Translating Noncanonical Ancillary Qur’anic Oppositions Into English: An Etiotypological Analysis

• Published in: Theory and practice in language studies 2024-02, Vol.14 (2), p.443-453
• Main Authors: Hassanein, Hamada S.A, Moustafa, Basant S.M
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Arabic language; Arabic literature; Bible; Biblical Literature; Corpus analysis; Discourse functions; English language; Functional sentence perspective; Grammar; Grammar Translation Method; Intercultural communication; Interpreters; Language; Lexical choice; Lexicalization; Linguistics; Literary translation; Literature Reviews; Morphology; Multiculturalism & pluralism; Quran; Religion; Religious literature; Semantics; Semiotics; Semitic Languages; Sentence structure; Subordination (Grammatical); Syntax; Translating and interpreting; Translation; Translations and translating; Translators
• ISSN: 1799-2591; 2053-0692
• DOI: 10.17507/tpls.1402.16

Translating the sacred in a so-called divine language has been shown to be so difficult and challenging a task for translators of the Bible or the Qur’an. The human reproduction of the divine product(ion) has biblically and qur’anically been found to raise (in)soluble challenges and (in)surmountable hurdles in bicultural and cross-cultural communication and transfer in translation. One great challenge or big obstacle thereof is the (un)transferability of noncanonical ancillary oppositions from SL (QA) to TL (E) which is sought to be explored and investigated by the current study from a linguistic-translational perspective. Based on corpus data across several languages, noncanonical ancillary opposition has been shown to co-occur in preponderant syntactic frames loaned from fellow categories, such as coordination, subordination, transition, and so forth, to perform cross-categorial discourse functions in canonical, semicanonical, and noncanonical configurations, and to entertain a propensity and penchant for special multi-principled and rule-governed sequences based on morphology, gender, agency, and so on. The specific objectives of this study are to compare and contrast SL and TL frequent frameworks and ordering sequences in the process and product of translation. It was found that a number of these frames and functions have gone untended and unrendered by the two Qur’an translators under scrutiny due to their incognizance of colligational forms and discursive functions as translation units of functional sentence perspective contributing to the semantic ends of intraversially sentential structures. It was also revealed that SL paradigmatic lexical choices were too semantically distinct and complex to lexicalize into TL.