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Quran translations in English: Analyzing The Challenges of Veracious Translation

Quran is the holy script of Muslims and considered to be the most superior among the Arabic literature works of all time.

WordForPeace.com Special

Ahmed Cimak, Markhins, Bnagalore
Quran translations in English: Analyzing The Challenges of Veracious TranslationT

he translation is one among the high-profile work that indeed needs extreme dexterity to attain best results. Accordingly, literary translations are heavier than normal as it not only requires bringing the subject into a new platform but also the exact feelings, emotions and every nuance of the context. Moreover, the translation of religious texts need scrutinized accuracy to keep the translation soulful, or else it might pulverize the faith and ruin its divinity which may lead to calamitous communal vendetta. Purity of translation depends on criteria like grammar, syntax, rhetoric, gender, equivalents, lexical semantic problem, translational strategies, techniques etc.

Quran is the holy script of Muslims and considered to be the most superior among the Arabic literature works of all time. So the paramount topic that arises in discussing translations of the Quran into English is whether the English language is able to display the superior literary beauty of the Quran or not. The reason behind it is that the Quran is considered as the everlasting elated literary work since its arrival to earth till now and remains forever. A large part of Muslims argue that English language is much weaker than Arabic language so the translation could not be promoted. However, here we discuss some of the challenges faced by translators while translating Quran to Arabic.

  • Lexical problems

As the Quran is the fountain head script of Islam it denotes many technical words that has no equivalents in English, Such as the words THAQWA, KUFR, ZAKAT, THAYAMMUM etc. They are used in holy Quran as verbal and subjective sentences in their scientific meaning which has no equivalent in English, here Taqwa means being completely committed to the wills of Almighty , to do all demands from him and reject all kinds of prohibitions from his part, Kufr means the act of rejecting to believe monotheism, Zakat means the yearly mandatory charity for a person for all his assets calculated by the laws of Islamic jurisprudence and Tayammum means the special act of being purified in the absence of pure water for the purpose of religious prayer. From these itself it is very clear that the verbs and nouns used in Quran cannot be equivalently translated by present English words. So we may have to use the same Arabic term or bring new words of that meaning or else the idea may be differently expressed.

  • Grammatical problems

Quran has very different forms of literary steps such as turning conversation from present to past, past to present, past to future ect. These are known as ILTHIFATH in Arabic and considered as literary moves for exploring pure idea from a person to another. for e.g. “When they came upon you, from above you, and from beneath you; and the eyes became dazed, and the hearts reached the throats, and you harboured doubts about Allah” (33:10) here the Arabic language used to use past tense in ‘came’, ‘dazed’, ’reached’ and then used present tense to say you doubt about Allah (SWT).

  • Time period problem

It is paramount to the translator to be well known about the time period of the arrival of each versus in Quran, on contrary to this it may light up for dangerous steps, for instance: (9:5) states “ When the Sacred Months have passed, kill the polytheists wherever you find them. And capture them, and besiege them, and lie in wait for them at every ambush. But if they repent, and perform the prayers, and pay the alms, then let them go their way. Allah is Most Forgiving, Most Merciful.” This is a wrong translation that has not included the real meaning of this verse. The fact is that this verse was revealed to Prophet Muhammed PBUH when he was in a time period of war with the nonbelievers (polytheist) and this verse never promote killing of poly theist for all the time, but fixed only for that time period of war and that context.

  • Emphasizing problem

As I had mentioned before Arabic language has different style of elated literature which sometimes the English may fail to portray it, for instance the chapter and verse (68:4) is generally translated into “And you are of a great moral character” it is saying about the conduct of last messenger, however the Arabic language used here twelve different types of grammatical emphasizes to stabilize he (messenger) is of great moral character where the English fails.

  • Conjunction

Arabic language holds 10 different types of conjunction for different situations among them the major three are commonly using as ‘fa’, ‘thumma’ and ‘vav’ they are generally translated into “ ‘so’, ‘then’ and ‘and’. In fact ‘fa’ denotes sudden action while ‘thumma’ denotes action after some time and ‘vav’ denotes action without the condition of time period. for instance (53;62) “So bow down to Allah, and worship!”, (53:41) “Then he will be rewarded for it the fullest reward.”, (53;42) “And that to your Lord is the finality”

  • Duality

It is the specialty of Arabic language that it has pronoun for singular, dual and plural where English holds only for singular and plural. As I have said before English language here also fails to determine them as two people as the Arabic used to do, so generally English translations used to cover this limitation by using plural pronoun, for instance (37;119) “And We left with them for later generations”.

  • Polysemy and Homonymy

Polysemy is a word which has several meanings and homonymy is different types of words for a single meaning, here the extra intellectual power of the translator must play vital role to choose the best word which stands equivalent to the context, similarly he must be aware which meaning is intended in a given verse.

Now we can conclude this part as the English language is unable to bear the literary beauty of Arabic language. Similarly, the knowledge and spirituality of the translator is also an important factor for this English translation of Quran. Spiritual enlightenment with dexterity in all streams of both languages like lexical, literary etc helps to bring best work on translation. On contrarily lack of knowledge in any single branch may be highlighted and diminish the elegance. Now let us see different translation for the 93:7 as “did he not find you wandering and guide you?” (An English translation published in Bierut Lebanon), “did he not find thee erring and guide thee” (Arberry), “did he not find thee wandering and direct thee? (Pickthal) etc. However, it is obvious that Prophet Muhammed PBUH, according to the Qur’an, was the perfect human being without any sins and mistakes. So the words like “wandering”, “erring”, “groping” are not befitting to his dignity. So the best translation for this verse is “And he found you drown in his love therefore gave way unto him” (Ahmed Raza Barelvi). This sentence is the best translation to bring the exact meaning being within the boundary of Islam.

In short, translating holy Quran is not an easy task, and it requires ultra-dexterity in both languages and wide knowledge of Islamic sciences. Additionally, a short explanatory note must be written or else, that may figure out hazardous misunderstanding of the text and pulverize its beauty. Once Prophet (PBUH) said “ I am afraid of Misguiding scholars on you than dangerous Dajjal”

(إتحاف الخيرة المهرة(وعن عَلِيِّ بْنِ أَبِي طَالِبٍ , رَضِيَ اللَّهُ عَنْهُ , قَالَ : كُنَّا جُلُوسًا عِنْدَ النَّبِيِّ صَلَّى الله عَلَيه وسَلَّم وَهُوَ نَائِمٌ 

فَذَكَرْنَا الدَّجَّالَ فَاسْتَيْقَظَ مُحْمَرًّا وَجْهُهُ ، فَقَالَ : غَيْرَ الدَّجَّالِ أَخْوَفَ عِنْدِي عَلَيْكُمْ مِنَ الدَّجَّالِ الأَئِمَّةَ الْمُضِلِّينَ.}.

May the Almighty bless us to be in straight path for ever.

 

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