Analysis of Morphological Shifts Gender and Number Shift Observed in the Translation of the Holy Qur’aan from Arabic into Amharic

Abstract

Abstract In this article, morphological shifts, number and gender shits observed in the translation of the Holy Qur’aan from Arabic into Amharic have been discussed and analyzed. Shifts in agreement in number and gender between parts of a sentence have been discussed. From the discussion given in the article one can conclude that agreement in number and gender is sensitive to word order in Arabic. For example, when the subject follows the verb the suffixes that show agreement are absent, but they are obligatorily present if the subject precedes the verb. Therefore, sometimes agreement in number and gender may not be strict in Arabic. However, in Amharic there should always be strict agreement in gender and number. Therefore shifts in number and gender have been obligatorily made by the translators of the Holy Qur’aan from Arabic into Amharic to produce grammatical sentences in the target language structure. However, in some instances, as discussed in the article, the translators closely adhered to the source language structure which produced ungrammatical or unknown structures in the target language structure. This may make some structures in the target text incomprehensible. Key Words: Source text, target text, target language structure, morphological shifts, gender and number Shift