Translating the Quranic word ‘Al-ð ann’ into English

Abstract

Translating the Qur’an presents significant challenges at the syntactic, discoursal, lexical, and pragmatic levels, largely due to crosslinguistic differences between Arabic and target languages. These challenges are amplified when dealing with terms whose everyday Arabic usage is limited, yet whose Qur’anic meanings are broader and more nuanced. This paper aimed to assess how accurately the word ‘al-ðann’ (الظن) was rendered into three English translations: Sahih International (1997), Pickthall, M. W. 1938. The meaning of the glorious Qur’an. Translated by M. W. Pickthall. Government Central Press, and Ali, A. Y. 1968. The holy Qur’an: Text, translation and commentary. Dār al-ʿArabīyah. To that end, we conducted a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the meanings of the 69 occurrences of this lexical item in the Qur’an. Drawing upon exegetical interpretations along with contextual clues, we identified five different meanings of ‘al-ðann’ in the Qur’an: ‘thought,’ ‘certainty,’ ‘skepticism,’ ‘false belief’ and ‘accusation’. The findings revealed that Sahih International provided the most accurate renditions, while Pickthall offered the least. Furthermore, the analysis revealed that translators often defaulted to the most common interpretation of ‘al-ðann’, overlooking its contextual variability in the Qur’an. These results underscore the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration in Qur’anic translation and invite further research into other terms whose richness is often reduced in translation.