Views on translating the Quran The translation of the Quran has always been a debatable issue which has

brought up many questions related to the permissibility of translating the Quran , and other relevant issues. Muslims believe that the Quran is the Divine literal Word of God, revealed to the prophet Mohammed in the 7th century CE. They also believe that the message of the Quran is a universal one, for the prophet was sent as mercy to all mankind. Therefore, the people to whom the Quran was sent understood the Quran comprehensively and undertook the task of transmitting it to the rest of mankind throughout the world. Paraphrase/ interpretation During the prophets lifetime, letters and messengers who mastered the language of the country to which they were delegated were sent calling on them to the universality of the massage. But there was no information of any direct translation of the Quran during the lifetime of the prophet apart from certain portions of the Quran. The author also states that Salman the Persian, a companion of the prophet, translated surah number 1 into Persian and other companions of the prophet translated certain verses pertaining to the prophet Jesus and Mary. Thus, the issue of translating the Quran in those very early days was a matter of serious consideration especially because Muslims came in close contact with non Arabs who get their instructions in the Quran through translations in their native tongues. These and other examples show the possibility that portions of the Quran, were translated at this early stage. The earliest translation of the Quran into Persian was made in 345 AH/ 956 AC. Another translation was made approximately the year 127 A.H. Paraphrase/ interpretation A.L. Tibawi in his article Is the Quran Translatable ? Early Muslim Opinion says that it was Abu Hanifa (about 81 A.H ), who generally declared that it was permissible to recite the Quran in Persian in prayer, whether the reader knew Arabic or not. His followers extended this permission to Turkish, Hindi, Syriac, Hebrew and other languages of non- Arabs. He carries on saying that Abu Hanifas opinion actually .. from the increasing number of non Arabs, with different racial and linguistic backgrounds, who embraced Islam. In fact, genuine religious concern and practical considerations combined to shape his opinion. It is important here to point to the fact that Abu Hanifa did not pronounce on the translation of the Quran as a whole, he merely tried to solve an obvious difficulty of non Arab believers who were required to recite in prayer certain short chapters or verses only. Paraphrase The interest of non Muslims in translating the Quran in the medieval ages arose prominently. Such early translation as the latin translation made by Robert of Kelton in 1143, but was not published until published in 1543. The Italian of Andrea Arrivabere , which was a paraphrase of the latin and first was published in 1547, and the French version by Andre du Ryer which first was published in 1647, formed the basis for subsequent translations of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. Mohammad Khalifa in his article Translation: TRIED & TRUE? States that this French version was the basis of the first English version of the Quran and was described by Sale as a very bad translation having mistakes on every page besides frequent transposition, omissions, and addition. It was also described by Savary as despicable;. Many other/ later translations were also based on a Latin

version by Father Ludovie Maracci in 1698 who was taught the Arabic Language by a Turk. Mohammad Khalifa .in his article Trans Paraphrase

Dr Trandil in his article (An approach to the translation of the meaning of the Quran into English) states that the first translation into English from a French version took place in 1688 CE by Alexander Ross. The Quran was also translated into English from other versions such as the Latin version by George Sale in 1734, which is considered the main reference for the translations at that time. He also points to an important issue, that earlier translations were undertaken by non Muslims and non Arabic speakers who lack knowledge of the Arabic language. And therefore, readers of these translations I believe are primed wrongly as a result of misinterpretations and misunderstandings of the original text. Another point Khalifa mentions in his article is that Sale depended mainly on Maraccis Latin version. Sale spent 25 years in Arabia where he acquired a profound knowledge of the Arabic language and customs. However, Sales translation of the Quran contains many faults, each one indicating that he could not have fully grasped the Arabic language. But despite its many inaccuracies, Sales version has gone through some thirty editions; it was retranslated into Dutch in 1742, German in 1764, French in 1750, Russian in 1792, and Swedish in 1814, and into Bulgarian in 1902. Paraphrase In the late 19th century several translations into English and into other European languages appeared. One important to point to is that most of the translations published at that time largely depended on Sales version. In the 20th century, Henry Palmer, ( in 1880), Richard Bell, ( in 1939), and Dawood (in 1956) undertook the task of translating the Quran. As Christian missionaries, they became interested in translating the Quran into European languages and also into Oriental languages and dialects. A.J. Arberrys translation of the original Arabic was published in 1955 and was described by Watt, Williams and others as the greater literary distinction. The translations of the Quran, from a variety of inaccurate versions or from second translation (which I consider the authors understanding) which do not accurately reflect the original text ,caused loss in the meaning of the original text. And hence, the need for accurate Quran translations, become apparent and that is why some Muslims such as Abdullah You Ali, Taqi Hilalai, pickthall and others offered translations into English from the Arabic version in. So many translations with different titles appeared like Article-An approach to the translation of the meaning of the Quran into English. Dr Trandil H El Rakhway - Al- Azhar 01/07/06. In the 20th Century translation was made by born Muslims who fell the need to produce faithful translation of the Quran into English and European languages as an attempt to convey the meanings to the readers in a way to help them understand the text accurately. Therefore, they provided their own rendering. Among them Abdul Hakim in 1905, Mirza Abul-Fazl in 1911, Mohammad Ali in 1916 2

