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The impact of ideology in the translation of the Qur’an by Laleh Bakhtiar: The Sublime Quran as a case study

Nowadays, ideology is considered very significant in a wide range of academic disciplines including cultural studies, linguistics, and translation studies. Ideology and its effect on translation have long become a research focus in the field of translation studies, and the use of ideology in translation is as old as the history of translation itself. ‘The practice of inserting and imbedding translated texts with ideology, values and cultural meanings is a practice that has been performed since the old times, however only from the 1990s has been considered as a new object of study according to which, in the translation process the culture both of the source and target text could no more be eluded’ (Valerio 2013: 986-987). According to Fawcett (1998), ‘throughout the centuries, individuals and institutions applied their particular beliefs to the production of certain effect in translation’ (p. 107). He claims that ‘an ideological approach to translation can be found in some of the earliest examples of translation known to us’ (p. 106). The corpus of the current study consisted of the original Qur`an, Bakhtiar’s translation, i.e. The Sublime Quran and four English translations. From among different Surats of Qur’an, the researcher selected ayat in Surat ’lns’ (women), ’l’hz’b ( the confederates), those related to women's rights and their thought to be oppressed were chosen with their translation counterparts, as well as the terms ḍrb (beat), k’frwn (infidels), nšwz (ill conduct), kw’mwn (protectors and maintainers), however, the list of terms is not exhaustive. The five English translations of the Holy Qur’an were critically analysed in this study based on the translator’s ideology: 1- Muhammad Taqiyyuddin Al Hilaali and Muhammad Muhsin Khan (2011). The Nobel Quran. Darussalam Publishers. 2- Muhammad A. S. Abdel Haleem (2004). The Qur'an: A New Translation. Oxford University Press Inc., New York. 3- Abdullah Yusuf Ali (1989-90). The Holy Qur-an. King Fahd Holy Qur-ān Printing Complex 4- Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall (1930). The Meaning of the Glorious Koran. 5- Arthur J. Arberry. The Koran Interpreted: A Translation. Touchstone; 1 edition (December 11, 1996). Bakhtiar introduced a new approach in her translation of the holy Qur’an, i.e., the inclusive translation. Bakhtiar said about her method of translation: ‘I tried to develop an inclusive translation so people from other faiths may read it and feel like it speaks to them as well, as a sacred text,’ (The Feminist eZine). Furthermore, she states in an interview (Muslims for Allah: 2018) when discussing the misinterpretation of chapter 4, verse 34 in the Quran that she wanted to present to non-Muslims from other cultures a better understanding of Islam by developing the inclusive translation approach rather than the exclusive one. For the purpose of this study, the researcher will discuss the reliability of Bakhtiar’s approach based on some translation theories, among others, Eugene Nida’s theory (1952), Skopos theory (end of the 1970s), the interpretative theory of translation (1970), and Lawrence Venuti’s theory (1998), i.e. ‘foreignizing’ and ‘domesticating’ translation methodology. This research is a descriptive and comparative case study based on the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The purpose of using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is to highlight the ideological content which is present in the target text and how this differs from the source text. The research aims mainly to investigate the role of the translator's ideology in the translation of the Holy Qur`an from Arabic into English based upon the above stated translations of the Qur’an.

Date:20 May 2019 →  13 Nov 2023
Keywords:The Sublime Quran, Laleh Bakhtiar, Critical Discourse Analysis, Translation Studies, Ideology and Translation, Comparative Study, Translation and Censorship, Linguistics
Disciplines:Study of Islam and qur'anic studies
Project type:PhD project