Achieving Equivalence in Translating Quran to English - Case Study Example

Achieving Equivalence in Translating Quran to English Name: Institution: Date: Table of Contents Abstract 2 1.0.Introduction 4 2.0.Literature Review 5 2.1.Translating the Holy Quran 5 2.2.Translating Divine Names in Context 6 3.0.Methodology of the Study 6 3.1.Source Material 6 3.2.Corpus and method of analysis 7 3.3.Procedure 7 3.4.Design 7 4.0.Results and Discussion 8 4.1.Linguistic difficulties 8 4.2.Lexical Challenges 8 4.3.Syntactic issue 8 4.4.Examples from the selected translations 9 4.4.1.Example1: 9 4.4.2.Example 2: وَتَرَى الْأَرْضَ هَامِدَةً فَإِذَا أَنْزَلْنَا عَلَيْهَا الْمَاءَ اهْتَزَّتْ وَرَبَتْ وَأَنْبَتَتْ مِنْ 10 4.4.3.Example 3: ک ِة – اِبلِیس 10 4.5.Lexical compression of the Divine 11 4.5.1.Metonymy 11 5.0.Conclusion 12 References 13 Abstract This study investigates the level of achieving equivalence in the meaning of words in translating the Holy Quran from Arabic to English. The goal is to present a detailed outline on how correct meaning can be obtained when translating the Holy Quran from Arabic to English. The Muslims view the Quran as the word of Allah. The book contains religious observances and specifications that are full of both figurative and literal suaveness. These adumbrations become a challenge when translating the Holy Quran from Arabic to English. This paper makes attempt to explain some equivalence challenges facing the process of translation giving evidence with instances of verses from the Quran. 1.0. Introduction There is an increased requirement for translation in the society of today because of the continuous enhancement in science, culture and technology. Translation is one of the most important mechanisms applicable in communication especially in the current society, making translation and its study an important field of study and research in the linguistics (Kelly, 2014). Linguistic Scholars and Experts have developed several theories to explain the process of translation and clearly make the practitioners and students with the hands-on problems prone in the process of translation and the ways of handling these challenges (Williams & Chesterman, 2014; Hall et al., 2015). The primary goal of the study is to discuss and present the equivalence challenge of translation of the Holy Quran from its original language, Arabic to the English language. The Holy Quran makes use of several rhetorical, linguistic and stylistic features that give effectual and magnificent suaveness. The utility of the rhetorical and the linguistic features becomes problematic to the translators of Quran into English. Finding equivalence for some literally devices such as homonymy, synonymy, simile, metonymy, polysemy, repetition, irony, epithet, assonance and metaphors challenges the translators because of the wide distinction between settings and the language family of Arabic and English (Ali et al., 2012; Munday, 2016; Dickins et al., 2017). 2.0. Literature Review 2.1. Translating the Holy Quran As Ali et al., (2012) comments on it, the Quran is neither poetry nor prose, but a peculiar conjunction of both. It is not easy, therefore, for a translator to imitate the exact form since it is Quranic-specific form, possessing both the features of poetry and prose and beautifully using the characteristics of the original language. Additionally, the content of Quran has a delicate fusion with its form so that neither a translation that is content-focused nor form-focused is capable of reproducing an equivalent translation considering the content and form (Farghal, 2012). The concept of equivalence at various stages is a notion that cannot be dispensed in Quran translation and translation studies. It is not possible to deny the central significance of equivalence in the theory of translation. Achieving symmetrical equivalence at any level of translation is not even possible because of the drastic difference in the cultures in which they thrive well and the multiple layers of meaning among the languages (Dickins et al., 2016). Thus, every individual doing the work of translation may focus on a particular type of equivalence such as translate accordingly to produce a different translation, aesthetic and denotative (Nord, 2014). According to Evans et al., (2015), the concept of lack of equivalence or non-equivalence poses a major problem and difficulty translating from one language to another. The challenge is encountered at all the levels of translation from word to sentence to textual level. At word level, non-equivalence refers to the absence of a word with the direct equivalence between the source language and the target language. The magnitude of the challenge due to non-equivalence is variable underlying its nature. Various strategies can be used to handle different kinds of non-equivalence. Some strategies are more involving and difficult to handle while others are straightforward and depend on the level of the non-equivalence. 