Comparing English and Persian Translations of Culture-Specific Items in the Surah Al-An’am

Document Type : Original Research

Authors

Attar Institute of Higher Education, Mashhad, Iran

Abstract

Each culture encompasses unique concepts that can be challenging for outsiders to grasp, often due to their deep-rooted connotations within the source language and culture. Various strategies exist for translating culture-specific items. This descriptive-comparative study examines the strategies employed in the Arabic-to-Persian and Arabic-to-English translations of Surah Al-An’am. This surah is one of the Tiwal suras, which are seven lengthy surahs in the Holy Qur’ān. Its complete recitation in one sitting, known as Khatme Anaam (complete recitation of Al-An’am Surah), is a common practice in Iran, performed with the hope of having one’s prayers answered by God. The Persian translation analyzed in this study was by Mohammad Mehdi Fooladvand, one of the top eight translators of the Holy Qur’ān, recognized for his balanced approach between literal and content-based translation. The English version studied was by Mustafa Khattab, a Canadian-Egyptian translator renowned for The Clear Qur’ān. The translation strategies for culture-specific items were evaluated using frameworks proposed by Vinay and Darbelnet, Newmark, and Nida. The analysis identified 50 culture-specific items in the surah. The findings revealed that both translations predominantly employed the strategy of literal translation, while footnotes and modulation were the least utilized. Statistical tests, including log-likelihood for significance and Bayes Factor for effect size, indicated significant differences between the two translations regarding the use of seven strategies. Notably, the strategies of borrowing and functional equivalence provided strong evidence against the null hypothesis.

Keywords

Main Subjects

©2024 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.

