Narratives of (un)translatability: the recurrent case of the Qur’an

ABSTRACT

Many narratives circulate around the translation of the Qur’an, but perhaps the most tenacious one concerns the sacred book’s (un)translatability. While certainly relevant to discussions of Qur’an translation, the issue of (un)translatability seems, however, to be paid a disproportionate and unwarranted level of attention in mainstream translation studies literature on the subject. This dynamic is at least partly informed by entrenched Eurocentric narratives about translation and the text of the Qur’an, especially as it relates to the Bible. This article explores Qur’anic (un)translatability by presenting the results of a thematic meta-analysis of articles on Qur’an translation that appear in two major translation studies bibliographic databases (BITRA and TSB). It lays out some recurrent themes in Qur’an translation scholarship and highlights the stubborn presence of the issue of (un)translatability. The article also identifies the Eurocentric narratives and value judgements that may well underlie and explain some of this presence.

KEYWORDS:

• Eurocentrism
• narrative
• untranslatability
• Qur’an
• Bible

Introduction

One of the most potent and seemingly unwavering narratives surrounding the Qur’an is that of its (un)translatability. A thematic analysis of 54 English-language articles on Qur’an translation appearing in early 2020 in the Bibliography of Interpreting and Translation (BITRA) and/or the Translation Studies Bibliography (TSB) suggests that Qur’anic (un)translatability is paid a particularly significant attention in mainstream translation studies literature. A survey of the titles and subheadings of these publications attests to this, as several contain some variant of the term (e.g. Al-Amri 2007; Al-Kharabsheh 2008, 23; Dror 2015; Kidwai 1987). For example, Abdul-Latif Tibawi (1962), in one of the earliest publications in the corpus, asks in his article’s title “Is the Qur’an translatable?”, and writing in 2018, Mohammed Al-Abdullatif equally investigates “The Qur’an translatability: the translation’s invisibility”.

While the analyzed articles assert, on multiple occasions, the long history and abundance of Qur’an translations into a multitude of languages (e.g. Abdelwali 2007, 1; Al-Amri 2007, 159; Rahbar 1963, 60), this assertion is coupled with a recognition of a paradox; the “seeming paradox (…) [of] a text said to be untranslatable, yet reproduced in literally scores of translated English editions (…)” (Moore, Suedfeld, and McLellan 2014, 121). This is what Catherine Moir (2009, 36) calls “the great paradox of the ‘untranslatable’ religious text, such as the Qur’an – [by which] the untranslatable is actually frequently, copiously translated”. Calling attention to the same “rather paradoxical” situation, Hamada Hassanein (2017, 138) similarly notes that “[Q]ur’anic translators themselves admit that the Qur’an is more untranslatable than translatable, but they translate it nevertheless” (see also Abdul-Raof 1999, 41; Al-Ali 2004, 134).

A word on methodology

The articles analyzed here are part of a larger corpus (2,550 publications) on “Arabic translation” that was extracted from the abovementioned databases for a larger study (see Othman forthcoming). The initial corpus included all entries on Arabic translation that were catalogued in BITRA and TSB as of February/March 2020. The BITRA sample, which was collected using the database’s open-access website, included entries that had “Arab*” in the “Subject” field. The TSB sample was compiled through a paid subscription to the database’s portal and included entries that had “Arab*” in one of the following fields: “Title”, “Source language(s)”, “Target language(s)”, “Pivot language” or “Subject – Title(s)”.

The corpus was then narrowed down to all English-language articles on Qur’an translation, bringing the total to 60 articles in BITRA and 13 in TSB. This initial aggregate of 73 was further reduced to a final total of 54, since ten of the TSB articles already appeared in the BITRA set, and some articles had to be excluded from the final analysis due to inaccessibility (six) or mis-categorisation in the databases (three). All publications meeting the selection criteria were included, regardless of the background of the scholars who produced them or that of the translators whose works they discuss.

Within this framework, Qur’an translation is conceived of as an integral part of discourse on Arabic translation. As a result, I am operating in this study, at least to a certain extent, within the specific realm of Arabo-Islam. This strand of Islam is particularly relevant to the issue of Eurocentrism given its role as a “constituting ‘Other’ for Europe” (Wintle 2016, 61) and the long history of contact (and conflict) between the Muslim Middle East and the West. In the realm of translation phenomena, this tension with Arabo-Islam often plays out in the area of Qur’an translation; a dynamic that can be observed within the initial “Arabic translation” corpus, where 73 out of 108 English-language articles on religious translation, for instance, featured the Qur’an as a keyword.

By using the “English language” and “article format” criteria to delimit the analyzed publications, I am suggesting to explore Eurocentrism and how it may manifest in the discourse on Qur’anic (un)translatability within those realms of translation studies that are either presented as, or have, for structural reasons, become, the de facto mainstream, international constituents of the field. That is because English, for better or worse, has become the dominant language in much academic writing, that there is more worldwide pressure to publish in it and that, due to its overall global dominance, it is more likely to allow international audiences access to a publication’s content (see e.g. Pérez-Llantada, Plo, and Ferguson 2011 and references therein). As to the article format, while not the only available channel for reporting research findings, the importance of articles is fast growing in the humanities, including translation studies (Franco Aixelá and Rovira-Esteva 2015, 270; Rovira-Esteva and Orero 2011, 248).

