Migrating Texts: Circulating Translations around the Ottoman Mediterranean

Fénelon, Offenbach and the Iliad in Arabic, Robinson Crusoe in Turkish, the Bible in Greek-alphabet Turkish, excoriated French novels circulating through the Ottoman Empire in Greek, Arabic and Turkish – literary translation at the eastern end of the Mediterranean offered worldly vistas and new, hybrid genres to emerging literate audiences in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Whether to propagate ‘national’ language reform, circulate the Bible, help audiences understand European...