Translating Science in the Ottoman Empire: Translator-educators as “Agents of Change” in the Ottoman Scientific Repertoires (1789-1839)

Abstract

Focusing on the fifty-year period between 1789 and 1839, the study aims to showcase the pivotal role of translators and translations in the transmission of modern science in the Ottoman Empire, which has long been ignored from a translation studies perspective. In order to ground the discussion, a corpus of scientific-educational translations of the era has been created. The paper reveals that the aspiration of raising the status of the Ottoman Empire in the military arena brought a concomitant need to reshape the Ottoman educational and scientific repertoires through translations of works from western sources. The first systematic, western-style military schools, which incorporated translator-educators, language courses and printing houses, functioned not only as translation bureaus but also translator-training centers at the time. The translator-educators serving at these institutions enabled significant transformation in the Ottoman culture, thus acting as ‘agents of change’: They promoted Turkish as a scientific language, contributed to the conversion of the religion-based learning system into a secular one, and also stimulated epistemologicalshifts in other repertoires.