Accordingly, my contention is that an English-language article that is indexed on one or two major translation studies databases has the potential for the most international impact and visibility and therefore a greater chance to have a representative role and exert subsequent influence in the discipline. This is a useful way to organize and demarcate the corpus, since I am partly examining the centre-periphery dynamics within the analyzed scholarship and, by extension, translation studies in general. That being said, a survey of the titles and abstracts of Arabic- and French-language publications on religion in the original Arabic sample (a mere total of 31 entries) shows no significant deviance from the patterns identified in the corpus used in this study. Topics like Qur’an translation, its connections to the translation of the Bible, its early translation history into European languages and the linguistic aspects of such translations dominate.

In terms of methodology, I broadly followed the thematic analysis approach outlined in Braun and Clarke (2006; 2013; Clarke 2017; 2018). I sought to be inductive in my analysis, with induction in this case implying that the research questions “act[ed] as a prism” through which to examine the data, but “[did] not provide the researcher with a set of pre-defined topics to look for” (Saldanha and O’Brien 2013, 189). The coding was conducted in two main sweeps and I predominantly moved from the most recent publication to the oldest. All the data was coded at the semantic level (Braun and Clarke 2006, 83–84) and higher-order, meta-level labels were added gradually. The codes were then grouped into clusters, structured into a storyline, in the manner expounded by Braun and Clarke above, and instances of codes in the data related to the issue of (un)translatability were collated and embedded within the final findings reported below.

Lastly, with regard to the concept of Eurocentrism, it is perhaps unsurprising that much debate surrounds it due to its complexity and overall lack of sufficient definition (see e.g. Amin 2009, 179; Robinson 2016, 52, 64). The same may be said of terms like “Western”, “non-Western” and sometimes even “Islamic” (on the latter, see Sayyid 2006; 2014). Delving into the intricacies of debates around these terms is beyond the scope of this publication and is something I tackle elsewhere (Othman forthcoming). For the purposes of the present article, however, I use a condensed understanding of Eurocentrism and define it as an ideology that distorts our interpretations of the social world (Amin 2009, 166; Delabastita 2013, 30) and causes more attention, legitimacy and visibility to be accorded to languages, data, analytical categories, models and tools emanating from Europe and, more recently, the West. This leads to a lopsidedness of knowledge structures and disciplines, including translation studies.

I, furthermore, continue to use the terms “Western” and “non-Western” in this article, despite the ample critique that they have received. I do this with full acknowledgement of the limitations of such dichotomies and the recognition that there are no great alternatives for describing the phenomena produced by old categories such as Europe, West vs East/non-West. Nevertheless, my contention is that the persistence of Eurocentric tendencies reveals the continued relevance of these dichotomies and that they are ineradicable from our consciousness to this day. Other terminological pairs, such as “global north” vs “global south” and “global centres” vs “global peripheries”, simply do not fully capture the entrenchment of the issue and its long history (see more in Othman forthcoming).

How Qur’anic (un)translatability is conceptualized in the corpus

Despite much overlap, the analyzed works tend to emphasize one of two aspects of the concept of (un)translatability as it relates to the Qur’an. Daud Rahbar’s (1963, 60) remark on the subject presents this well: when the Qur’an is described as untranslatable, he notes, this either means that “[i]t is sin to translate the Qur’ān” or that “[n]o translation of the Qur’ān will faithfully represent the original”. Although these two significations may intersect, the first one mainly equates untranslatability with impermissibility, while the second focusses on the ultimate impossibility of (fully and adequately) translating the sacred book.

The latter dominates in the publications, as the discussion of (un)translatability is frequently geared towards equivalence or, more commonly, a lack thereof. Iman El-Zeiny (2011, 248), for instance, maintains that “one of the most outstanding linguistic unique features, which tend to make the Qur’an ‘untranslatable’, is its extensive usage of figurative language”. Likewise, Mohammad Abdelwali (2007, 4) remarks that Qur’anic terms for which “lexical substitutes are unavailable in the target language” are patently untranslatable. Other examples of this conception of (un)translatability can be found in Al-Kharabsheh (2008, 23), Dazdarević, Fijuljanin, and Rastić (2016 5), Farghal and Al-Masri (2000, 27) and Ghazala (2008, 146).

However, the (un)translatability debate can also be centered on the question of religious permissibility, especially as it relates to the doctrine of Qur’anic inimitability, or iʿjaz. Underscoring links between language, style and sanctity, Al-Abdullatif argues that the “term iʿjaz (inimitability) is generally considered to be the solid proof [of] the Qur’an’s sanctity” (2018, 209; see also Hassan 2016, 118). While mostly embedded in religious creed and historiography, the inimitability debate also typically carries the undertones of equivalence in the sense that no human effort is capable of producing a match to the Qur’an, whether in its original language or any other. This testifies to the overlap between the two uses of the term “untranslatable”, even when the chief focus in each set of occurrences in the publications is usually preponderant towards one of them. Accordingly, Omar Sheikh Al-Shabab (2001, 58), for example, highlights that the opposition of Islamic scholars to the translation of the Qur’an was sometimes based on linguistic and rhetorical grounds, as well as theological grounds.

That being so, it is not always easy to know what dimensions of the Qur’an are encompassed in its inimitable character. That is because Islamic scholars have defined iʿjaz in a variety of ways, some chiefly localizing this inimitability in the sacred book’s literary style and composition, and others extending it to its legislative genius or the historical events it describes, among other things – therefore focusing on meanings or contents rather than just language (Tibawi 1962, 11).¹ Hence, we find in the analyzed publications more specific expressions such as “linguistic inimitability” (Abdelghani 2010, 147; Abdul-Raof 2005, 122) and “stylistic inimitability” (Al-Azzam 2009, 74). We equally find the notions of “partial translatability” (Abdul-Raof 1999, 46; Al-Shurafa 1995, 53; Farghal and Bloushi 2012, 1) and “translation resistance” (Al-Kharabsheh and Al-Azzam 2008, 2). Moir (2009), discussed further below, is also one instance where other concepts are proposed to address the shortcomings of the framework of (un)translatability, notably “translation resonance”.

