Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Quran's Divine Presence Not Conveyed through Translation

www.ahl-ul-bayt.org, www.iqna.ir/en/
Quran's Divine Presence Not Conveyed through Translation
--The holy Quran is divine in terms of style, form and content; yet only the content can be conveyed through translation and its divine presence would remain untouched in the original text.
This is according to Salar Manafi Anari, English teaching professor in Allameh Tabatabaie University, speaking at a forum investigating Quran’s translations into the English language, which was held at IQNA on May 3.
Referring to the wide differences between the translation of the Quran and that of other texts, he said that the divine presence included in the holy Quran has given it an exceptional characteristic.
“A Quran translator tries to grasp the meaning based on the apparent form and put it in another form in the target language; therefore, the final translation will include a divine content in a human form, and the divine presence can never be conveyed through the translated text,” Dr. Manafi went on to say.
Defining translation as a process of conveying meaning from the original to the target language, he noted that it covers 3 stages, namely analyzing the text, grasping the main idea and reconstructing the text in the target language.
He further stressed the importance of the second stage, adding: “A translator with no sense of commitment may misrepresent the main idea due to his/her own limited views and presuppositions, and this is quite unacceptable in translation especially in the case of the holy Quran and other divine texts.”
“That explains, according to some scholars, the reason of Prophet Mohammad’s (PBUH) illiteracy, as they believe pure Revelation might have been mixed with human knowledge had he been a literate man.”
"Unlike Christians who consider the translations of their holy book as equal to the original text, Muslims believe that translations are all subject to change and can never equal the holy Quran,” Dr. Manafi went on to say noting that even Quran’s specific style cannot be conveyed through translation; “that is why the divine presence within its words and phrases can only be grasped in the Arabic language.
“Translations are of 3 types: content-oriented, form-oriented and target-oriented. For example in translating publicity texts, only the last type matters, i.e. conveying the text’s main idea to the audience. However, none of the aforementioned types of translation is sufficient on its own as far as Quranic verses are concerned because the holy Quran is a unique combination of verse and prose which makes its divine style impossible to be conveyed in translation.”
“In translating the holy Quran, both the form and content should be equally considered so that its lofty content can be conveyed together with the specific style of the book, and that is surely a very painstaking job if not impossible for the translator,” he further remarked.
He also referred to the ideas of some western translators of the Sacred Bible including Eugene A. Nida, American linguist and translator theorist, who insists on considering the audience of such texts in the first place by resorting to "dynamic- equivalence". “That is, some words should be translated in a tangible way in accordance with the reader’s culture and living conditions.”
“However, such a view is not acceptable concerning the holy Quran. In other words, the translator is not allowed to change the words for the sake of the reader’s better understanding,” Dr. Manafi stressed in the end.
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