Introducing Transcription Standards for Armeno-Turkish Literary Studies

Abstract

Turkish literature in Armenian script comprises a large corpus of manuscripts dating from the 14th century together with printed material published between the 18th and 20th centuries. Books were printed in a wide geographical area and their contents were produced by mono- and bilingual Turkish- (and Armenian)-speaking Ottoman Armenians. Therefore, Armeno-Turkish text production represents the textual output enabled through Armenian and Turkish cross-cultural interactions, including various genres and different types of text. Although the scope of Armeno-Turkish text production is extensive, scholarly engagement with Armeno-Turkish texts at universities has only been markedly evident since the 2000s. The most significant reason for this late and limited engagement may lie in the obstacle of the hybrid nature of the script and the language, whereby Armeno-Turkish literature has a place neither in Turkish nor in Armenian literary studies. The aims of this article are therefore (1) to give a short overview of hitherto scholarly work with Armeno-Turkish text corpora and (2) to propose a standard for the transcription of Turkish texts in Armenian script. In a longue durée perspective, we aim to conduct inclusive literary studies and examine Armeno-Turkish literature within the greater framework of (Ottoman) Turkish literature.