Photo by Dan Farrell on Unsplash

I was kneading a delicate little spanakopita

a Folk Song

Translated from Kosovar Gorani by Denis Ferhatović

Both delicate and crispy

It was kneaded, it seems, for two people

For two people, or even four

It seems, for Iba and for Nedžip

– Come, Nedžip, at night when it’s dark

While Ramče’s still at the mosque

While he prays the long tarawih

In the meanwhile, we’ll dance our dance

Iba lit three oil lamps

Three oil lamps in all three of her chambers

Iba spread three mattresses

Three mattresses in all three of her chambers

Nedžip climbed up the stairs

And entered Iba’s quarters:

— Hey, Iba, oy Iba of steel-blue eyes,

What’s this in the bread trough here?

— This is my little spanakopita, Nedžip

Both delicate and crispy

It was kneaded, it seems, for two people

It seems, for Iba and for Nedžip

Musings of an Exophonic Immigrant Translator: A Long-ish Translator’s Note

I do not speak any language “properly.” I came to the United States shortly before my fifteenth birthday, so the entirety of my education from high school onwards has been in English. But somehow, I never lost my foreign—and hard-to-place—accent, although I think to myself that I sound exactly like Marina Abramović. I have fought hard to keep and develop my Bosnian further, to make it more than the kitchen variety that is often the most that immigrants like me can manage in an environment that does not value or support multilingualism, especially from low-prestige languages. I make sure I read literary works and sometimes nonfiction in Bosnian and the other closely related varieties from the unwieldy acronym BCMS (Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian). Of course, with the advent of the Internet, from the late nineties to today, I take advantage of access to all types of up-to-date materials like music videos, podcasts, films, and TV shows. The option of Croatian subtitles on Netflix sometimes does wonders for my vocabulary.

Languages are my obsession. I hate the question of how many of them I “know”, and even worse, how many I can speak fluently. If I have to, I answer “between four and twelve,” which is never satisfying to the person asking the question. The only language I speak fluently, I might add, is Neurosis. It seems like I am always in the process of learning a language or two and forgetting others. Even with my two strongest ones, English and Bosnian, it never seems like I have a full bilingual mastery, whatever that might mean. Some things are much easier in one; for example, writing scholarly prose and giving talks. Others like crossword puzzles and writing poetry come more naturally in the other.

Translating poetry is a good way to explore my ever-changing multilingualism. In the case of the folk lyric that I am offering to The Third Wheel, we have the source language of a particular nature and in a complex relationship to BCMS. But first, let me explain my term “folk lyric.” In South Slavic languages, “pesem”/“p(j)esma”/ “песна”/“песен” can mean a song or a poem; an English translator usually has to choose which, but I remembered the word “lyric” which can cover both. While I preserved many of the repetitions of the original, including the figura etymologica “danced our dance” (“igra izigrame”), I do not want to over-emphasize its folkloric or oral-traditional character because I access the work as a printed text in an edited anthology. Too often is Balkan literary creativity read exclusively and reductively in oral and traditional terms, and if we can treat The Odyssey, Beowulf, Occitan troubadour poems, and Popol Vuh, to give some examples at random, as literature, we can do the same with lyrics such as this one.

Let us now speak about the language of the original. Gorani is a South Slavic variety spoken in Kosovo and certain villages in Albania and North Macedonia. Some people would call it a dialect, but disagree of which larger language: is it Bosnian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, or Serbian? (Some of those individuals would also call Bosnian a dialect of Serbian, and Macedonian a dialect of Bulgarian or even Serbian. That way madness lies.) Like BCMS, Gorani can be and has been written in both Cyrillic and Roman alphabets. Hasani’s anthology from which I took the original was printed in Cyrillic. I provide the lyric in both alphabets to make it legible to more people. I should note that I have never formally learned Gorani. I am not sure one can, without living in Kosovo for a time. It has not been standardized. Because of my knowledge of BCMS and experience with Macedonian, to which Gorani is grammatically similar, and Turkish, which provides many borrowings, I am able to read it.

There are not many texts that I can find in Gorani, except for those that belong to its rich folk tradition. It is hard to come by lexicographic aids longer than glossaries. I have done some research, consulting the glossaries in Harun Hasani’s and Ramadan Redžeplari’s print anthologies (Горанске народне песме [Prishtina, 1987] and Sedefna tambura: Goranske narodne pjesme [Prizren, 2008], respectively), as well as the one provided in Sadik Idrizi Aljabak’s scholarly monograph on the language and style of Gorani folk poetry (Jezik i stil narodne poezije Gore [Prizren, 2012], available online). The Internet helps in providing some valuable books in pdf format (anthologies and scholarly works like the abovementioned study), and thanks to social media, I have been able to contact one of the foremost Gorani experts, Professor Sadik Idrizi Aljabak (University of Prizren), who generously answers my questions. The most complete dictionary that I am aware of was published in Bulgaria, Reçnik goranski (nashinski)-allbanski [Gorani-Albanian Dictionary] by Nazif Dokle (Sofia, 2007). I was able to look at a copy through the Interlibrary Loan system. It was massive, and helpful, even if I do not know Albanian. I had to return the volume to the library.