Impermissibility of Qur’an translation

It seems, therefore, difficult to separate completely the two main facets of Qur’anic untranslatability as it is understood in the corpus as a whole; that is, the impossibility of equivalence and the impermissibility of translation. Even in those instances where equivalence is given prominence, impermissibility is rarely, if ever, fully absent, and it is primarily the latter that appears to underpin some of the tensions around the subject of Qur’anic (un)translatability. While the overall tendency in the articles is to address the issue with at least some nuance and multidimensionality, some cases depart from the norm. Opting out of descriptors typically used in Islamic scholarship, such as “(im)permissible” or “(un)lawful”, Jacobus Naudé (2006, 454), for example, affirms, on multiple occasions, that “the translation of the Qur’ān by any mere human into another language would be blasphemous, because the text of the Qur’ān is considered by Muslims to be a miracle (mu‘jiza)” (the first emphasis is mine).

Nevertheless, the notion of a total impermissibility of Qur’an translation, while often cited in the analyzed publications (and beyond), is actually hard to pin down to specific, authoritative Islamic scholars and theologians. Instead, it tends to be mentioned with no reference to particular authors and with no direct quotations. This is especially the case when classical scholarship is generically referenced. However, in that scholarship, opinions varied about the functions of such translations and how they should be carried out (see e.g. Tibawi 1962, 9) and translation seems to have never been categorically banned. The transgressive nature of Qur’an translation appears to be indirectly inferred (e.g. when the Arabic nature of the Qur’an is extoled and stressed by an author) or associated with particularly charged events, notably in contemporary history, where the banning of certain translations appears more informed by political motives than theological ones (see Tibawi 1962, footnote 32; also beyond the analyzed corpus, Mustapha 2008, 226–227). A question can then be raised about where this excessive preoccupation with and frequent reference to the impermissibility of Qur’an translation stems from.

Some recurring themes in the analyzed scholarship

This can be elucidated by examining the place that the issue of (un)translatability occupies in the corpus in light of other recurring themes. The thematic meta-analysis, which sought primarily to identify what was being talked about in the articles and how this was being done, shows a strong tendency in the publications to frame Qur’an translation using biblical touchstones. That is, throughout most of the articles in the corpus, the Bible – and its translation – was amply referenced; from casual, one-off mentions (e.g. Afrouz 2019; Dazdarević, Fijuljanin, and Rastić 2016), to full-fledged comparisons with the Qur’an (e.g. Diab 2010; Moir 2009).

For example, when approaching the history of Qur’an translation, the articles recurrently referred to the role that Christian missionaries played in the translation of the sacred book and in setting the tone for subsequent efforts to translate it.² In the corpus, Christians are, therefore, described as “pioneers in this direction” (Khan 1986, 104) with reference to English and other European-language translations of the sacred book, and as “the most active non-Muslim translators of the Qur’an” (Naudé 2006, 451; see also Kidwai 1987, 70). In most cases, this missionary translational history is couched in terms depicting a Christian hostility and a Muslim reactivity. Abdur Rahim Kidwai (1987, 66), for instance, speaks of “an offensive against a politically humiliated Islam in the eighteenth century” launched by Christian missionaries, in an effort to produce a “usually erroneous and confounding – European version of the Muslim scripture”. Likewise, Khaleel Mohammed (2005, 59) explains that early English translations of the Qur’an were undertaken “by Christians who sought to debunk Islam and aid in the conversion of Muslims to Christianity”. Earlier translations, performed in the twelfth century under the auspices of the church, are also described as seeking “an intellectual battle against Islam” (Pym 1994, 57).

Significantly, Muslim translational efforts of the Qur’an are presented mainly as a reactive and defensive process against the misinformation and misunderstanding that characterized translations by non-Muslims. Mainly driven by the desire “to combat the missionary effort” (Kidwai 1987, 66), Qur’an translations by Muslims sought to “address the inadequacies of [the Qur’an’s] (…) translations by non-Muslims” (Al-Abdullatif 2018, 208), “refute the allegations levelled by the Christian missionaries against Islam in general and the Qur’an in particular” (Kidwai 1987, 67; see also Naudé 2006, 455) and respond to extant English translations, which “were directed against Islam and were often used as such by Christian missionaries” (Greifenhagen 1992, 281).

Remarkably, only two articles mention the Qur’an’s translation history with reference to non-Western traditions. Placing Qur’an translation within a broader tradition of translation in the Islamic world, as well as a long history of intra-Islamic Qur’anic translations, Rahbar (1963, 60) notes that the first translation of the Qur’an was “made into Persian by a Muslim in the middle of the eighteenth century”. He further highlights the older history of interlinear translations of the sacred book into Persian and Turkish. Similarly, Eleazar Birnbaum (1990, 113), whose focus on intra-Islamic translations of the Qur’an stands out from the rest of the corpus, notes that the earliest known written interlinear translations of the Qur’an date back to the tenth century CE, and that numerous early Persian and Turkish full or partial translations are preserved in various libraries around the world, including Turkey, Iran, Germany, the United Kingdom and Russia. Evoking an untapped wealth of information, Birnbaum underscores the shortage of scholarly and librarian work on these historical resources, which naturally impedes access to translational knowledge about them (114, 116).

