Translation as an Act of Love
On the Holy Creation Process of Listening Across Languages
This past week,
I finished translating the first in a series of 175 Sohbetler (Spiritual Conversations) given by Dr. Rahmi Oruç Güvenç.
To say that I “did the translation” is not entirely accurate. I oversaw a process carried by tools, then checked and re-checked by other tools, and finally sifted by my own ear and attention.
I am aware that translation via AI and digital tools is not ideal, nor does it constitute a professional undertaking. (Though it is admittedly entertaining to watch a parade of “mechanical brains” correct and critique each other’s phrasing while arguing about grammatical nuance.) This is a personal project, initiated in the absence of other options, hence my motley team of non-human colleagues.
My aim is simple and stubborn: to hear every recorded word in Oruç Baba’s voice and grasp his teachings in my first language, English.
Baba taught primarily in Turkish, and 175 snippets of that teaching have been captured in a Sohbetler podcast (accessible on different platforms here). Some has made its way into German and Spanish, but English remains scattered and partial. I have spent time with his direct students and heard of his teachings second-hand, yet only a few sources report them in English with continuity. Printed compilations exist in Turkish, but from Cairo they may as well be on the far side of a closed gate.
I do not call this desperation. I call it determination.
Or, if you prefer the Sufi frame, an act of love.
Does love not make you want to listen deeply to the one you esteem? Does it not create the desire to understand more carefully, to stay longer with the sound of someone’s meaning, to refuse paraphrase when the real voice is available?
Of all the teachers I have encountered in Christian, Jewish, and Islamic mystical circles, none has made me want to listen more deeply than Dr. Rahmi Oruç Güvenç. That alone is a feat worthy of devotion. I hope this project evolves into an offering of that caliber, even if it begins as imperfect work undertaken with limited tools.
Which raises the next question:
What is this love that moves a person to undertake such a task?
Within Sufism, love in its more ardent register is named aşk (a term not found in the Qur’an), described as divine energy that brings the universe into being and transcends the division of sacred and profane. The word itself is a loan from the Persian eshgh, where it saturates classical Sufi poetry, most notably in the work of Rumi.1
I am drawn to this definition because it binds love to creation. Love creates. Love generates form. Love produces a new rhythm between beings, a shared world, a household, children, or simply the irreversible inner change that follows true encounter.
It is difficult for me not to see translation through that same lens. Translation is transformation. It is the re-forming of meaning into a new body, a new set of sounds, a new logic of comprehension. In my case, translation is the form of creation that arose most naturally when I sought a way to honor and implement Baba’s teachings in my life — made first for my own listening, yet inevitably becoming an act of expression in its own right.
Kabbalah, with which I have long been more familiar, offers a parallel intuition. In that tradition, the central word for love is ahava, often linked to giving, a resonance that brings it near to the comparable Qur’anic term hubb. Creation is giving at the highest level, transmuting life-force into new form. I love this perspective on the generativity of the energy we call love.
The temperaments of Kabbalah and Sufism differ. Overall, Aşk tends to carry more heat and intensity than ahava. Yet both terms point toward a dynamic process of transformation.
Love changes what it touches. It makes something new possible.
(In this intimate video, Oruç Baba works with small groups of instrument players. Enjoy a peek into the past!)
Beyond metaphysics, the practical work of this project — its expression of love — is both ordinary and strangely intimate.
I listen to the recording. I catch what Turkish I can. I run an initial transcription from spoken to written language, then a translation, then repeated rounds of correction. Baba’s dialect, pacing, and specialized vocabulary make it difficult at times to follow. There are moments when I stop and remind myself what is actually happening: a human being is transmitting wisdom with his own voice, reaching me across time and space through the miracle of modern technology.
His act of creation now inspires mine.
Love keeps giving, and the giving takes form.
Like many teachers from his culture and tradition, Baba teaches by spiraling. His stories unfold in widening circles, each revealing a new layer of meaning around a central theme. The argument assembles itself gradually, sometimes becoming fully visible only at the end. Along the way he offers insights that reward patience. For a Western-minded listener, it can take time to adjust to this style. I say this only as someone still learning the discourse. (Anyone already accustomed to Turkish or Persian Sufi sohbet will likely find it entirely natural.)
