Semantic disparities and discrepancies in translations of the Holy Qur’an into English.

Abstract

This is a comparative analysis of selected verses from a number of Sûrahs (or Chapters) in six English translations of the Holy Qur‟ân, at a sentence, clause, phrase, word and, where useful, the morpheme level, using the original Arabic version as the Source Text. The translated version of the Holy Qur‟ân of the Complex of Madinah Munawarrah in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will be used as a Control Text in order to determine the significant semantic disparities and discrepancies between the translations, as well as to identify the possible reasons for differences. It was important, further, to ensure that the translators chosen for this study have different educational, cultural and social backgrounds in order to establish, for instance, the consequences when Arabic is the native language of a translator in comparison to the other extreme where a translator is a native-speaker of neither Arabic nor English. Special attention is paid to the way in which the translations reflect the poetic prosody of the original source text as well as to the influences of the aims, the approaches, the techniques, the styles and the common problems of translation in general, such as the incongruities of languages, the cultural barriers between the communities, the concepts of accuracy, loyalty and fidelity to the original text.