EXPLORING ASPECTS OF LEXICAL CONVERGENCE AND DIVERGENCE IN SOME TRANSLATIONS OF THE HOLLY QUR’AN

Abstract

It is commonly observed that languages all over the world may converge or diverse in their linguistic features such as lexical and semantic perspectives. These are linguistic phenomena that happen in all languages as a resulting consequence of the evolution and development of all human languages on earth. This present study is primarily designed to tackle these aspects of convergence and divergence in some selected translations of the Holly Qur’an. Special consideration will be given to the impact of these aspects of lexical convergence and divergence on the selected translations of the verses of the Holly Qur’an that is to say whether they add or deduce to the semantic value of the selected lexical items. Our initial anticipation is that no selected items of these translations of the meanings of the Holly Qur’an will have the same value of the original Arabic term that is used in the verses of the Holly Qur’an; however, some English Lexical items will have distinct semantic value in explaining the meaning under investigation or interpretation as they have more or less the same semantic import of the Arabic items, i.e. if we take just a simple example of such lexical items such as the word child in English that may either be used to mean a young or a small - aged person, or to mean someone's son or daughter. The latter meaning may give the exact meaning of sons and daughters in some of the verses that will be selected in this study. In such a case we feel that the lexical choice helps in selecting an item of a positive convergence between Arabic and English. The divergence in the lexical items may cause some problems for the translators of the meanings of the Holly Qur’an; therefore, they may depend on additional linguistic features to bridge the gap between the Arabic items and the English ones such as literal translations, the denotative dictionary definitions, or the use of bracketing or foot notes. This study will be a qualitative survey and a content analysis approach whereby some previously related studies together with some selected verses of the Holly Qur’an that will be chosen from “The Noble Qur’an" and "The Glorious Qur'an”. All the important elements of a scientific research such as the Statement of the study, its importance, methodology, discussion, findings and suggestions for further future studies will be tackled in this present study.