Adequacy and Acceptability of the English Translation of Scientific Implications: Eclectic Model of Shifting to Quran Translations of Arberry, Irving, Yusuf Ali, and Saffarzadeh

Subject Areas : All areas of language and translation

Razieh Eslamieh ¹ , Marzieh Mokhtari ²

1 - Assistant Professor of English Literature, Parand Branch, Islamic Azad University, Parand, Iran
2 - MA in Translation Studies, Parand Branch, Islamic Azad University, Parand, Iran

Received: 2021-08-13 Accepted : 2021-08-13 Published : 2021-10-01

Keywords: Shift, scientific verse, Acceptability, Adequacy, Initial norm,

Abstract :

There are verses in the Holy Quran with implicit scientific overtones, the improper translation of which may not reveal the scientific I’jaz of the Quran. This research focuses on the English translation of the scientific implications to find any relation between acceptable/adequate and explanatory/non-explanatory translations. To this end, first, the verses with a scientific impact were selected by consulting four commentaries. Second, four English translations of the Quran by Arberry, Irving, Yusuf Ali, and Saffarzadeh were chosen and theoretically analyzed in terms of Toury’s initial norm of acceptability/adequacy, an eclectic model of shifting built on Chesterman and Zahedi’s models. Third, the translations were comparatively and semantically analyzed to assess if the scientific implication had been transferred. The results show that Saffarzadeh, Yusuf Ali, and Irving’s translations use more shifts; henceforth, their translations are near to acceptability. Saffarzadeh, Yusuf Ali, and Irving have referred to the scientific implications in more cases than Arberry whose translation is near the adequacy pole. Acceptable translations conveying the implicit meaning more frequently are more explanatory and a more proper translation for translating the scientific implication.

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