Probing the Meaning Loss in the Translation of Arabic Qur’ānic Connotative Words Into English: A Linguistic Semantic Perspective

Abstract

Linguistic, cultural, and lexical knowledge is essential when rendering the Arabic Qur’ānic connotative words into English. The existing renderings show that the translation of Arabic Qur’ānic connotative meaning is an arduous task and presents sometimes insurmountable challenges. This study endeavored to probe the meaning loss in the translation of some selected Arabic Qur’ānic connotative words into English that is from linguistic and semantic perspectives by examining three notable translations of the Noble Qur’ān which have been extracted from The Qur’ānic Arabic Corpus. They are the works of Abdelhaleem (2004), Al- Hilali and Khan (1996) and Pickthall (1930). This study, which is qualitative descriptive in nature, utilized Nord's (2005) model of text analysis in translation. Findings showed that a literal or word-for-word rendering is not the appropriate method to use when translating the Arabic Qur’ānic connotative words into English. The semantic translation method may be more useful in conveying the connotations of The Noble Qur’ān into English and in coping with this phenomenon that is commonly met in the translations of the Arabic Qur’ānic connotative words, due to causes such as the dearth of equivalence of some connotative words in English language.