A Contrastive Linguistic Study of lexical and Cultural Constraints Met in Translating Qur’an-specific cultural Items into English Showing (Riāa رِئَاءَ) in the Sūrat Nisaa

Abstract

Even though the translation of the meanings of The Holy Qur’an into English has obtained great importance in the last few years, there is a dearth of studies conducted on the topic of lexical and cultural constraints in the translation of Qur’an-specific cultural items. Hence, the current study was carried out to probe lexical and cultural constraints met by the translators of the Holy Quran in translating the Qur’an-specific cultural items into English showing off- Sūrat Nisaa in (رِئَاءَ Riāa. ِAlso, the paper aimed to answer the main question of whether lexical and cultural constraints impede or not the perspicuous rendering of the meaning of the Holy Qur’an in English, in general, and Qur’an-specific cultural items in English, in particular. The results attained from the present study answer this question: The Holy Qur’an is an untranslatable text. It can never be reproduced appropriately and properly into English, and the cultural loss of meaning in its English- rendered versions is unavoidable.

A Study of the Translatability and Untranslatability of Qur’ānic Arabic Particle laʿalla لَعَلَّ in Some Selected Surahs: A Linguistic Perspective

“…The Qurʾānic language also contains numerous such items. The Holy Qurʾān comprises Islamic cultural lexical items that do not exist in any other culture (Jalaluddin & Abdelkarim, 2023;Alhaj, 2023;Mounadil, 2023) and therefore present translation challenges. Since the language of The Holy Qurʾān is Arabic and it is rich in Islamic thought, which is unfamiliar to non-Muslims, and since other people in quest of the truth should know the Word of Allah, it must be rendered into other languages.…”