Polysemic Words in English Translations of the Qur’an: A comparative study of translation by ‎Saffarzadeh, Pickthall, Shakir and Arberry

Abstract

Polysomic words in different languages create problems in the process of understanding, ‎interpretation and translation of the text. In the past, the Qur’an researchers have investigated ‎polysemic words under the categories of wujūh and nazāyer (polysemy). Furthermore, in the field of ‎linguistics, in order to identify meaning and concepts of homonymous and polysemic words, linguistic ‎and metalinguistic contexts have been taken into consideration. Therefore, in this study, some key ‎words of Surah al-Nūr which are polysemic words have been chosen and their English translation by ‎Saffarzadeh, Pickthall, Shakir and Arberry have been investigated in order to analyze the strengths and ‎weaknesses of the translations. The result of this study shows that none of these translations has ‎adequately translated the polysemic words of Surah al-Nūr.‎