Comparison of English and Persian translations of culture-specific items in the Holy Qur’an: The case of al-An’am Sura

Articles in Press

Document Type : Original Research

Authors

Attar Institute of Higher Education

10.22081/ttais.2024.70303.1044

Abstract

Every culture is fraught with certain concepts that may be hard to comprehend to foreigners due to connotations rooted in source language and culture. Different strategies can be used to translate these culture-specific items (CSIs). The present descriptive/comparative study explored the translation strategies used in the Arabic-to-Persian and Arabic-to-English translations of al-An’am Sura. This sura is among the Sab' Tiwal (seven lengthy suras of the Holy Quran), and its full recitation in a sitting (or Khatm al-An'am) is a popular gathering in Iran, where Sura al-An'am is recited fully with the intention of one's needs being met by God. The Persian translation used in this study was by Muhammad Mahdi Fooladvand, among the first best eight translations of the Holy Quran with a translation style in the mid-way between verbatim and content-based. The English translation used was by Mustafa Khattab, the Canadian-Egyptian translator famous for his “The Clear Qur’an Series”. The CSI translation strategies were those suggested by Vinay and Darbelnet, Newmark and Nida. Fifty CSIs were found in the sura whose analysis showed in both English and Persian translations, the most frequent strategy to translate CSIs was literal translation and the least frequent were footnote and modulation. The significance of the frequency differences was tested using loglikelihood, and to check the effect size, Bayes Factor was used. Statistically significant differences were found between the two samples of translation in terms of seven strategies, among which borrowing and functional equivalence provided very strong evidence for rejecting the null hypothesis.

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International Journal of Textual and Translation Analysis in Islamic Studies

Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 04 February 2025

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History

  • Receive Date: 15 November 2024
  • Revise Date: 22 November 2024
  • Accept Date: 12 December 2024

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