Overall, the prevalent narrative in the corpus about Qur’an translation history and its development paints it as a locus of tension – an idea that runs throughout the publications. This global narrative also tends to give center stage to Christian missionaries and the active role of Western translators in the sacred book’s translation efforts and generally assigns a reactive role to Muslim translators, as noted earlier. The publications also pay little attention to intra-Islamic translations. In a way, this corpus’s focus on the history of English, Latin and other European-language translations already pushes Western translators’ leading role to the forefront. This role is further accentuated when one considers the long legacy of some of their translations, as it is discussed in the articles. Examining the legacy of Ludovico Marracci’s Latin translation of the Qur’an (published 1698), Al-Shabab (2001, 66), for example, argues that the translation established a “European subculture” of Qur’anic translation, which constituted a move towards the appropriation of the sacred book, and was responsible for “a deeply-rooted misunderstanding of Islam and the Arabs in the West”.

There is, furthermore, a pronounced pattern of biblical referentiality throughout the analyzed scholarship. So while only four articles in the corpus have both the Qur’an and the Bible appearing in their lists of keywords (Al-Abdullatif 2018; Al-Shabab 2001; Diab 2010; Moir 2009), the majority evoke the latter in one form or another. These references to the discursive world of the Bible can be categorized as belonging predominantly to one of two frameworks: Qur’anic and biblical commonality or the divergence of the two. In the former, the occurrence (i.e. reference to the Bible) emphasizes the two sacred books’ membership of a common group of some kind. Frequently, the two frameworks may be present in a single occurrence (and/or article), but one is generally put into greater relief than the other. For example, an article may explicate (or imply), on one occasion, that both sacred books belong to the category of religious and/or literary texts, as shown in the examples to follow, but later underline how they differ in terms of theology or “proper” translational practice, among other things.

In the corpus, the “commonality framework” is cast in four main ways. To start with, there are the cursory mentions of the Bible found, for example, in Ali (1996, 28), Ghazala (2008, 133), Hannouna (2010, 96) and Naudé (2006, 433). In these instances, the Bible is evoked in passing, along with the Qur’an and sometimes other texts, as belonging to an overarching category that calls for a specific type of intellectual engagement or translational treatment. Exploring the translation of euphemistic expressions in Qur’an translations, Salah Salim Ali (1996, 28), for one, discusses the commonalities of euphemism in the languages of “ancient texts viz the Qur’an, the Bible, Greek Mythology”. Similarly, Hasan Ghazala (2008, 133) speaks of “[t]he Holy Quran, the Bible and poetry in particular” as text types “whose language exhibits examples of understandable and acceptable un-naturalness and fluency of reading”.³ More succinctly, Yasmin Hannouna (2010, 96) casts the Qur’an as “a Holy and unique book like the Bible”, while Naudé (2006, 433) points out that “sacred texts like the Qur’an and the Bible” call to mind some shared core issues with regard to their translation activity, including translatability and liturgical uses.

Then there are the references that highlight specific correspondences between the two sacred books. These instances chiefly underscore shared itineraries and common debates that revolved around both the Qur’an and the Bible. They also tend to be matter of fact, presenting the two sacred books in parallel rather than through a comparative lens. With a view to illustrating the importance of cultural awareness in translation, Saudi Sadiq (2008, 49), for instance, uses examples of the cultural density found in both the Qur’an and the Bible and mentions references to daily life in the Bible and the histories of prophets in the Qur’an as cases in point. Hassanein (2017, 139), addressing scriptural (un)translatability, notes that the debate around the subject “has circulated not only around the Qur’an but also around the Bible”. Another example is Ghazala (2008, 138), who makes a case that dynamic equivalence, proposed by Nida and Taber (1969), is fit neither for the Qur’an nor for the Bible. Following Stamps’s (1993) line of argumentation, he notes, for instance, that when used in biblical translation, dynamic equivalence eliminates the author – in this example, Saint Paul – and his historical referentiality, as well as the reader, who no longer has sufficient space to form his or her own reading of the text (Ghazala 2008, 138; see another example in Hassen 2011, 223).

The third group of biblical references tend to stem, more obviously, from the embeddedness of shared elements with Christianity and Judaism within Islam’s theology, narratives and intellectual history. These references can perhaps be viewed as less avoidable than those in the previous groups, and this is most apparent in some of the theological debates presented in Tibawi (1962, 6–8). In his attempt to answer the question “Is the Qur’an translatable?”, Tibawi looks at early Islamic history, theology and jurisprudence. Being mainly concerned with the permissibility of the feat, Tibawi highlights early jurists’ opinions on Qur’an translation and their reliance on a “permissibility by analogy” reasoning to allow the translation of the Qur’an. The analogy in this case is drawn from the events surrounding Ayah 93 in Surah 3,⁴ which are taken to establish the lawfulness of translating the Torah, a fellow Abrahamic sacred book, from Hebrew to Arabic.

Other analogous occurrences include the one in Hassanein (2017), who opens his discussion of lexical-semantic opposition in Qur’anic Arabic by presenting the Qur’an and referencing its own proclamation of being part of the same “spiritual tradition of the Torah and Gospel transmitted by Moses and Jesus” (Cleary 1994, viii as quoted in Hassanein 2017, 138). This is equally underlined in Diab’s (2010, 73) examination of Bible translation in the Middle East and the “attitude of Islam towards Jewish and Christian scriptures”.

