Translating Mental Tropes Related to Active andPassive Participles: Syntactic Twisting andSemantic Exclusivity

Abstract

This paper endeavors to promote research intothe under-explored field of mental tropes byinvestigating the translatability of twointriguing types: the active participle and thepassive participle. These two types have beenexamined with special reference to the Qur’an. Aclose-reading-of-parallel-texts method has beenused. The method involves the selection ofQur’anic texts and their correspondingtranslations in conjunction with a host ofQur’an-related authentic exegeses as to providea point of departure for the ensuing discussion.Analysis mainly reveals two distinct cases of syntactic twisting and semantic exclusivity: thefirst is where the active participle is found toserve the function and give the meaning of thepassive participle, and the second is where thepassive participle is found to serve thefunction and give the meaning of the activeparticiple. The study also shows thattranslation incommensurabilities (Kuhn, 1962) atthe syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, rhetorical,and exegetical levels are very much in evidencein the selected translations, which may precludea translation from assuming a trusted authority.Finally, the study proposes a tenabletranslation procedure to deal with Qur’anicmental tropes, viz. the communicative-exegetictranslation. Keywords: translatability, mental tropes, active andpassive participles, syntactic twisting,semantic exclusivity, communicative-exegetictranslation.