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cannot ignore the contribution of the rich translation of philosophical text. To this aim,
treasury of eastern older science, literature, some extracts from a philosophical text with
art and culture including Persian poetry and a special focus on philosophical terminology
Islamic Arabic knowledge (Newman, 2002). was compared with their published Slovak,
Among Islamic sources, the holy Quran German and Czech translations. The
enjoys the most standing position, a source comparative analysis showed that the form
from which poets, philosophers, thinkers, and function of philosophical discourse is
physicians, astronauts are fed and the rituals interconnected to such a degree that the form
of millions of Muslims around the word are even constitutes a part of the text’s function.
extracted. Therefore, the book and the This study used different translation as
concepts within it have a great weight in criterion for evaluating quality through
science, art and jurisprudence but this comparison but in the context of the present
importance is doubled translation discipline. research, the form and function of the word
Many translators have rendered the holy “Roshd” is compared against an already
Quran in different languages but little established usage, semantic and function in
research is conducted on the quality or famous commentaries on holy Quran which
accuracy of these translations. Considering brings about a more robust conclusion.
this weight and research gap, the current Considering the fact that Arabic and
research is an attempt to enjoy theoretical English suffer from a relatively huge
foundations of equivalence theory to shed cultural distance, it can be claimed that the
light on the quality of the translation of the distance affects the way some cultural-
concept “”رشد1, in four famous English specific and religious items are translated
translations of the holy Quran including into English. The word “roshd” which has
Arberry, Ahmad Ali, Pickthall and Qarai . religious and jurisprudential semantic load is
Thus, this research answers the following not an exception. Abdi (2019) has conducted
question: a research on accuracy of translation of
Question: To what extent the concept cultural-specific items and concluded that
“roshd” conveys an equal meaning in four strategy in translation does not affect the
famous English translations of the holy quality of translation of these items but the
Quran? level of education does.
2. Literature Review Investigating the Quality of Arabic
Although contradictory in establishing translations to English, Almutairi (2018)
the nature, definition or application of conducted a study and explored the efficacy
equivalence, reviewing the literature on of two translation quality assessment models
translation studies shows that a bulk of on media translations of presidential
research is conducted on the concept. speeches. To this aim he selected four
Critically evaluating these theories, Panou presidential speeches and analyzed them
(2013) concluded that the usefulness or not through the adopted approaches. The
of the concept of equivalence to the findings showed that the seven standards in
translation process varies according to the the adopted model do not cover all the
stance of the translators concerned on what elements of the source text language
they regard are the virtues of equivalence (Arabic). He concluded that for a proper
itself. He also argued that most of analysis, the adopted model must be
translation theories are based on a binary modified considering the characteristics of
distinctions between translation types where the source text. This sheds light on the fact
Nida and Taber single out formal from that translation competency is not enough
dynamic equivalence, Newmark tells the for a quality translation and even famous
difference between semantic and translators stand in the need of familiarity
communicative translation, Catford with in-depth aspects of the source language
diagnoses formal correspondence different culture, ideology and local knowledge.
from textual equivalence while House in her In the same line of research Aladwan
model distinguishes overt and covert (2011) conducted a study and investigated
translation and Pym natural and directional the quality of two English translations of an
equivalence. Arabic text (Naguib Mahfouz's Midaq
Delving into Nida’s equivalence Alley). To this aim, he adopted a
theory, Bednarova and Zakutna (2018) descriptive, evaluative and comparative
investigated terminological equivalence in approach to explore a valid criterion for
proper evaluation of literary translation
1 through which assessing the translation of
Arabic: Roshd
Cite this article as: Khoshnoudi, H.(2019). Investigating the Quality of the Translations of Quran through
Equivalence Theory: A Religious Lexicology of the Word “Roshd”. International Journal of English Language &
Translation Studies. 7(3). 19-24.