Listening through the spiral brings its own reward. During this first sohbet translation process, I was wrestling with a life question outside the project itself. Yet the answer surfaced in the text as though it had been waiting for me all along.
Baba addressed it while speaking about need and spiritual duty:
“Without spiritual grace, no matter how hard a person rows, they can only go so far …
However, if a person … should receive a grace similar to himmet, a divine bestowal known as a mevhibe-i ilahi, then there is no need for striving. Because striving arises from need.
Such a one does not busy himself with need, for his task is more sacred than the time that would be spent tending to necessity. Therefore he comes into this world already provisioned, like the prophets. Within that state of provision, every need is met, and within him exist the mechanisms capable of answering every question.”
~ Dr. Rahmi Oruç Güvenç ~
17 January 2010, in Ankara
When he says “task,” the Western mind may hear something dry or coercive. Yet the duty he points to resembles the prophets’ kind of inevitability. It is duty animated by faith, inflamed by love, steadied by grace. In this context duty is not punishment. It is a compulsion that arises when the heart recognizes what it cannot not do.
When I first encountered this passage in translation, my immediate thought was of love, though the word itself does not appear in Baba’s comments. The prophets, Baba suggests, move as they do because striving in the usual sense is unnecessary. Their task is more precious to them, than the time they would spend chasing perceived needs. They know that anything they require will be created from within.
That passionate fixed attention — and deep trust in unfolding resources — is the very definition of generative love itself. Aşk and ahava, in living form.
That is what I hear in his phrase “already provisioned.” To be provisioned is, at its core, to be imbued with the love that creates and re-creates worlds. Through devoted attention to sacred duty, grace arrives, creation unfolds, and what is needed to carry the work is given.
In other words: getting down to the work of love ensures the needs of love are met.
This teaching within the very first translated sohbet strengthened my resolve.
The translation project now truly feels like a duty anchored in love, not because anyone assigned it to me, but because my soul demands it. There is something astonishing in the mere act of connecting with another human being through the medium of his or her own living voice. Even more so a human like Oruç Baba, who is remembered by his students as an insan kâmil, a fully realized person.
It is not my business how the resources, skill, tools, or intellect required to complete such a vast project will unfold. It is mine to begin, and to trust that the love which compels this project will continue creating every insight and solution required to carry it forward.
Translations will be created. Meaning will unfold. More than this, I myself will be created and re-created through the process of moving through each sohbet and its resulting English text. At some level, I have already been reshaped by the process. That alone speaks to its power.
Translation is an act of love because it requires time, care, deep listening, and a willingness to revise one’s expectations. You cannot predict the outcome. You do not control what the work will demand. You show up anyway. You listen anyway. You consent to change.
That is love’s way. It is also the way of translation.
Until next time …
Yolun açık olsun.
May your path be open.
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This essay is accompanied by an example of the music. These traditions cannot be understood apart from direct encounter with sound. Please take listen to play the provided video.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Lisa England stands at the crossroads of Jewish memory, Central Asian shamanic healing, and Sufi therapeutic sound.
Her work traces migratory lineages of music as medicine across medieval Central Asia and the Ottoman world, with particular attention to makams as living structures of embodied sacred medicine. Through writing, translation, and somatic practice, she seeks to uncover the therapeutic logic of these traditions.
A Jewish convert shaped by Sufism, she regards Dr. Rahmi Oruç Güvenç as a personal guide, while also working independently and without institutional affiliation. In addition to this Substack, she also hosts The Jewish Sufi Pilgrim, a podcast exploring mingled devotional traditions and migratory music on the medieval silk road.
Lisa lives and works in North Africa.
Çiğdem Buğdaycı”Ashk: The Sufi Concept of Love” in International Handbook of Love: Transcultural and Transdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. Claude-Hélène Mayer and Elisabeth Vanderheiden (Cham: Springer, 2025), 214 & 211.