Rendering the Islamic Concepts of the Holy Qur'an: Towards a More Comprehensive Model

Abstract

Translating religious terms is one of the most challenging tasks to be performed by a translator since they may have particular connotations in the source culture but not necessarily in the TL. Taking this fact into consideration, the present paper is going to touch upon the Islamic concepts of the Holy Qur'an in its fourteen English translations, to investigate how strategies employed by the translators can help the TL readers in perceiving the implied meaning connected with such concepts. In order to analyze the accumulated data, generally, the following steps have been taken: (i) tracing the Islamic concepts, (ii) identifying their English translations, (iii) applying Aixela’s (1996) model to the collected data, (iv) specifying some shortcomings of her model, and finally (v) presenting a table to illustrate the results as comprehensibly and intelligibly as possible. It was found out that there are a number of strategies which are employed by the fourteen translators of the Holy Qur’an yet are left unmentioned by Aixela. The mentioned strategies are considered as subcategories of ‘substitution’ and include: couplet, absolute modulation and limited modulation.