A Study of Translators’ Faith and Eschatological Terms in the Qur’ān: A Comparative Study of Muslim, Christian and Jewish Translations

Document Type : Original Research

Author

Department of English, Marvdasht Branch, Islamic Azad University, Marvdasht, Iran

Abstract

The translation of eschatological terms and concepts related to the Resurrection Day has always sparked heated debates among individuals with diverse ideological trends and religious beliefs. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of the translator’s religion on the English translation of eschatological terms in the Holy Qur’ān by three renowned Muslim, Christian, and Jewish translators. To achieve this, relevant eschatological terms in the Holy Qur’ān were examined and analyzed, along with their translations by Tahereh Saffarzadeh (2014), Arthur John Arberry (1996), and Nessim Joseph Dawood (2003), using Newmark’s procedures (1988) as a framework. Thirty eschatological terms from thirty verses in the Holy Qur’ān were selected for analysis. In order to enhance the understanding and interpretation of each term, the Persian interpretation of the Holy Qur’ān by Naser Makarem Shirazi (2010) and Allameh Tabataba’i’s (1987) Tafsir Al-Mizan were consulted as supplementary materials. The English equivalents used in each verse, as well as the translation strategies employed by the translators, were compared, classified, and analyzed based on a revised model of Newmark’s procedures to determine which procedures were more or less frequently utilized by the three translators. The findings revealed that the “through-translation” strategy was the most commonly employed procedure, while the “synonymy” and “transference” strategies ranked last in translating the selected eschatological terms in the Holy Qur’ān.

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©2023 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, as long as the original authors and source are cited. No permission is required from the authors or the publishers.

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International Journal of Textual and Translation Analysis in Islamic Studies
Volume 1, Issue 2 - Serial Number 2
April 2023
Pages 189-208

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History

  • Receive Date: 05 May 2023
  • Revise Date: 07 June 2023
  • Accept Date: 20 August 2023

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