So the Tawrāt (Torah) of Moses, the Zabur (Psalms) of David, and the Injīl (Gospel) of Isa [i.e. Jesus] were inspired in the same way as the Qur’ān (…) and should present to humanity the same message of God (…), notes Issa Diab.

Discussing culture-specific elements in Surah Maryam (chapter 19 in the Qur’an), Al-Abdullatif (2018, 218), in a similar vein, calls attention to the fact that the Surah is “about a person revered equally in Judaism, Christianity and Islam”.⁵ Continuing with Ayahs from the same Surah, he further cites the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, part of the New Testament Apocrypha, to highlight narrative similarities between English translations of the Qur’an and the biblical text.

Another example from this group is the biblical reference made in Naudé (2006, 458), where he discusses N. J. Dawood’s English translation of the Qur’an and the changes the translator effected to the order of the Surahs. Naudé writes, “The sequence begins with the more biblical and poetic revelations and ends with the much longer, and often more topical sūrahs”. While depicting the Qur’an and the Bible within a framework of commonality, this reference particularly ascribes a derivative nature to the Qur’an vis-à-vis the Bible. This is even more evident in Mohammed’s (2005, 65) expression, “[t]he Qur’anic retelling and reliance on the Biblical narrative (…)”.

The final group within the “commonality framework” covers references to correspondences between translator practice in both Qur’an and Bible translation. Rim Hassen (2011, 228) posits that the two female translators of the Qur’an – Laleh Bakhtiar and Camille Adams Helminski – who used gender-sensitive language in their translations, seem to be aware of debates around patriarchal language in the Bible, and that their techniques share similarities with its feminist translators. A last example is the one found in Greifenhagen (1992, 283) referencing Rashad Khalifa’s translation of the Qur’an, which carried the subtitle “Authorized English Version”, thus mimicking “the titles of English translations of the Bible”.

In the case of the “divergence framework” between the Qur’an and the Bible in the articles, biblical references in this cluster usually shed light on varying degrees of rupture between the two religious traditions and their sacred books, and generally emphasize the need to preserve the unique character of each, especially the Qur’an’s vis-à-vis the Bible. Staying on the question of translator practice, the Qur’anic-biblical divergence framework can be identified across biblical references found, for example, in Al-Khawalda (2004, 218), Ayoub (1986, 38), Dazdarević, Fijuljanin, and Rastić (2016, 7), Hassan (2016, 126), Mohammed (2005, 66), Sadiq (2008, 43) and Sideeg (2015, 221–222). These occurrences imply that a translation decision that assimilates the language of the Qur’an to that of the Bible is undesirable or reproachable. Mahmoud Ayoub (1986, 38), for one, maintains that the Qur’an “must not be translated into the archaic language of the King James Bible, as Pickthall has done in his translation (…)”, while Mohammed (2005, 66) notes that translations whose titles imply a multitude of versions of the Qur’an, such as The Qur’an: The First American Version by Thomas b. Irving, put the sacred book “into a paradigm of the various versions of the Bible – an idea not welcome to Muslim scholars who feel that multiple versions lead to corruption of the text”.

Similarly, Abdunasir Sideeg (2015, 221–222) contests that invoking gender issues with reference to God in Qur’anic translation, as Helminski (2000) does in hers, is in alignment with feminist practices in the tradition of Bible translation and is in essence incommensurate with the Islamic conception of God. Another example is found in Al-Abdullatif (2018, 216), who remarks that modern Bible translations “contrary to their Muslim counterparts, place more emphasis on [the] understanding of the Bible into other cultures”. Other references to the Bible in the corpus underscore differences and nuances of meaning for comparable concepts that exist in both traditions, as well as their implications for translation, such as the concept of God or Allah (Hassan 2016, 127), “almsgiving” or “sinner” (Farghal and Al-Masri 2000, 32, 36).

More fundamental divergences are equally evoked on multiple occasions in the publications. These include the distinction Fischer and Abedi (1990, 126) make between “the metaphoric differentials of stress” in the words biblos, torah and Qur’an, whereby the last one, as opposed to the first two, puts particular emphasis on the oral. On the issue of (un)translatability, Al-Kharabsheh and Al-Azzam (2008, 2) assert that “the Qur’an, unlike the Bible in Christian understanding, can only exist in its original language”. Relatedly, Naudé, evoking a prototypical “Muslim”, declares that the Qur’an does not “occupy the same position in Islām as the Bible does in (Protestant) Christianity. The Muslim prefers to learn the Qur’an by heart (…)” (2006, 451; for a similar view on the position of the Qur’an, see Pickthall 1931, 423 and, beyond the corpus, Shahzad 2010, 57). Another core difference that Rahbar (1963, 61) raises is the concept of a “standard translated version”, which exists in the case of the Bible but not that of the Qur’an.

A final example of this is Moir (2009), which is perhaps the most comparatively inclined piece in the corpus, providing a number of occurrences of biblical references that fall under the “divergence framework” category. Some of the differences she highlights between the two religious traditions and their relation to scriptural translation concern the relative importance of the oral vs spoken word, the weight accorded to proselytism, the place translation occupies in the tradition’s history and development and the typical modes of transmission of religious texts. Moir also remarks that the important role of translation in its history “can be seen today in the very fact that the Bible is anchored into Western translation theory, whereas Qur’an translation remains on the margins of the translation studies discipline” (2009, 30).

