محبوبه نورا

The translation of sacred texts has been a long-standing practice, employed by followers of various religions to disseminate their beliefs. The Qur’ān, revered by Muslims as a divine miracle, is one such text that has attracted the attention of translators and researchers across different periods. Given the Qur’ān’s divine origin and its linguistic intricacies, its translation poses a significant challenge. This article adopts a corpus-based approach to investigate the extent to which the nuanced semantics of the Qur’ān’s moral terms have been captured in English translations. Specifically, the words “Marouf”, “Munkar”, and “Sin” and their translations by Arberry, Picktall, Shaker, and Yusuf Ali were examined using Izutsu’s semantic analysis approach. This approach analyzes the fundamental and relational meanings of key Qur’ānic terms from syntagmatic/paradigmatic and synchronic /diachronic perspectives to reveal the worldview they embody. The study’s findings indicate that translators often used identical vocabulary to translate the aforementioned moral terms across all contexts, paying insufficient attention to the contextual nuances of these Qur’ānic moral terms. Despite the use of interpretive techniques in translating the Qur’ān, it appears that even the most accurate English translations fall short of conveying the original concepts and their subtleties fully. This study offers valuable insights for Qur’ān translators, acquainting them with the nuanced semantic aspects of Qur’ānic terms and the delicate task of reflecting these nuances in their translations.

Theme/rheme structure plays a crucial role in conveying meaning and facilitating effective communication and comprehension. Moreover, foregrounding is an issue that has attracted much attention from researchers and theorists. Several studies have investigated the translation of marked structures of the Holy Qur’ān into different languages from various perspectives, such as semantics or stylistics, but few have focused on foregrounding in English translations by Iranian translators of the Qur’ān. The present study aimed to examine the challenges that Iranian translators encountered in their renditions. To this end, English equivalents of eighteen Ayahs featuring foregrounding were extracted from four English translations by Iranian translators and the translators’ strategies in rendering foregrounding cases were analyzed. The findings revealed that the Iranian translators were inconsistent in their renditions but performed better in cases where marked structures were less complex and aligned with the normative structure of English prose. The translators faced the most difficulties in rendering specification and emphasis, which are two main categories of foregrounding. Interestingly, the translators who had native-like proficiency in English outperformed their peers in rendering foregrounding into English.

The purpose of this study was twofold: (a) to assess the retention of two word types (synonyms and homonyms) in the short term memory, and (b) to investigate the effect of these word types on word learning by asking learners to learn their Persian meanings. A total of 73 Iranian language learners studying English translation participated in the study. For the first purpose, 36 freshmen from an intact class were presented with two lists of words with their Persian meanings. One of the list included 5 pairs of synonyms and the other one included 5 pairs of homonyms. They were asked to retain as much vocabulary items as they can. Learning was measured by lexical representations of the words. The results showed that learners did better on the retention of homonyms than synonyms. For the second purpose, 37 sophomores from an intact class were provided with 40 words in pairs (20 synonyms and 20 homonyms). They were asked to write their Persian meanings in the testing session. The results indicated that students did better on learning synonyms than homonyms. The study revealed that homonyms are better retrieved in short term memory but learned more slowly regarding to the semantic representation.