Semantic Collocations in the Holy Qur'ān and their English Translations

Abstract

Collocations are regular co-occurrences of words. Getting familiar with collocations like sirāt mustaqēm (صراط المستقیم) and yawm dēn (یومالدین) is a necessity for English translators of the Holy Qur’ān. In this study, nine well-known English translations of the Holy Qur’ān are analyzed with respect to semantic collocations. Frequent semantic collocations are extracted from the Qur’ān and the componential analysis reveals the original concepts enclosed within sample collocations. The results indicate that some new meaning components are introduced into the contexts as collocational clashes. Therefore semantic collocations of the Holy Qur’ān may not be translated into other languages word-by-word. A semantic collocation can be considered as a unit of translation. In this study, at first, the concept of collocation and its role in the translation of the Holy Qu’an is explained, and then five kinds of collocations are discussed. The relevant tables showing the total number and frequencies of different kinds of collocations are also presented.