2.2. Translating Divine Names in Context An accurate and a just rendering of the Divine Names referred to as Asmā ul Hosnā in Arabic to English has failed most of the translators and commentators. These names are the greatest values of the Holy Quran (Amjad, & Farahani, 2013). Another major difficulty facing the translators in rendering the Holy Quran into English is the way to handle collocation. According to Tabrizi and Mahmud (2013), selection constraints has to do with the restrictions capable of preventing co-occurrence of words in manners producing nonsense, collocations restraints work to bring about large arbitrary variations between near-synonyms. Sarikaş (2006) argues that collocations happen when words combine together to form lexical units like extreme happiness or have a lunch. The challenge for the translator is identifying the source language collocations to be able to find target language equivalence, taking caution of the possibility of being led astray by the target language form to a misleading literal translation. 3.0. Methodology of the Study 3.1. Source Material The research utilizes three English translated versions of the Holy Quran produced by three translators Muhammad H. Shakir (1985), Sayyed Alli (2003), and Fazlollah Nikayin (2006). The translations are compared to the original Arabic text of the Holy Quran. 3.2. Corpus and method of analysis In conducting this study, the paper selects the three translations of the Holy Quran and draws a comparison and contrasting with the original Arabic text. The corpus of the study, therefore, includes some surahs of the Holy Quran from 10 to 20 with the selection of their pertinent translations. Some verses of the strategically selected chapters were thoroughly read to point out lexical collocations. 3.3. Procedure Achieving the purpose of the research composed of a selection of eleven surahs from 10 to 20 followed by a thorough reading of some purposefully selected chapters to single out lexical collocations. The "Habl- ul- Matin" and "Pars- Quran" software were put to task to help in the elicitation and extraction of features of collocations and the frequency of occurrence in the Holy Quran. A comparison and contrast between the lexical collocation and its corresponding equivalent are carried out to show the mechanisms applicable by the three translators in translating lexical collocations. This is followed by eliciting the frequency of strategies to find out the strategy that is used more frequently in the rendering of the lexical collocations by the three translators. 3.4. Design The paper is based on descriptive corpus applying both the quantitative and the qualitative designs. Quantitative and the qualitative research methodologies are applied to the article in an attempt to answer the study questions. 4.0. Results and Discussion 4.1. Linguistic difficulties The work of translation if the Holy Quran from Arabic into the English language faces several linguistic challenges since Arabic and English languages are different both in the manner in which corresponding symbols are applied in sentences and phrases and the meaning given to such symbols. Semantically, syntactically and lexically related difficulties arise during the translation of the Holy Quran from Arabic into English. 4.2. Lexical Challenges Rendering some lexical items into English is one major challenge that the translators face in the process of translating the Quran. Non-equivalence or the absence of equal Islamic terms in the English language is one of the lexical problems in Quran translation. The examples of such terms whose translations in English only give approximate meanings and not exact meaning as used in the Arabic text: ثوبة (tāwbah )- repentance, zakāh (زآاه)= almsgiving, غيب(ghaīb)=the unknown/unseen, نكر (munkar)= wrong, معروف (ma‛rūf)=charity, حق (haq)=truth, شرك (shīrk)=associating other gods with God, فر (kufr)=disbelief, and تقوى (taqwā)=piety. Saleh Elimam (2009, p. 40) puts it that the rendering of the terms fails to bring out the full liturgical and semantic range of the original terms. 4.3. Syntactic issue The syntactic problem, especially the tenses, is a challenge in translating the holy Quran into English arises because of the several differences between the English and Arabic languages. Sadiq (2010, p.20) defines tenses as the ability to grammatically realizing the location in time and the way in which it can be conveyed in language. Stylistic considerations and the overall context should guide the tense and verb forms in translating Quran. The changes in Quran from past to imperfect tenses is problematic to the translators even prohibiting them from conveying the tenses literally. 