During the editing process of this piece for The Third Wheel, a question arose about my positionality and potential dangers of appropriation. Appropriation of literature and culture in the Balkans does not happen through translation into English. It happens by absorbing a smaller group into a larger group, often under duress, or by denying that group its language by imposing the majority language of the nation-state, if it belongs to another language group, or the larger linguistic variety, if it belongs to the same group. As I mention above, the identification by those outside of the immediate group is complicated in the case of the Gorani people, but so is the self-identification. I assume that individuals have the right to self-identify as they see fit, for personal and practical reasons. Some speakers consider themselves Goranis, others Bosniaks, and yet others Serbs, Macedonians, or Bulgarians. For example, from the scholars whom I mention above, Harun Hasani identifies as a Serb, and Sadik Idrizi Albaljak identifies as a Bosniak. Because I myself identify as a Bosniak, I can claim that my translation of a Gorani lyric is an act of engagement with my own background, writ large. Furthermore, I consider the Balkan literary tradition in any language that I can read and understand as a part of my own, which is a political act, since both outsiders to and insiders within the region have historically insisted on ethnic divisions, to disastrous outcome. In paying attention to Gorani and spreading some awareness of it through English, I refuse to treat my native language, BCMS, as the central, most important part of the linguistic landscape of former Yugoslavia.

Encouraged by already having published five translations of Gorani folk lyrics in three journals, I have decided to keep going. “Som mesilo tenko zeljaniče” [I was making a delicate little spanakopita] fascinated me with its combination of elements: the consistent, though strange, erotic food metaphor; the adulterous or otherwise illicit affair (is Ramče “little Ramo” the woman’s husband or brother?); the playful way of signaling availability to the lover; the suggestion of sexual activity in all three rooms of Iba’s house. The folk are outrageous! Not to mention that my favorite pita “pastry made of phyllo dough” is the one central to the lyric.

Spanakopita is the best equivalent in English because being borrowed from a Balkan language, Greek, both parts of it, “spanak” and “pita”, exist in other Balkan languages, including Gorani. Furthermore, spinach is a food word that has traveled from the East to the West and the North, existing in multiple European, Mediterranean, and Middle Eastern languages in slightly different forms. Pita has a less clear trajectory – the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) mentions its “multiple origins” in English, from Hebrew, Greek, and Serbian and Croatian—but like spinach, it appears in many languages. One other piece of realia I explain in a stealth gloss is “long tarawih.” Tarawih is the exact term in Muslim English usage that corresponds to the Gorani teravija. It refers to the long prayer anywhere from one to eight hours that is performed during the holy month of Ramadan, which makes Iba’s invitation to Nedžip even more provocative. Mattress, which might appear to some readers as modern, is attested in English since around 1300. According to the OED, it ultimately originates in Arabic from the verb that means “to throw,” moving afterwards into Italian and from there into French and then English. This was a moment of fortuitous etymologies since postelja – literally, “a bed” – comes from the Proto-Slavic root meaning “to spread,” according to the Croatian etymological dictionary (Etimološki rječnik hrvatskoga jezika [2021]) by Ranko Matasović, Dubravka Ivšić Majić, and Tijmen Pronk.

I hope the readers enjoy the mixture of religious references, sexual suggestiveness, and spanakopita in this delicate little poem.

Denis Ferhatović is a Bosnian-American scholar and writer. His essays, poems, reviews, translations, and co-translations have been published in Rumba under Fire, Index on Censorship, The Riddle Ages, Iberian Connections, Turkoslavia, Trinity Journal of Literary Translation (JoLT), DoubleSpeak, Asymptote, Grouchy Medievalist Substack, Ellipse Magazine, Reading in Translation, Hopscotch Translation, Strane, Polja, and Ancient Exchanges. His scholarly work appears in various journals and essay collections. His monograph Borrowed Objects and the Art of Poetry: Spolia in Old English Verse came out in 2019.

Read more from Denis:

“Zejnepa Arose Early” [“Станала рано Зејнепа”], “Bride, You Turkish Carnation” [“Manesto, turski karanfilj”], “There He Goes, Granddaddy A-Hopping” [“Ено иде, дедо поигрује”]. Translations of folk lyrics from Gorani (Kosovo) to English and a translator’s note. In Los Angeles Review (November 12, 2025)

https://losangelesreview.org/gorani-lyrics-translated-by-denis-ferhatovic/

“From My Weary Sorrows” [“Od umorne muke moje”]. A translation of a love poem from Croatian/Montenegrin (the Bay of Kotor region) to English. In Ellipse Magazine (Issue 95: “Archipelagos, Islands, and Shores” / “Les archipels, les îles, et les rives”). Spring 2025.

https://ellipsemagazine.com/portfolio-item/capelan-roule/

“Someone Asked For Maiden Ilinka’s Hand” [“Go sakale Ilinka divojka”]. A translation of a folk lyric from Gorani (Kosovo) to English and a translator’s note. In Turkoslavia (Issue 4), Spring 2025.

https://exchanges.uiowa.edu/someone-asked-for-maiden-ilinkas-hand/

Denis's Translator's Slam Book

Fidelity is…complicated. I am grateful that we live in a time when we can understand, experience, and speak about phenomena like ethnical nonmonogamy, throuples, open relationships, polyamory, chosen families, asexuality, and so on. Bourgeois marriage ideals should not be foisted either on love or on translation

Ninja or superhero? Why not both? But more often a cat shredding a piece of furniture steadily, with dedication.

Full time job or glorified hobby… For me, it is the latter. I deeply admire my friends and colleagues who have the stamina and knowledge to translate professionally. They tackle entire books and many of them work with texts not of their own choosing. I have no idea how they manage to make a decent living.

A translation I fell in love with is… So many. Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf. Catherine Eyjólfsson and Brian FitzGibbon’s translations of Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir’s novels. Esad Duraković’s complete Hiljadu i jedna noć.

My favorite misconception about translation is…that it is easy.

My favorite translation grant is…Being a dabbler and a dilettante, I have never applied for one. I would say any translation grant with unimpeachable ethics, generous terms, and copious amounts of money.

Money is…something that helps you survive and makes life easier. It does not buy taste.

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