The Translating Subject: Self-Assertion and Edges of Mediation in Ali Ufkî’s Bilingual Dialogues

Abstract Why did translation matter for early modern translators themselves? Approaching Ottoman court translator and religious convert to Islam, Ali Ufkî’s (né Wojciech Bobowski, ca. 1610–1677) intellectual endeavors, this article explores the multilayered relationship among translation, commensurability, and transmission of cultural knowledge by focusing on the translating subject. It argues that translation was an epistemic posture taken on by translators operating in complex cultural landscapes to navigate their self-assertion within the contours of cultural mediation in late seventeenth-century Istanbul. In so doing, it suggests reading translations beyond imperial logics and their concomitant historiographical terms.