Page | 20
Investigating the Quality of the Translations of Quran through Equivalence Theory … Hadi Khoshnoudi
the selected novel for this research was performing the syntactic, semantic and
possible. Also the research aimed at pragmatic processing of the textual input of
measuring the shifts which occurred the source text for transfer of the source
between English translations of the novel language text into the target language, the
compared with the Arabic text. The finding current research has adopted a descriptive
of this study on the basis of the adopted approach to analyze the quality of
model was that, both English translations of translation using Newmark’s principles
the Arabic novel suffered from translation (1988). These principles a framework for
quality problems in the areas of linguistics, text analysis which can be employed in
pragmatics, cultural and text-specific translation tasks which has some steps
features. including a) understanding the intention of
In one more study on the quality of the text, b) the intention of the translator, c)
English-Arabic translation, Ali Deeb (2005) understanding the style of the source text,
conducted a study and arrived at taxonomy d)understanding readership and e)
of problems in English to Arabic understanding attitude, connotations and
translations. The results of this study which denotations. On the basis of such an
was an empirical one was that translation analytical framework, we can judge the
problems found in English to Arabic quality of translation as falling into one of
translation corpus consists of four levels the aforesaid categories of formal
including supra, main, sub and sub-sub equivalence, denotative equivalence,
categories. In the supra category the connotative equivalence, text-normative
problems encompass source text equivalence and pragmatic (communicative)
comprehension, target text production and equivalence or unacceptable. In other words,
inadequacies in the process of transfer while these principles help the researcher to
the main category includes micro-language recognize and comprehend the source text,
problems, macro-text level problems and the norm, the type of text, the register, the
deficiencies in adopted techniques and style, the intention of the text and its
strategies. However, the problems in sub- readership in terms of its purpose, textual
category covered a very larger area themes and subject matter.
including grammar, vocabulary, spelling, 3.1 Data Collection and Procedure
rhetorical and stylistic devices, cohesion, To fulfill the aims of the current study,
register and style, background knowledge a corpus of Quranic verses in which the
and culture, word order, fixed expressions, word ““رشدwas mentioned were collected
spelling slips, irony, omission and additions. and then analyzed through the adopted
This research was similar to El-Haddad framework. Arriving at the meaning of the
(1999) who made an attempt to explore word in source text in each context, the
problems of literary translation from English researcher compared its equal value in
into Arabic, aiming at investigating those English translations of the verses in the
aspects of culture and style in the “Old Man target language. Then, a descriptive analysis
and the Sea” and its two Arabic translations. of comparisons was mentioned and
And finally, in a research on the holy judgments on quality of translations were
Quran, Tabrizi and Mahmud (2013), explained.
conducted a comparative analysis of famous 4. Results and Discussion
translations of the book to explore the The word “ ”رشدand its derivations are
coherence issues among them from used in 19 verses of the holy Quran but in
discourse structure point of view. The the present research the first three Quranic
findings of the study showed that there are verses in which the word itself (not its
several different translations of Quran, derivations) is used are selected for further
which differ in structure and word domain. analysis. These verses include the 256th
In these translations, the order of sentences, verse of Surah al-Baqarah, 146th verse of
phrases, and words is different, not only Surah al-Aa’raaf and the 51st verse of Surah
with each other but also with the Arabic al-Anbya.
holy Quran, which affects computational Table 1: Comparative translation analysis of
text analyzing. Quranic verses
3. Methodology
According to Dickins et al (2002), any
definition of equivalence in translation is
either descriptive or prescriptive. Since
obtaining equal value depends completely
on the skills and ability of the translator in
Cite this article as: Khoshnoudi, H.(2019). Investigating the Quality of the Translations of Quran through
Equivalence Theory: A Religious Lexicology of the Word “Roshd”. International Journal of English Language &
Translation Studies. 7(3). 19-24.
Page | 22
Investigating the Quality of the Translations of Quran through Equivalence Theory … Hadi Khoshnoudi
Cite this article as: Khoshnoudi, H.(2019). Investigating the Quality of the Translations of Quran through
Equivalence Theory: A Religious Lexicology of the Word “Roshd”. International Journal of English Language &
Translation Studies. 7(3). 19-24.
Page | 24