Translation versus Transliteration of Religious Terms in Contemporary Islamic Discourse in Western Communities

Abstract

The significance of the present research stems from the escalating yet unnecessary conflict between Islamic culture on the one hand and western civilization on the other hand. The researchers believe much of the growing and sometimes mutual distrust between the two sides may sometimes at least stem from mere linguistic behaviour. Hence, this research aspires to examine the use of translation versus transliteration of religious Islamic terms in two different types of Islamic discourse in the western countries, viz. the site of Imam Hendi (USA) and the Da'wah Internet site of Australia, as representative of tolerant versus intolerant Islamic discourse. The main objective is to investigate the researchers' hypothesis that the use of translation versus transliteration may be fairly regarded as a linguistic marker of the type of content advocated by the two kinds of Islamic discourse. The scope of the research is confined to Islamic discourse in English, notwithstanding that the author/s in both sites in question are native speakers of English, and, hence, differences in the use of transliteration and/or translation can hardly be attributed to problems with linguistic competence. In this respect, a couple of articles and/or texts have been examined with an eye on the use of such terms as God versus Allaah/Allah, prayer versus Salaah/Salat, alms giving versus Zakaah/Zakat, mosque versus masjid and even Islam (a traditionally accepted transliteration of????? ) versus Islaam. The researchers mainly depend on semantic analysis of religious terms in translation versus transliteration and, partly, try to make use of a questionnaire to test the impact of both techniques upon the possible addressees. The research ends with a couple of recommendations suggested by the researchers in the light of their discussions of the data and findings of the research

The Islamic Terms Translation in Kalimatun Sawa’ an Indonesian Bulletin

“…The last, the research also discussing about terms translation were done done by ElShiekh and Saleh [4]. They used statistical evidence to decisive and not decisive regarding to the negative/positive effect of the use of transliteration upon the addressees.…”

Semantic Change of Hijab, Halal and Islamist from Arabic to English

“…This strategy is defined as "an operation whereby the characters of an alphabetic writing system are represented by characters from another alphabetic writing system" (Wright & Budin, 1997, p. 257). However, the use of transliteration rather than translation, especially in religious or cultural contexts, is assumed to convey an anti-other tone and may have a negative impact on non-Muslim addressees (Davies, 2003) while the use of translated Islamic terms is suggested to be a more favorable option to advocate coexistence and dialogue (El-Shiekh & Saleh, 2011). Hassan (2016) has semantically investigated translation versus transliteration strategy of Islamic terms in English in Ibrahim and Johnson-Davies' translation of An-Nawawi's Forty Hadiths in his attempt to explore how well did the authors manage to convey the meaning of Islamic terms into English in their translation.…”

“…Indeed, the volume of terms related to Islam borrowed from Arabic into English is increasing; more and more Muslims now speak English as either a second or a foreign language (Ali, 2007). Nonetheless, researchers believe that coexistence is disturbed between the Islamic culture and other western societies as a result of unnecessary conflict and mutual distrust due to mere linguistic behavior (El-Shiekh & Saleh, 2011;Baker et al, 2013;Törnberg & Törnberg, 2016). By and large, Islam and its Muslim followers have been represented in a stereotypical and negative way in western media.…”

“…Numerous studies have investigated culture-specific items and they greatly vary in nature, models and classification, but they are majorly in the context of translation of literary works from and into English (Davies, 2003;Daghoughi & Hashemian, 2016;Farahani & Mokhtari, 2016;Öztemel & Kurt, 2017;Leskovar, 2017). There are also some studies which focused on the translation of Islamic religious texts and/or Islamic religious terms (El-Shiekh & Saleh, 2011;Agliz, 2015;Alghamdi, 2016;Hassan, 2016;Yulianita et al, 2018). Others studied the representation of Muslims and Islam in the media through analysing associative patterns (Moore et al, 2008;Baker et al, 2013;Törnberg & Törnberg, 2016).…”

The Acceptability of Religious Terms Translation in the Complete Idiot’s Guide to Understanding Islam

“…Most of the previous researches use novels as the object of the study. On the other side, there are also some researchers who only focus on religious terms (Elshiekh & Saleh, 2011;Agliz, 2015;Alghamdi, 2016;Elewa, 2014;Hassan, 2016;Mehawesh & Sadeq, 2014;Sharififar, 2010). However, most of those researches only discuss the translation from Arab to English or vice versa.…”