Abstract

This paper conducts a comparative study about four translations of sūrat al-Inshiqāq: Yousef Ali, Muhammad Hilali-Muhsin Khan, Pickthall and Mohammad Abdel Haleem. Multiple opinions of exposition have been provided to explore how, in certain ayas, the translators fail to find an appropriate equivalent. The translations' problems are categorized into lexical, stylistic and syntactic problems, whereas these categories also have sub-categories in order to clarify the gaps that might be encountered while translating the Qur'anic text. The problems are investigated through the theories of free and bound translation. Since religious texts, especially the sacred ones, are context- based, they have different meanings which are not easy to tackle. In conclusion, the lexical, syntactic and stylistic norms of the target language fail to match those of the Qur’an discourse because these features are far from universal.

Keywords: Religious translation, Untranslatability, Qur'an exposition.

Full Text