4.4. Examples from the selected translations At this stage, the paper provides examples of Quranic lexical collocations translation that is being investigated. The will provide a critical research on how we can get the correct meaning when we are translating the holy Quran from Arabic to English. The occasions of the lexical collocations are presented with relevant discussions and explanations. 4.4.1. Example1: ض نَبَا ُت ال from Quran verse number Yoonus 24 translated as "the produce of the earth" by Abdullah Yusuf Translation following a couplet and "the herbage of the earth" by Muhammad S. Shakir Translation following couplet strategy. Abdulkarim Parekh (2000, pp.52, 136, 159) argues that it contains a fusion of two phrases, "ت ِاَبَن " which preferentially means "plants, vegetation, greenery" and ض meaning earth. The two translations use "herbage" and "produce" which can define by oxford dictionary as "plants in general" and things are grown or made" respectively. Taking the dictionary definitions into account, both the translations render ض "الَ َ into literally into "earth" and uses the synonym of ت ِاَبَن in the translation, therefore, both the translations uses a synonym and literal translations and utilize the couplet strategy in the rendering of the meaning of the phrase in English. 4.4.2. Example 2: وَتَرَى الْأَرْضَ هَامِدَةً فَإِذَا أَنْزَلْنَا عَلَيْهَا الْمَاءَ اهْتَزَّتْ وَرَبَتْ وَأَنْبَتَتْ مِنْ This is a metaphoric phrase which is among other metaphors in the Quran and other rhetorical usages. Many translations render different meanings in the translation of such phrases by avoiding their usage. Surah al-Hajj: 5 of Yusuf Ali’s translation (200) render the text as “Thou seest the earth barren and lifeless, but when we pour down rain on it, it is stirred (to life), it swells and it puts forth every kind of beautiful growth in pairs”. There is a comparison of the animal that calms down after moving with the trembling of the earth after a long quiescence. Here, it is not possible to use a literal translation but rather paraphrasing or communicative translation can work well to bring out the context, features, and the intended meaning of the verse. Eweida (2007) concludes that paraphrasing or explaining the translation is the most appropriate way to translate metaphors to make them more understandable in the target language. 4.4.3. Example 3: ک ِة – اِبلِیس Both Abdullah Yusuf and Muhammad S. Shakir render the word as “the angles/ Iblis” applying the couplet strategy of translation. Abdulkarim Parekh (2000, pp. 55,56) argues that "ة ِکَ ِالئَم " َ referentially means angles and "یسِبلِا " referentially means iblis. It is possible to conclude that two translators use two strategies for bringing out the clear meaning of the collocation in English. Thus, they use couplet strategy. The two translators literally render "ة ِکَ ِالئَم" َ into angles and trans-literally render "یسِبلِا" into iblis applying the mechanism of transference for the translation of the term. 4.5. Lexical compression of the Divine The lexical compression of the Divine Names is also a major problem that the translators of the Holy Quran face since the names are equipped with varieties of meanings that encapsulate in a single linguistic item. The translators also face the challenge of distorting the expressive effects and the emotive overtones that the original Divine Names create in the readers of the Quran in Arabic because of the wide difference in the structural and the cultural aspects between English and Arabic. The names like لغفّار, العلیمّ give the translators serious problems. Various examples can be pointed out on the translation of the Divine Names. These names are the greatest values of the Holy Quran (Amjad, & Farahani, 2013). Another major difficulty facing the translators in rendering the Holy Quran into English is the way to handle collocation. According to Tabrizi and Mahmud (2013), selection constraints has to do with the restrictions capable of preventing co-occurrence of words in manners producing nonsense, collocations restraints works to bring about large arbitrary variations between near-synonyms. 