Translation of the Imperative Forms in the Holy Qur'an

Abstract

This thesis is about the translation of the imperative forms in the Holy Qur'an. Relevant issues in translation theory are covered in the beginning of the thesis. I focused on the linguistic approaches in translation studies because they may be helpful in the translation analysis section of the thesis. Then some of the syntactic structures and semantic features of the imperative forms are explored, with examples cited from the Holy Qur'an. In the chapter on translation analysis, ten examples are discussed in light of the theoretical and linguistic background explored in the first six chapters. The three translations selected are each carried out by reputable Muslim scholars. The first translation is Translation of the Meanings of the Noble Qur'an in the English Language, written by Dr. Muhammad Taqi-ud-Din Al-Hilali and Dr. Muhammad Muhsin Khan. The second translation, Towards Understanding the Ever-Glorious Quran, is written by Professor Muhammad Mahmoud Ghali, and the final translation is entitled The Qur'an, A new Translation by M. A. S. Abdel Haleem. The analysis is done systematically according to the following approach. After citing the ayat, the imperative form is defined in terms of its dictionary meaning, lexical root, and morphological measure. Then it is analyzed syntactically to identify its grammatical relationship to the other grammatical items preceding and following it. If there could be more than one reading of a word, these readings are studied to see their effect on meaning. All this is done in light of what the authentic books of Tafseer say about the ayat under discussion. Some elements of the translation models are explored in the beginning of the thesis to be used as a theoretical background for the translation analysis in chapter seven. The thesis concludes that the three translations examined approached the translation of the Qur'anic text in different ways. The renderings may sometimes be literal, sometimes non-literal. In several places in the translations, lexical and grammatical equivalences were maintained. However in other places, another grammatical category other than that in the source text was used to maintain the meaning of the Qur'anic text.