and the most notable of which are the English translation made by a western scholar who accepted Islam Muhammed Marmaduke pickthall. His translation was published in 1930 London, and that of Abdulla Yusuf Ali, Lahore in 1934-1937 and many other translations. Paraphrase.

1.2- Views on translating the Quran.

The Quranic words are considered sublime. Allah challenged the Arabs to produce a literary work of a similar calibre like the Quran. The Arabs found it an unapproachable task despite their well- known eloquence and literary prowess. If this was the case with the native speakers of Arabic in the Arabian Peninsula, then we can safely assume that translation of the Quran is an extremely difficult endeavour in trying to reflect the shades of meaning in another language. This inevitably changes the original text. Dr Jamal Badawi . Translations of the Quran

article translations of the Quran states that if a translator tries hard to translate a text into another language, he will find it difficult to cover meanings of the text in the target language. But, this difficulty becomes more apparent and problematic in the case of the Quran, because of its eloquence of style, multiplicity of meanings, implicit meanings which are almost impossible to translate, connotations that the words of the Quran convey, for the Arabic language is distinctive and owes unique style features. (paraphrase).
Dr Jamal Badawi in his

He(Dr Jamal) carries on saying that many jurists are of the opinion that anyone who claims to make literal translation of the Quran is really mistaken and , morever, this is forbidden, because, after all, the word of Allah , which is the Quran, according to Muslim belief, is the word of Allah as it came to prophet Mohammad (pbuh) through Angel Gabriel. So, any translation of the word of Allah cannot be the word of Allah, rather, it is the translation of the meaning of the word of Allah. (paraphrase )
A.L. Tibawi in the same article mentioned above states that Al-Gazali (b, 450 A H), believes that the Quran is untranslatable and he insisted that a Muslim believer must not translate it or translate its meaning into Persian or Turkish. For some Arabic words have no equivalent persian words, and some have equivalents, but the Persian are not accustomed to use them metaphorically as Arabs do He also emphasized that the Arabic wording must remain the same with no changes as it has been transmitted to them. To the mind of Al- Ghazali, the danger from change of wording or translation affects the divine attributes, a danger which must be avoided by strict adherence to the Arabic. Paraphrase 1.3- Problems of Translating the Quran. Many problems are likely to occur when translating between any two languages. Some aspects of translation are quite difficult regardless of which language one is translating to or from. However we should draw attention to the fact that the Arabic language has certain characteristics that make it

even more difficult to translate, in addition to other characteristics that are peculiar to the Quran itself as a standard of the Arabic language. ( translation of the Quran. Dr Jamal Badawi). Paraphrase Rhetorical problems In the Arabic language, there is rich vocabulary; words are used to convey multiple meanings or sometimes the same word may have different shades of meaning. This feature of the Arabic language is called Eejaaz (Brevity) where a word or an expressions conveys numerous meanings. If someone attempts to translate, he simply tries to select one English word or a term that encompasses that meaning. But I think this is problematic as he/ she would not find really one single term in English that conveys all shades of meaning. However, this does not fully convey the meanings of the Quranic Arabic word or the Quran ayah. Pharaphrase Whats more, there are a number of terms, for instance, divine attributes of Allah the Almighty such as Khaliq- Khalaq- Fatir, Badi- Bari.). All of these terms are usually translated into ( Creator or Originator), for example. However, in fact each one of them has a particular shade of meaning; a particular emphasis that is not exactly equal or equivalent to the other terms. Take an example of conciseness the ayah Khudey alafwaa waamur bilurfey wa aared aanee aljaheeleen Khudey alafwaa means to keep in touch with relatives, to forgive the person who might offend you, and to take money from those who refused to spend out, in charity, of what Allah has given them. Waamur bilurfey means Wa aared aanee aljaheeleen means . All translations of the above ayah show that only one shade of meaning is rendered. In fact, the language of the Quran is terse and adopting the style of the Quran in translation is fraught with problems.

