Cultural Issues in Translating from Arabic to Tamil

Abstract

Translation has been used by every community in the world throughout the history as a tool to derive many new things from other language and cultural backgrounds that are not present in the particular culture. In Islamic history during the reign of the Umayyad, the treasuries of knowledge from Greek territory were translated into Arabic. This is what led to the formation of modern Europe and the scientific, industrial and technological revolution in the world. Tamil-speaking Muslims living in the Indian subcontinent, especially in countries such as India and Sri Lanka, were interested in translating religious texts from Arabic to Tamil, including the Qur'an and Al-Hadith literatures, the main sources of Islam. Thus, during the translation process that took place between languages belonging to different language families, translation faced various challenges. Particularly, Translators have had some cultural problems. Those translators also tried to solve it. This study has found the need to build culture in translation, the importance of translation in maintaining inter-cultural communication and the possible ways to identify and resolve issues that arise when translating from Arabic to Tamil.