The Qur'an is the central religious text of Islam and is believed by Muslims to be the literal word of God as dictated as revealed to the Prophet Mohammed. The Qur'an is thought to be the only holy book that exists today in the precise form and content in which it was originally produced and has consequently been preserved and documented extensively by Islamic scholars over the last 1,400 years. Arabic is the language of the Qur'an and thus also the liturgical language of Islam. For that reason, Muslims of all nationalities practice rote recitation of the Qur'an in its original Arabic. As a result of this unique etiology, the Qur'an is sometimes called “untranslateable” or inimitable, because to render it into another language would be to transform the already perfect and divine words of God. Nevertheless, the growth of Islam as a global religion with over 1.9 billion adherents has necessitated interpretations of the Qur'an into different languages. This project began with the question, what is lost in translation?
What are the most common rhetorical devices used in the Arabic original text and the two English translations by Ali and Pickthall? How do the frequencies and distributions of devices compare across the three texts?
A common debate in the field of translation is the struggle to balance the competing demands of style and faithfulness to the original text. We are interested in pinpointing the editorial choices made by each translator, and if there are differences in each translator's approach to the text (i.e., do one or both translators err on the side of faithfulness to the text at the expense of style, or vice verse?)
What is the density of rehtorical devices within each unit of text?
English and Arabic are very disparate languages both in terms of syntactic structure and rhetorical stylings. Recitative poetry was a key part of Arab art and culture long before the revalation of the Qur'an, and the rhetorical stylings of the Qur'an, originally a text that was recited orally, continue that vibrant tradition. We are interested in examining whether there is a significant difference in the rhetorical richness among the three texts, as operationalized by density of devices per ayah and per surah.
How do English translations compensate for rhetorical elements that are available in Arabic but do not exist in English?
One striking feature of the Arabic language is the use of the vocative particles to signify direct address and emphatic particles to indicate topic or focus. There is no direct analog to these tools in modern English, so would like to examine if and how the English texts compensate for any loss of sentiment due to the lack of those particles.
The Noble Qur'an: The name of this text is derived from the Arabic word for "recitation," which references the rich oral history of this text. The Qur'an is estimated by religious scholars to have been revealed beginning in 610 - 632 CE. The text was collected and canonized under the caliphate of Rashidun Uthman, around 650 CE.
The Holy Qur'an, trans. Yusuf Ali: (1872–1953) was an Indian Islamic scholar. His translation of the Qur'an was published in 1938 and remains one of the most widely-known and used translation in the English-speaking world.
The Glorious Koran, trans. Pickthall: (1875 – 1936) was an English-born novelist and scholar of the Islamic World who converted to Islam in 1917. Pickthall was a novelist and a contemporary of writers like D.H. Lawrence, H.G. Well, and E.M. Forster, but he is perhaps best known The Meaning of the Glorious Koran, an English language translation of the holy text with exegis.
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