Another problem is that there are some words in Arabic that even through their meaning could be understood by the English translator, there is no one single word that conveys their meaning in English. A translator has to form a sentence if he is to properly convey the meaning. Confusion can also create a big problem in translating from Arabic into English Mohammed Abdulwali in his article The loss in the translation of the Quran says that part of the difficulty in translating the Quran is the presence of huge number of difficult and Quran specific words with a wide range of contextual meaning.

Paraphrase Style of the Quran. ( dont interpret- Hudas analysis)

The first point to shed light on is what makes the language of the Quran distinctive here I can say that the Quran uses mercy rather in specific ways in that it is 195 times more frequent proportionally than the BNC and this is interesting because it points to an important theme of the Quran. The use of the prepositions from and for in QIT and BNC in the context of mercy differs in terms of frequency so in the Quran mercy from is 19 times more common in QIT than in the BNC and for is six times more common in QIT than in the BNC so the colligation in the QIT is differently manifested. We also have a theologically and linguistically important point and is different from ordinary English; that is the collocation of mercy with and in R1 position and the implication is that mercy is always combined with another gift from God. The occurrence of mercy inside rhetorical questions ( e.g. How would it be without Gods bounty and mercy towards you (all)? God is the receiver of Repentance, Wise. 24:10) and alongside rhetorical questions ( e.g. Evidence has now come to you from your Lord, as well as guidance and mercy. Who is more in the wrong than someone who rejects Gods signs and even evades them? 6:15 ) points to a distinctive stylistic feature of the QinT. There are many other stylistic features in the QinT that make the Quranic text distinctive and different from any other text including the association of say in QinT with interrogatives and exclamation marks. This point is demonstrated in chapter 5 and 7 in detail. What I have identified is distinctive stylistic features and they are marks giving a clue as to have might understand the Quranic text. Hudas analysis- dont interpret. M.H Omran. Elsayyed. ( Spring 1988 ) Al- Serat, Islam, the Quran and the Arabic Literature. Vol XIV No 1.

The inimitability of the Quran is not limited to its content but also in its language. The eloquence of the Quran clearly impressed and overwhelmed Arabs. From a linguistic point of view, the revelation of the Quran was the most important event in the history of the Arabic language. It was an event with far- reaching and lasting consequence, for the Quran gave Arabic a form which it had hitherto lacked. The Quran introduced a host of new themes and linguistic forms not only to the Arabic language but to the Arab mind as well. With regard to this particular aspect of the Quran Taha Husayn wrote:
In its external form the Quran is nether poetry nor prose. It is not poetry because it doesnt observe the meter and rhyme of poetry, and it is not prose because it is not composed in the same manner in which prose was customarily composed.

The Quran consists of verses which vary in length depending on their theme and the occasion for which they were revealed. What is most interesting about Quranic verses is the
5

superb selection of words, a selection which helps to induce varying reading speeds, which render these verses most effective. On this particular point, Paraphrase the above paragraphs Taha Husayn wrote:
For example, those verses dealing with dialogues that took place between the prophet and the pagans as well as those dealing with legislation require the type of low reading speed appropriate to explanation and recapitulation. On the other hand, those verses in which the pagans are warned of the fate that awaits them, require a higher speed appropriate to censuring and warning.

Another aspect of the novelty of the Quran language is to do with its themes. These themes and topics represent a clear departure from those which had been familiar to the Arabs. The themes are presented through an abundance of examples all aimed at illustration and persuasion. The use of illustration is one of the most effective stylistic techniques of the Quran The Quran makes extensive use of illustration, imagery, and metaphor, thus adding beauty, life, and colour to plain words. In fact, the ubiquity of figures of speech in the Quran has led Sayed Qutb to conclude that the use of imagery and figures of speech is the Quran proffered style over plain words. For example, those who do charitable acts yet spoil what they have done by gloating and reminding others of such acts is conveyed thus:
They are in a parable like a hard, barren rock on which is a little soil; on it falls heavy rain which leaves it just a bare stone. (2: 265)

The opposite case, namely that of those who spend for Gods sake rather than in order to boast, is also expressed through imagery:
As a parable high and fertile; heavy rain falls on it but makes it yield a double increase of harvest. (2: 265 )

