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Notes about the Translations

The translations in this edition have been produced with an academic approach that privileges accuracy over a creative attempt to reproduce the poetic qualities of the texts. Although an effort was made to remain as faithful as possible to the tone and essence of the original Kurdish works, it is therefore natural that the translations fall short of the originals in expressive power. For this reason, they are best read alongside the original Kurdish texts and the accompanying audio recordings from which they derive.

There are some general points regarding the translations in this edition that I believe are worth mentioning:

• I have maintained the Kurdish spelling of personal and place names in the translations. This decision was made in collaboration with Marlene Schäfers and Martin Greve, with the goal of helping readers become familiar with Kurdish pronunciations and particularly with how Kurds themselves relate to their own geography in sound. To pronounce these names correctly, readers need to have some knowledge of Kurdish pronunciation rules.
• In Kurdish, gender is marked in vocative forms (forms of direct address). In Turkish, on the other hand, a distinct vocative form does not exist and gender is not indicated in forms of address. For this reason, I have chosen to add a gender-indicating word where a Kurdish word is used in the vocative form, particularly where gender might not be clear from the context. For example, the address kemberzerê is directed at a woman, which is indicated by the -ê suffix at the end of the word in Kurdish. In accordance with the context, I translated it as »gold-belted (girl)«, but only the first time it appears.
• There is a constant interplay between personal names and the meanings of these names in dance songs, and this duality is often used as a literary device. For instance, the female name Gulê also means »rose«. It is intentionally ambiguous whether the word is being used as a personal name or in its literal meaning. I have indicated my translation choices in clickable notes attached to the corresponding word(s) within the translated texts.
• I left the vocative forms of proper names untranslated in the Turkish translations.
• I have translated the vocative exclamations lê (feminine) and lo (masculine), which have no equivalent in Turkish, only rarely as »hey«. I have mostly left them untranslated, though spelled in italics.
• I have tried to translate interjections like ax, wî, and de in a way that is appropriate to their semantic and sound context, without significantly altering the number of syllables whenever possible.
• Kurdish and Turkish differ in their syntax. For example, in Kurdish, adjectives follow the nouns they describe. Because of these syntactic differences, it was somewhat challenging to reflect in the Turkish translations the moments when Gazîn starts a phrase but, for some reason, leaves it unfinished. I did my best to show these situations in the translations.

In the Turkish translations, the same symbols were used as listed in the Transcriptions section. In the translations, specific use was made in the following ways: