The Translation of Some Misunderstood Qur'anic Words Into English

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate some cases where misunderstanding of Qur'anic words takes place on the part of Qur'an translators. In these cases, misunderstanding leads to mistranslation of the Qur'anic verses. Having analyzed nine translations of seventeen Qur'anic sample verses, relying on two well-known Qur'anic interpretations, considerable misunderstanding was detected, leading to mistranslation of the Qur’anic verses. The analysis of the translations shows that mistranslation results from misconception, misreference, homonymy confusion, and inflection confusion. The paper concludes that translators, besides having a good grasp of Arabic source language (SL) in general and Qur’anic language in particular, have to rely on Qur'anic interpretation, Tafseer, to overcome any misunderstanding, thus mistranslation might not happen.