Componential analysis of the divine names in scripture translation

Abstract

The main aim of this paper is use Componential Analysis to identify the basic components of a number of divine names to understand their meanings in the heavenly scriptures to render their meanings accurately. The divine names selected for this study are either of similar phonological structure or semantic components in the three faiths. However, they may be understood and/or translated differently as evident in the various translations of the Bible and the Qur’an. The distinctive semantic features of each divine name in each scripture are identified using Componential Analysis techniques. Then, they are compared to highlight any lexical gap as well as all similar/dissimilar semantic constituents of each name in order to find a robust method of translating very important fundamental elements in all religions, God’s names.