4.5.1. Metonymy Armstrong (2005) investigates the occurrence of metonymy in which there is a transfer of the name of an object to stand in for something else connected with it. There should be a contiguity association between the figurative and the literal meanings conditioning the substitution and the availability of unmistakable evidence that the use does not intend the literal meaning. For example, the Surahal-An‛ām 6:6 of Yusuf Ali’s translation (2000) renders وَأَرْسَلْنَا السَّمَاءَ as poured out rain from the skies. The word السماء meaning sky is applied to bring out the desired meaning rain. The literal rendering of the same word by Arberry is “loosed heaven” does not give the exact intended meaning of the word in the original text. Literal translation strategy can be used to translate the metonymy in the Quran; nevertheless, the translation is dependent upon the type of clue. Most of the translators use the semantic strategy among a variety of different strategies. The extent of usage of any of the methods depends on the translator. Qarai leads the park in the application of expansion strategy. Moreover, he uses the expansion part of the couplet strategy which is a combination of the transposition and expansion. Thus, to attain lexical adequacy and semantic equivalence, Qarai strongly inclines toward expansion and considers it the most appropriate strategy. Figure 1: Summary strategy used in translating selected examples Example Abdullah Yusuf Shakir ض نَبَا ُت ال synonym and literal(couplet strategy) synonym and literal(couplet strategy) وَتَرَى الْأَرْضَ هَامِدَةً فَإِذَا أَنْزَلْنَا عَلَيْهَا الْمَاءَ اهْتَزَّتْ وَرَبَتْ وَأَنْبَتَتْ مِنْ paraphrasing or communicative translation (couplet) paraphrasing or communicative translation ک ِة – اِبلِیس Transference (couplet) Transference(couplet) وَأَرْسَلْنَا السَّمَاءَ Semantic Literal 5.0. Conclusion The Holy Quran is rich in beautiful attributes considering both the content and the form, and there is no translation that encapsulates all the features. These beautiful features of the original text cannot be covered even by a combination of all the existing English versions of the Quran. The Holy Quran makes use of several rhetorical, linguistic and stylistic features that give effectual and magnificent suaveness. The utility of the rhetorical and the linguistic features becomes problematic to the translators of Quran into English. It is advisable for the non-Arabic speakers to read several of the translations. This will lead the non-native speakers of Arabic to experience and approximate effect as the original readers. The recommendation put forward by this paper is that a committee that includes experts in science, history, and language of the Quran should conduct the translation of the Holy Quran. References Abdullah Yusuf, A.(2005). The Holy Quran. Tehran: Jajarmi. Abdul-Raof, H. (2001). Quran Translation – Discourse, Texture and Exegesis. Richmond: Curz Ali, A., Brakhw, M. A., Nordin, M. Z. F. B., & ShaikIsmail, S. F. (2012). Some linguistic difficulties in translating the holy Quran from Arabic into English. International Journal of Social Science and Humanity, 2(6), 588.\ Amjad, F. A., & Farahani, M. (2013). Problems and Strategies in English Translation of Quranic Divine Names. International Journal of Linguistics, 5(1), 128. Armstrong, N. (2005). Translation, Linguistics, Culture: A French-English Handbook. Clevedon, Buffalo and Toronto: Multilingual Matters Ltd. Dickins, J., Hervey, S. G. J., & Higgins, I. (2017). Thinking Arabic translation: A course in translation method : Arabic to English. Dickins, J., Hervey, S., & Higgins, I. (2016). Thinking Arabic translation: A course in translation method: Arabic to English. Routledge. Evans, L., Baskerville, R., & Nara, K. (2015). Colliding worlds: Issues relating to language translation in accounting and some lessons from other disciplines. Abacus, 51(1), 1-36. Eweida, S. (2007). The realization of time metaphors and the cultural implications: An analysis of the Quran and English Quranic translations. Farghal, M. (2012). Advanced issues in Arabic-English translation studies. Kuwait: Academic Publication Council-University of Kuwait. Hall, C. J., Smith, P. H., & Wicaksono, R. (2015). Mapping applied linguistics: A guide for students and practitioners. Routledge. Kelly, D. (2014). A handbook for translator trainers. Routledge. Munday, J. (2016). Introducing translation studies: Theories and applications. Routledge. Nord, C. (2014). Translating as a purposeful activity: Functionalist approaches explained. Routledge. Sadiq, S. (2010). A Comparative Study of Four English Translations of Surat Ad-Dukhan on the Semantic Level. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Saleh Elimam, A. A. (2009). Clause-level foregrounding in the translation of the Quran into English: Patterns and motivations (Doctoral dissertation, University of Manchester). Sarikaş, F. (2006). Problems in translating collocations. Elektronik Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, 17(17). Tabrizi, A. A., & Mahmud, R. (2013, February). Issues of coherence analysis on English translations of Quran. In Communications, Signal Processing, and their Applications (ICCSPA), 2013 1st International Conference on (pp. 1-6). IEEE. Williams, J., & Chesterman, A. (2014). The map: a beginner's guide to doing research in translation studies. Routledge. Read More