All in all, what these references show is a strong tendency in a large portion of the analyzed publications to discuss Qur’an translation by identifying where it sits on various planes vis-à-vis Bible translation. In essence, barring a few instances (mentioned above), the analysis indicates that the Bible acts as the main interlocutor of the Qur’an, especially in its Christian forms. Although most of the references avoid openly evaluative comparisons or suggestions of biblical precedence – as opposed to mere “concurrence” with the Bible, to borrow Jeffrey Einboden’s (2009, 53) expression – the Bible regularly serves to contextualize and frame the Qur’an. This, of course, excludes the few occurrences that explicitly confer a derivative nature upon the Qur’an in relation to the Bible (viz Mohammed 2005, 65; Naudé 2006, 458), possibly playing to some recurrent narratives about Islam being “a Christian heresy” (Pym 1994, 58; see more below).⁶ And despite the reconciliatory tone of some of the references within the commonality framework, tension remains by and large present in the analyzed occurrences as they grapple with the inevitable intersections between the two sacred traditions, on the one hand, and the unique, individual character of each, on the other.

This same tension could be equally observed in other patterns throughout the analyzed publications, even if it comes in less obvious forms. For instance, one notices a pronounced focus on linguistic matters in more than half of the corpus articles. The scope of those linguistically inclined pieces extends from the translation of “pragmalinguistic forms” (Abdul-Raof 2005), “autoantonymy” (Al-Kharabsheh 2008) and “sound and sight effect” (Shakir 2000) in the Qur’an, to “ellipted structures” (Ali 1992), “puns” (Al-Aqad et al. 2018) and “structural pause” (Al-Azzam 2009).

What is perhaps most significant here is that this scholarship frequently falls into a Translation Quality Assessment (TQA) dynamic, which is an “overtly evaluative” line of research (Williams and Chesterman 2002, 21). Recurrently assessing translated text, the articles highlight shortcomings (e.g. Al-Azzam 2009, 74), recommend (or prescribe) strategies (e.g. Abdelghani 2010, 121) and/or provide alternative solutions (e.g. Ali 1992, 488); they also regularly point out “challenges”, “problems” and “errors” – all common practices in TQA research (Martínez Melis and Hurtado Albir 2001, 273, 275). The translation assessment undertaken in much of the corpus seems to be geared to serve a primarily pedagogical function – helping readers choose translations and suggesting enhanced translation choices and strategies to future translators. Although there is palpable reliance upon and/or reference to Bible translation and scholarship – of which Eugene Nida’s work is perhaps the main example (e.g. Abdul-Raof 2005, 115; Al-Abdullatif 2018, 216; Ghazala 2008; Sadiq 2008) – that scholarship seems to be approached selectively within the corpus. This is partly attested by the different framings expounded above.

All of this could suggest that while the Bible is strongly present, the linguistic bent of a good share of the publications and the TQA associated with it – which is an approach generally oriented towards the source text (see Williams and Chesterman 2002, 21) – seem to represent a degree of assertion and reclaiming of the Qur’an’s unique, separate character. This could be seen in the selective and almost instrumentalist use of biblical theories and their relative recasting to function within Qur’anic parameters. Thus, despite the overall Eurocentric and limiting medium of mainstream scholarly discourse and theories on (religious) translation, the evaluation criteria and procedures offered by TQA are used in a way that suggests an effort to pull the Qur’an back to a grounding more in line with its own frames of reference and regimes of epistemic authority. And although this dynamic could constitute some countertendency to the Bible’s ubiquity in the corpus, it indicates, yet again, that significant tension exists around Qur’an translation and that it is, nonetheless, frequently conceptualized in the articles in light of biblical translation.

Eurocentric narratives and Qur’anic (un)translatability

This pattern of casting Qur’an translation in relation to the Bible’s is perhaps most potent in the regularly evoked subject of Qur’anic (un)translatability. When considered in view of the recurrent biblical framing discussed above, the publications’ focus on (un)translatability raises the issue of what I label as a benchmarking dynamic. Being an openly comparative piece, specifically contrasting the Qur’an’s (un)translatability with that of the Bible, Moir (2009) can help bring this dynamic to the forefront. Moir’s article covers a variety of interrelated topics, but the main argument she makes concerns the concept of “translation resonance”, which she defines as the “the degree to which a religious text is accepted as authentic and authoritative in translation” (29). As previously mentioned, Moir proposes the concept as a better way of approaching the translation of sacred texts than the conventional conceptions of (un)translatability, and as a means of understanding the relationship between translation and religious change.

Moir presents a multifaceted line of reasoning to explain the differences of translational practice in the cases of both the Qur’an and the Bible. She moves from doctrinal differences “found within the Bible and the Quran themselves” (2009, 30), to “traditional modes of transmission of epistemic authority” (32), passing through the history of printing, the place of proselytism, the existence of a textus receptus and the secularization of Christianity. According to Moir, translation is central in the biblical text, as attested by the story of the Tower of Babel, while it is not in the Qur’an (30); the written word is key in the traditional Christian universe of authority, where it is not in the Islamic one (32); proselytism is central to Christianity, less so to Islam (33); the Bible has translations that function as a textus receptus,⁷ the Qur’an does not (36); Bible translation affected major changes in Christianity, notably secularization, while a comparable impact for Qur’an translation is yet to be seen within Islam (40–42). In essence, where there is translation for the Bible, there is no real or proper translation for the Qur’an. One illustration of this is Moir’s discussion of the authority of writing in the biblical world, where she opines that

[T]he culture of the authority of writing can therefore be seen to be at the heart of the reciprocal Judeo-Christian relationship with translation, and is thus also at the source of the Bible’s translational resonance. On the contrary, “there is no textus receptus, a generally accepted form of the Quran” in any language other than Arabic (…). (Moir 2009, 32–33)

The ideas that Moir propounds are not uniquely hers; some of them appear elsewhere in the corpus, albeit more subtly (see previous sections). What is of relevance here, however, is the densely comparative structure of her piece, which depicts pairs of two opposed realities, recurrently starting from a place of presence in the Bible and concluding with an absence from the Qur’an. On the one hand, there is abundance; on the other, lack abounds. One text is “‘naturally’ translatable” (Moir 2009, 39), while the other shows an “inherent lack of translational resonance” (41, 36).