Doomsday is one of the frequent themes of the Quran. The description of the horror of that day is also presented through figures of speech. Another very characteristic stylistic device of the Quran is that of anthropomorphization. Thus it describes dawn as breathing away the darkness (78:10), the night as concealing the sun and the veiling the day, the wind as fecundating, causing the rain to fall (15: 22). The sea is linked to ink which, if used, will not suffice to write the words of God: Paraphrase The Qurans Genre ( from The Unique Genre of the Quran ) by Hamza Andreas Tzortzis From a linguistic point of view the Quran employs various rhetorical features such as the use of rhythm, figures of speech, similes, metaphors, and rhetorical questions. Also, the use of irony and the repetition of words are just a small part of the Quranic repertoire of rhetorical devices. The Qurans cohesiveness includes various methods such as phrasel ties, substitution, reference and lexical cohesion. These features hang together to create the Quran unique genre. The Quranic Arabic text uses both cohesive and rhetorical elements in every verse. Consider thie example.
6

Men who remember Allah much and women who remember The Quranic verse above, in a different word order such as the verses below,

Would not deliver the same effect as the word `Allah` has become linguistically redundant, . The original Quranic structure achieved its objective by the use of the `wa` particle - as a linguistic bond. This Quranic verse has a rhetorical element reflected by the conciseness of its language. This is achieved by ellipsis ( a form of deletion ) ; the deletion of the object which is the word Allah in the second part of the sentence. Words of sentences might be deleted without affecting the meaning. Michael says here The central placement of the word Allah highlights the importance of remembering Allah which is emphasized by the word `katheran` meaning much/a lot. In this example and in all verses of the Quran the Quran combines rhetorical and cohesive elements to produce the intended meaning and any change to the structure of a Quranic verse simply changes its meaning , style and literary effect.

Paraphrase

The style of the Quran helped to develop and enrich the Arabic language. The Quran has made remarkable contributions to the structure and style of the Arabic language. It combines within its covers the first documentation of the sentence patterns of Arabic, and it was instrumental in the documentation of Arabic grammar which began in the first Islamic century. An interesting unique feature of the Qurans style is its sudden change of person and number. This feature , also known as grammatical shift, plays a rhetorical device because sudden changes are used to enhance expression. Robinson states: . Sudden pronominal shifts are characteristic of the quranic discourse.they are a very effective rhetorical device. From the inimitability of the Quran

This is from
One important stylistic features of the Arabic language of the Quran is what is called AL-il tifat.. It is one of the rhetorical devices of the expressive powers of the Quranic language. In Arabic, it is usual for the speaker or the writer to begin a discourse by a certain pronoun and suddenly uses another pronoun that does not go with the first pronoun or the antecedent. This style is peculiar to the Arabic language and is not adopted in English, as the pronoun in English should always be in concord with the antecedent. major problems in Translating Quranic meanings into English

M. A thesis.
7

One type of Al-iltifat ( shift) is from first person to second person as in 36:22 This verse is literally translated as why should I not worship Him who created me and to Him you shall go back There is a disagreement between the pronoun in the second sentence and the pronoun in the first sentence. He marked his discourse as if he were advising himself in order to show politeness and tact, and he indicated that he wanted for them what he wanted for himself. Therefore, he said: Why should I not worship Him instead of why shouldnt you worship the one who created you and unto Him you shall return. The rhetorical effect is not reflected in the English, however, the use of the pronoun you in the second clause is of such highly importance to the meaning of the ayah. 2- From second to First person as in 11:90 .. This verse can be translated literally as..ask for your Gods forgiveness and repent to Him, Surely my Lord is Merciful and Loving. My in the second clause does not go with your in the second clause.

These points are from the article the style of the Quran By IslamicReligion .com Published on 01 May 2006 Last modified on 11 Jul 2007 Also, the Quran repeats certain verses and themes at times, shifts topics, and often relates narratives in summarized form. We can see two reasons for these characteristics. First, it serves a linguistic purpose and one of the Powerful rhetorical techniques of classical Arabic. Another important point to keep in mind is that many passages were revealed in response to specific events. Often, Quranic revelation would come from the angel Gabriel to prophet Mohammad as a response to a question raised by those around him, whether believers on non believers. It addresses the prophet himself , commanding him what to do in certain situations or supporting him. Knowing the historical and social context helps to clarify the text.

10

11

12

13