Thus, every individual doing the work of translation may focus on a particular type of equivalence such as translate accordingly to produce a different translation, aesthetic and denotative (Nord, 2014). According to Evans et al., (2015), the concept of lack of equivalence or non-equivalence poses a major problem and difficulty translating from one language to another. The challenge is encountered at all the levels of translation from word to sentence to textual level. At word level, non-equivalence refers to the absence of a word with the direct equivalence between the source language and the target language.

The magnitude of the challenge due to non-equivalence is variable underlying its nature. Various strategies can be used to handle different kinds of non-equivalence. Some strategies are more involving and difficult to handle while others are straightforward and depend on the level of the non-equivalence. 2.2. Translating Divine Names in Context An accurate and a just rendering of the Divine Names referred to as Asmā ul Hosnā in Arabic to English has failed most of the translators and commentators.

These names are the greatest values of the Holy Quran (Amjad, & Farahani, 2013). Another major difficulty facing the translators in rendering the Holy Quran into English is the way to handle collocation. According to Tabrizi and Mahmud (2013), selection constraints has to do with the restrictions capable of preventing co-occurrence of words in manners producing nonsense, collocations restraints work to bring about large arbitrary variations between near-synonyms. Sarikaş (2006) argues that collocations happen when words combine together to form lexical units like extreme happiness or have a lunch.

The challenge for the translator is identifying the source language collocations to be able to find target language equivalence, taking caution of the possibility of being led astray by the target language form to a misleading literal translation. 3.0. Methodology of the Study 3.1. Source Material The research utilizes three English translated versions of the Holy Quran produced by three translators Muhammad H. Shakir (1985), Sayyed Alli (2003), and Fazlollah Nikayin (2006). The translations are compared to the original Arabic text of the Holy Quran. 3.2.

Corpus and method of analysis In conducting this study, the paper selects the three translations of the Holy Quran and draws a comparison and contrasting with the original Arabic text. The corpus of the study, therefore, includes some surahs of the Holy Quran from 10 to 20 with the selection of their pertinent translations. Some verses of the strategically selected chapters were thoroughly read to point out lexical collocations. 3.3. Procedure Achieving the purpose of the research composed of a selection of eleven surahs from 10 to 20 followed by a thorough reading of some purposefully selected chapters to single out lexical collocations.

The "Habl- ul- Matin" and "Pars- Quran" software were put to task to help in the elicitation and extraction of features of collocations and the frequency of occurrence in the Holy Quran. A comparison and contrast between the lexical collocation and its corresponding equivalent are carried out to show the mechanisms applicable by the three translators in translating lexical collocations. This is followed by eliciting the frequency of strategies to find out the strategy that is used more frequently in the rendering of the lexical collocations by the three translators. 3.4.

Design The paper is based on descriptive corpus applying both the quantitative and the qualitative designs. Quantitative and the qualitative research methodologies are applied to the article in an attempt to answer the study questions. 4.0. Results and Discussion 4.1. Linguistic difficulties The work of translation if the Holy Quran from Arabic into the English language faces several linguistic challenges since Arabic and English languages are different both in the manner in which corresponding symbols are applied in sentences and phrases and the meaning given to such symbols.

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