References

Abdul-Raof, H. (2001). Qur’ān translation: Discourse, texture and exegesis. Richmond: Curzon Press.
Abdul-Raof, H. (2018). New horizons in Qur’ānic linguistics: A syntactic, semantic and stylistic analysis. New York: Routledge.
Al-Azzam, B., Al Ahaydib, M., & Al Huqail, E. (2015). Cultural problems in the translation of the Qur’ān. International Journal of Applied Linguistics and Translation, 1(2), 28-34
Aldahesh, A.Y. (2014). (Un)translatability of the Qur’ān: A theoretical perspective. International Journal of Linguistics, 6(6), 23-45.
Al-Qinai, J. (2012). Convergence and divergence in the interpretation of Qur’ānic polysemy and lexical recurrence. Acta Orientalia, 65(1). 71-92.
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.
Allaithy, A. (2014). Quranic term translation: A semantic study from Arabic perspective. Quranic Studies.
Ayyad, G. R., & Mahadi, T. S. T. (2019). Strategies of translating Qur’ānic cultural terms. International Journal of Humanities, Philosophy and Language, 2(7), 139-147.
Ayyad, G.R., & Mahadi, T.S.T. (2020). Procedures of foreignizing culture-specific-terms in the Noble Qur’ān. International Journal of Humanities, Philosophy and Languages, 3(9), 08-13.
Ayyad, G.R., Obeidat, A., Sepora, T., & Mahadi, T. (2021). Translation of culture-specific-items in religious texts: A case study of the noble Qur’ān. Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, 18(7), 293-308.
Baker, M. (1992). In other words: A course book on translation. London: Taylor & Francis Limited.
Bassnett, S. (2007). Culture and translation. In Kuhiwczak, P., & Littau, K. (Eds.), A companion to translation studies. Bristol, Blue Ridge Summit: Multilingual Matters. (pp. 13–23). https://doi.org/10.21832/9781853599583-003
Bassnett, S., & Lefevere, A. (1990). Translation, history and culture. London: Printer Publishers.
Borysenko, N., Slavova, L., Kodubovska, O., & Matushevska, N. (2024). Culture-specific items in the source and target literary texts: Classification of translation strategies. Forum for Linguistic Studies, 6(1), 1-14.
Braçaj, M. (2015). Procedures of translating culture-specific concepts. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 6(1), 476-480.
Chalak, A., Tabrizi, H.H., & Valipoor, A. (2019). Cultural-specific items in translation of the Holy Quran by Irving. Linguistic Research in the Holy Quran, 8(1), 43-52.
Cómitre Narváez, I., & Valverde Zambrana, J. (2014). How to translate culture-specific items: A case study of tourist promotion campaign by Turespaña. The Journal of Specialised Translation, 21, 71–112.
Dastjerdi, H.V., & Jamshidian, E. (2010). A sacramental wordplay: An investigation of pun translatability in the two English translations of the Quran. Asian Social Science, 7. https://doi.org/10.5539/ass.v7n1p133.
Haroon, H. (2019). The use of footnotes in the Malay translation of a thousand splendid suns. Translation & Interpreting, 11(1), 130-146.
Hatim, B., & Mason, I. (2016). Discourse and the translator. London: Longman.
Holmes, J. S. (1972). The name and nature of translation studies. Translated! Papers on literary translation and translation studies, 2, 67-80.
Mizin, K., Slavova, L., & Khmara, V. (2021). The equivalence of terms denoting the emotion concepts of Ger. angst and A.-S. fear: A corpus-based method. Language Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow, 6(2), 69-104.
Mizin, K., Slavova, L., & Letiucha, L. (2023). Emotion concept disgust and its German counterparts: Equivalence determination based on language corpora data. Forum for Linguistic Studies, 5(1), 72–90. https://doi.org/10.18063/ fls.v5i1.1552
Moir, C. (2009). Translational resonance, authenticity and authority in the Bible and the Qur’ān: Translation and religious change. New Voices in Translation Studies, 5, 29–45.
Moradi, M. & Sadeghi, H.M. (2014). Translation of culture-specific phrases in the Holy Quran. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 4(8), 1735-1746
Muñoz, E.F. (2019). Analysis of the presence of Spanish culture in American culinary language study of the series Spain... on the road again and a comparison with its dubbed version into Spanish. International Journal of Translation and Interpreting, 3, 25-48.
Nagar, A. (2018). The concept of translation in Western and Indian traditions. Journal of Education and Culture Studies, 2. 242. https://doi.org/10.22158/jecs.v2n4p242
Newmark, P. (1988). Approaches to translation. New York: Prentice Hall.
Nida, E., & Reyburn, W. (1981). Meaning across cultures. Orbis Books, New York.
Obeidat, A, M., & Mahadi, T. S. T. (2019). The translation of Arabic religious-cultural collocations in literacy texts into English: An application of domestication and foreignization translation strategies. International Journal of Humanities, Philosophy, and Language, 2(6), 155-165.
Peachy, D.W.S. (2013). English translations of the Qur’ān and the roles of why, by whom, for whom and how introduction. Department of al-Qur’ān and al-Hadith, Academy of Islamic Studies. University of Malaya. http://dx.doi.org/10.11136/jqh.1311.02.03.
Rahman, F. (1988). Translating the Qur’ān. Religion & Literature, 20(1), 23-30.
Roodashsty, M., Mozaheb, M., Ghajarieh, A., & Isqh, I. (2023). Translation of culture-specific items in three chapters of the holy Quran: The case study of translators with different l1 backgrounds. Studies of Qur’ān and Hadith, 1(1). https://doi.org/10.30497/isqh.2023.244736.1005
Saeed, A. (2008). The Qur’ān: An introduction. Routledge.
Siddiek, A.G. (2012). Viewpoints in the translation of the Holy Qur’ān. International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature, 1(2), 18-25.
Slavova, L., & Vozna M. (2022). Ethnic and cultural nature of historical terminology: The comparative and translation aspects (based on historical terms of antiquity and Old Rus period) (Ukrainian). Movni i kontseptualni kartyny svitu, 1(71), 115-131. https://doi.org/10.17721/2520-6397.2022.1.10
Tabrizi, A., & Mahmud, R. (2013). Coherence analysis issues on English-translated Quran. Communications, Signal Processing, and their Applications (ICCSPA), 1-6.
Valeišaitė,  I. (2022). Peculiarities of rendering charactonyms of The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien into Lithuanian. Transletters. International Journal of Translation and Interpreting (6): 127-150.
Venuti, L. (2001). Strategies of translation. In Baker, M. (ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies (pp. 240–244). Routledge.
Vinay, J.P., & Darbelnet. J. (1995). Comparative stylistics of French and English: A methodology for translation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Vlakhov, S., & Florin, S. (1990). Neperevodimoto v prevoda. Sofia: Nauka i izkustvo.
International Journal of Textual and Translation Analysis in Islamic Studies
Volume 2, Issue 1 - Serial Number 5
January 2024
Pages 88-103

Files

History

  • Receive Date: 08 October 2023
  • Revise Date: 02 December 2023
  • Accept Date: 25 December 2023
  • Publish Date: 01 January 2024

Share

How to cite

Statistics