. Ferhengnâme-yi Sa’dî Tercümesi was written in the same meter of mutekarib (feûlun feûlun feûlun feûl) just as Bustan. Ferhengnâme-yi Sa’dî Tercümesi and Bustan also have similarities in terms of meaning. As Hodja Mes’ud mentions in his text, he tried to keep the meaning as he did for the form.
Hoca Mes’ud states that the book he intended to write was not original Bustan, but a concise work created with selected couplets from it. Fuad Koprulu and Kilisli Muallim Rifat also stated that they examined many of the shortened and selective Bustan and none of them were compatible with the work written by Hodja Mes’ud. Unfortunately, despite my long-term efforts, I also could not find a shortened Persian copy that overlaps with the work of Hodja Mes’ud.
Although I did not find the original of the work, when we compare the text with the original Bustan, we see that the meaning of the couplets in Persian and Turkish overlap. In other words, as Hoca Mes’ud said, the work had been translated in the same meter with Persian and without much change in the meaning. In the copy published by Kilisli Muallim Rifat, some couplets in Persian forms are also added as a footnote. Comparing the Persian and Turkish forms of these couplets, some couplets seem to be exactly the same. As Rifat did, I also compared some other coupletes in the two languages, and I found that the translation was made word for word from Persian to Turkish in some couplets. As an example, in Turkish, götürmez-mi-di yėl her ṣubḥ u şām/Süleymān serīrin ʿalayhi’s-salām (Kopenhagen: couplet 72) (Did wind not bring Suleiman’s crown from place to place every day and every night); is translated from Persian text, ne ber bād reftī seḥergāh u şām/serīr-i Süleymān ʿaleyhi’s-selām (Bustan: page 83/couplet 13)
As was Ferhengnâme-yi Sa’dî Tercümesi, many other works such as Hüsrev and Şirin, Mantıku’t-Tayr, Leyla and Mecnun, Yusuf and Züleyha were translated from Persian into Turkish during the period when Turkish was the written language in Anatolia. As a result of this, many Persian structures, phrases and words have been used widely in Turkish. Undoubtedly, one of these examples of structures that have been translated from Persian to Turkish is idioms.
Many idioms that are still in use in contemporary Turkish also exist in Persian. The question of whether these idioms were transmitted from Persian to Turkish through texts or from Turkish to Persian verbally is controversial. However, it can be said that some of the idioms used in Turkish based on written texts were translated into Turkish during these translation activities and gained widespread usage in Turkish. One could also say Hoca Mes’ud must have tried to use the idioms that were already used in Turkish at that time, to make the text more meaninful and at the same time to stay with the Persian script.
Ferhengnâme-yi Sa’dî Tercümesi contains many idioms that were written in the Old Anatolian Turkish era in the 14th century and translated from Persian Bustan and have similar use in terms of its structure such as dilüŋ çek-: dilini tutmak, susmak vs. zabān dar kashīdan: to keep in one’s tongue. Apart from these, there are some idioms used in the Turkish version which are not the same as in the Persian couplets. However, same idioms might be found in Persian. One of the methods of creating this kind of idiom is taking the nouns as they are and adding a Turkish verb in the same meaning with Persian ones such as cemʿ ḳıl-: bir araya getirmek, toplamak vs. jam’ kardan: to assemble, bring together, collect. Another type of idiom used in the text is where nouns and verbs were different but with the same meaning such as el yu-: kötü bir şeyden uzak durmak, onu yapmaktan vazgeçmek vs. dast shustan: to abandon.
As I explained above, because Hodja Mes’ud tried to keep the form and the meaning close to its Persian version, Ferhengnâme-yi Sa’dî Tercümesi has traces of some Persian structures and patterns. One of these structures is idioms used to strengthen expression in the work. In this study, the idioms in the text of Hodja Mes’ud were identified and the similarities to their Persian equivalents were pointed out.
