Problems in Translating Holy Quran

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Mahmoudi 1 Nema Mahmoudi Kaleybar Professor Naser Dashtpeyma, Ph.D. Research methodologies (2) 26 July 2011 Difficulties and Problems in Translating the Holy Qur’an For long translation in general has been a burdensome task for the translators to be done. The new era, with the rise of translation studies, has been dramatically influenced by the systematic theories of translation. Lots of theories have been developed and introduced to make this field of study more systematic. It has solved lots of problems and answered those knotty parts never dared to be answered. But it fell short of organizing authoritative rules to translate words of God that is the Holy Qur’an. Here, I am taking a closer look to the reasons why the Qur’anic texts can’t be fully translated and why the greatest translators’ efforts reflect poor translations of the texts in terms of lexical, grammatical, syntactical, semantical, and stylistic features. To do this, I have taken into account a number of scholarly books on this subject; and I am going to examine this paper in three contexts: The historical overview, style and strategies of Qur’anic translation, and features of Qur’an translation. THE HISTORICAL OVERVIEW Early messages from the Prophet Muhammad to political rulers of the time, such as Emperor Heraclius (c.610–41) of the Eastern Roman Empire and al Muqawqis, his viceroy in Coptic Egypt, included an aya from the Qur’ān. It can only be assumed that translations of these Mahmoudi 2 messages were undertaken by translators employed by the receivers, or at least by persons familiar with Arabic in their particular country. The first aya which may have been translated in this fashion is likely to be number 64 in the sura of al Imran (alZafzaf). Pickthall translates it as follows: Say: O People of the Scripture! Come to an agreement between us and you: that we shall worship none but Allah,

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