Likewise, Moir explains that in the case of the Bible, the receiving culture “absorbs the religious ideas of the carrier culture into its own language”, creating an organic mix of source and indigenous cultures; in that of the Qur’an, the source culture “implant[s] itself” and the “target culture ‘accepts’ the imposition of the source culture’s language” (Moir 2009, 34, my emphasis). Similarly, with the former, “translation will be accepted as authentic and authoritative”, which is understood as an inherently good thing, while with the latter, “resistance or rejection of translation” is the end result.

Content aside, what the above examples do is constantly cast the Qur’an within a framework of lack and/or inflexibility. Their particularly comparative format and value-laden language stand as a useful, and somewhat blunt, illustration of the potentially problematic implications of the corpus’s overall excessive focus on (un)translatability and constant evocation of the Bible. To a certain extent, this could be attributed to the very nature of the comparative exercise that Moir undertakes in her article, which perhaps inevitably leads to higher degrees of reductionism. By contrast, Tibawi’s (1962) non-comparative presentation, for instance, which equally centers around the question of (un)translatability, is strongly immersed in a (classical) Islamic frame of reference and, perhaps inescapably, offers a more nuanced depiction of the matter, presenting how Islamic scholars grappled with the subject and provided varying opinions. Indeed, like Tibawi’s, most articles in the corpus evoke (un)translatability in ways that are less overtly evaluative than the one found in Moir (2009). Yet, the differences of approach among individual articles do not preclude the issues arising from the corpus’s undue collective attention to the subject.

In other words, the preponderant focus on the question of (un)translatability seems to put the Islamic sacred book in a disadvantaged position from the get-go. That is because when translation is held to be the ideal outcome, and the result, in the case of the Qur’an, is “no translation”, then presumably that is a failed instance of communication. Not only does this mean that different conceptions of translation are unaccounted for (e.g. interlinear translation), but also that forms of communication other than translation proper are overlooked or downplayed. The conclusion thereby becomes that Islam “implants” and “imposes”, as seen in Moir’s argumentation, rather than negotiates. These ideas interlink with some recurrent Eurocentric narratives about Islam, namely that Muslims constitute an inflexible and especially “threatening culture – the most homogenized and the most troubling of the Rest” (Abu-Lughod 2013, 15). This narrative, like many others, can be traced back to a specific portrayal of the role Islam has played in world history; namely, the assumption that Islam spread across the world exclusively through military expansion and dominance – “an assumption that established the essentially violent character of the Muslim enterprise (past and present)” (Sayyid 2013, 130). Accordingly, the common Eurocentric depiction of religion as a source of violence is held as particularly accurate of Islam – and its sacred book – whereby the Muslim world is viewed as especially resistant to accept secularism, enter modernity and relinquish its oppressive and violent roots (Asad 2003, 9–10; see also Hazbun 2013, 218; Sayyid 2013, 130, 137, 139).

All things considered, what is true of the context at hand is that the preponderant biblical framing acts like a (Eurocentric) benchmarking apparatus, whereby one of the two compared elements functions as the indicator, the yardstick against which the other is to be measured. Arguably, the intersection between this benchmarking dynamic and the issue of (un)translatability is particularly discernible in the notion of standardization. Just like in Moir (2009, 36), who underscores the “[obvious] potential problems” of not having a textus receptus, the concept of a standard translated version is highlighted by Rahbar (1963, 61) as one of the major differences between biblical and Qur’anic translation – the other being that Arabic, unlike Latin and, until recently, Hebrew, remains a vigorous living language. In fact, Rahbar goes on to argue that “the classic Muslim doctrine of the ‘untranslatability’ of the Qur’ān is perhaps one of the reasons for the absence of a desire among Muslims to standardise translation”. This attention to the notion of a standard translation is also given in Moore, Suedfeld, and McLellan (2014, 121) and Naudé (2006, 431, 458).

The connection that I am making between the over-focus on Qur’anic (un)translatability, on the one hand, and Eurocentric narratives about the Qur’an and Islam, on the other, can be justified not only by the way the articles present Qur’an translation history and their sustained reference to biblical translation, but also by the macro-narratives underlying several of the issues they raise. For instance, in addition to the narratives I have already highlighted above, we see that discourses and counter-discourses underpinning global public debates conspicuously crop up across the corpus. The usual points of contention when “Islam and the West” meet appear: jihad (Einboden 2009, 49–50; Moore, Suedfeld, and McLellan 2014, 134), hijab (Elmarsafy and Bentaïbi 2015, 210), (misunderstanding of) women’s place in Islam (Farghal and Al-Masri 2000, 37; Greifenhagen 1992, 284; Hassen 2011, 213, 228; Muharam 2003, 297, 303), political events (e.g. Iranian revolution; September 11) (Al-Abdullatif 2018, 208; Fischer and Abedi 1990, 114; Mohammed 2005, 63), the awaited “Islamic reformation” (Mohammed 2005, 70; Moir 2009, 42), and the enduring “misunderstanding” of Islam in the West (Al-Shabab 2001, 66; Fischer and Abedi 1990, 125).

