Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!ernie.viewlogic.com!m2c!wpi.WPI.EDU!shari
From: zama@midway.uchicago.edu (iftikhar uz zaman)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.islam
Subject: Re: Translating Qur'an ( Was Re: Questions regarding Israel)
Message-ID: <1990Nov8.173922.19732@wpi.WPI.EDU>
Date: 8 Nov 90 17:39:22 GMT
References: <1990Nov8.014434.27292@nntp-server.caltech.edu>
Sender: shari@wpi.WPI.EDU (Shari Deiana VanderSpek)
Organization: U of Chicago
Lines: 71
Approved: shari@wpi.wpi.edu


In article <1990Nov8.014434.27292@nntp-server.caltech.edu>
bro@eunomia.rice.edu (Douglas Monk) provides an excellent rendition of
some of the problems of translations (thank you).  

One point which he omitted which, perhaps, to a second level of
problems, is the one of the reference for "ba`dihi" (and we said to
them after **him**...).  Pickthall and Arberry maintain this while
the other two translators seem to just swallow it under the "thereafter/
and then" formulation...

>N.J. Dawood: "Then We said to the Israelites: `Dwell in this land.
>When the promise of the hereafter comes to be fulfilled, We shall
>assemble you all together.'"
>Yusuf `Ali: "And We said thereafter to the Children of Israel, `Dwell
>securely in the land (of promise)': but when the second of the warnings
>came to pass, We gathered you together in a mingled crowd."
>Muhammad Pickthall: "And We said unto the Children of Israel after
>him: Dwell in the land; but when the promise of the Hereafter cometh
>to pass We shall bring you as a crowd gathered out of various
>nations."
>A.J. Arberry: "And We said to the Children of Israel after him, `Dwell
>in the land; and when the promise of the world to come comes to pass,
>We shall bring you a rabble."

This "him" might be significant since in the sentence preceding this one,
the destruction of the Pharoah has been referred to.  It would seem natural
that now, the reference is to him.  And this would, perhaps, bring into
play the context of the whole passage--so that someone *might* be justified
in adding to "the land" and saying "the land [you had been promised]..."

>Closing comments: 

>No existing translation of the Qur'an is satisfactory to me: Too many
>errors, too much unfortunate interpolation, too many personal agendas
>of translators intruding.

See below.

>Of the ones I list here, I would put Pickthall at the top, then Yusuf
>`Ali (especially the new Saudi edition that corrects some of the
>errors), then maybe Arberry. Each has problems, though.  I don't really
>recommend Dawood (he scrambles the order of the surahs and I often
>don't trust his translation: just look at what inserting "this" in the
>above does to create spurious implications).

I think that translation of something like the Quran (which has been
read and re-read, been interpreted and re-interpreted) is something which
has to take a number of decades of careful translators giving it their
best--unfortunately, so far we don't even have care in translation, nor
has it, in my opinion, been given the care it deserves.

In Urdu I have found Bayan al-Quran to have the best approach to this
problem.  The author makes his decision in translating the text, as any
translator must.  But, in the margins he has "mulhaqat al-turjama" 
("addenda (?) to the translation") in which he allows us to follow him
and as he makes his choices at every turn in the road, he allows us to
see why he turned away from one reading and towards another.  In this
way he is able to avoid attempting the impossible task of a "readerless
reading" implicit in trying to translate without agenda; but he avoids
his translation becoming a straitjacket...

>Doug Monk (bro@rice.edu)
>Disclaimer: These views are mine, not necessarily my organization's.


--
La yajrimannakum shan'anu qawmin `ala an-ta`dilu; i`dilu huwa aqrubu li
al-taqwa... *ROUGH* rendering: "Let not the enmity of a people incite you
to injustice; be just, this is closer to piety"
zama@ellis.uchicago.edu        xpszama@uchimvs1.uchicago.edu