These examples bring to the fore tensions lying in the background of the analyzed scholarship on Qur’an translation and illustrate how grounded this scholarship is within its broader real-world contexts. More importantly, however, what I am arguing here is that many of the listed examples above evoke Eurocentric accounts and value judgements about (Arabo-)Islamic culture(s), such as its supposed backwardness and unique oppressive nature. In part, these accounts can be observed through the reference to recurrently contentious subjects in Western contexts, whether it is hijab, women’s place in Islam or the Iranian Revolution. Eurocentric narratives and subjectivities can, therefore, be witnessed throughout the publications. Sometimes these are asserted and reinforced; at other times, as noted above, they may be contested, reconfigured and ultimately, in some sense, resisted. Whether in the positive or the negative, through implicit acquiescence or reactive defiance, Eurocentric constructs are, nevertheless, strongly operative.

Concluding remarks

It is my contention, in this article, that a significant portion of mainstream translation studies literature on Qur’an translation accords the subject of Qur’anic (un)translatability an undue level of attention and that this dynamic can be partly linked to the frequent benchmarking of the Qur’an against the Bible, as well as the persistent presence of an oppressive and exclusionist image cultivated by Eurocentric narratives of Islam and its sacred book.

The analyzed articles on Qur’an translation portray the debate around (un)translatability as an integral and long-standing issue within Islamic scholarship (also beyond the corpus, see e.g. Mustapha 2008, 226). It is understood to have always lingered in the background, becoming inflamed occasionally in light of certain events or developments. It would therefore be misleading to suggest that this discussion was imposed by a strictly Eurocentric agenda. Nevertheless, what the analysis also suggests is that the coordinates of this debate have changed over the years, acquiring within religious scholarship a more political nature – as opposed to the loftier theologically-focused debates of the first few centuries of Islam (see e.g. Ayoub 1986, 36). This recent shift betrays a more defensive and/or conflictual disposition, and this same stance, I argue, can be observed in the publications’ overall examination of the issue of (un)translatability. After all, there appears to be a disproportionate focus on this one specific subject, especially when viewed in light of theological debates – which mostly point to the acceptability of Qur’an translation – and the particularly understudied non-Western (south-to-south) translation traditions of the Qur’an, which indicate the abundance of the practice. The lack of sufficient mainstream scholarly interest in these traditions is all the more striking when one considers the estimated 3,000 translations of the Qur’an into over 65 languages that have been recorded in the past few decades (Mazrui 2019, 463; Wilson 2020, 554).

Finally, the preoccupation with (un)translatability could, furthermore, be viewed as a reflection of a specific, Eurocentric conception of translation that does not account for Qur’an translation history within the Islamic world. That is because throughout the sacred book’s history, no hard distinction has been typically made between its exegeses and translations. The latter were actually often categorized as interpretive literature rather than classified as a separate genre of their own. This has made them less recognizable using Western definitions of translation (Wilson 2020, 553). So while Qur’anic translation (both oral and written) has been an integral part of Islamic communities since the beginning, Western scholarship on Qur’anic translation has typically focused “on translations into European languages, often giving the impression that Muslim activity in the field was negligible in comparison with the efforts of Euro-American missionaries and scholars” (552). Our understanding of Qur’an translation, and indeed translation more broadly, can therefore be enriched by paying closer attention to the globally diverse contexts, histories and practices of Qur’anic translation and by approaching the sacred book more assuredly on its own terms.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ahd Othman

Ahd Othman is a Visiting Research Associate in translation studies at the University of Bristol, UK. She is currently working on a monograph based on her doctoral thesis, which examines the interplay between Eurocentrism, Qur’an translation and decoloniality. Her primary research interests include translation history and alternative epistemologies of translation, with special focus on the Arabic and Qur’anic translation traditions. She holds a Bachelor's degree from Birzeit University in Palestine, a Master's degree from the École Supérieure d'Interprètes et de Traducteurs (ESIT) in France, and a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Bristol.

Notes

1 Tibawi notes that iʿjaz is a subject of controversy in the Islamic tradition and bases his remark on a number of canonical writings, including those by al-Baghdadi, al-Juwaini and ash-Shahrastani (see Tibawi 1962, 11). More recently, argues Saleh (2020, 694), the “predictive scientific miracle” of the Qur’an has been stressed in Islamic discourse and commentary and seems for many to take precedence over the sacred book’s unique eloquence and linguistic features.

2 While the Bible may not have been explicitly named in some of these occurrences, it is being used in the present discussion as a proxy for the corpus’s emphasis on the role of Western, Christian missionaries and translators who were operating within the discursive world of the Bible.

3 “Non-fluency” is probably what is intended here.

4 Ayah (roughly, “verse”) 93 of Surah (roughly, “chapter”) 3 reads, “Say, Bring the Torah and read it if ye are truthful” (Tibawi 1962, 6–7).

5 This is true of Christianity and Islam, but not Judaism.

6 Greifenhagen (1992, 280) equally alludes to this by mentioning “the recurrent Western charge that Muhammad was merely a syncretistic plagiariser and that Islam is thus totally derived from its Jewish and Christian antecedents”.

7 While it typically refers to the Greek New Testament that was compiled by Erasmus, Moir (2009, 36) uses this term differently to denote an authoritative, recognized and common translation.