Lexical, exegetical, and frequency-based analyses of the translations of the Qur’anic collocations

Abstract

Abstract Translating collocations is one of the problematic areas in translation studies, which becomes even more complicated when translating Qur’anic text is involved. The uniqueness of Qur’anic linguistic features, special context of the Qur’anic text, and stylistic differences between English and Arabic are barriers to accurate and natural rendition. Along these veins, this study attempts to investigate seven translations of the Qur’anic noun-noun collocations (Sarwar 1981; Al-Hilali and Khan 1996; Arberry 1996; Pickthall 1997; Sahih International 1997; Shakir 1999; Ali 2001) to unfold the degree of accuracy and naturalness of their translations. The present article follows the approach of corpus-based research to study seven prominent translations of the Noble Qur’an taken from The Qur’anic Arabic Corpus , using lexical, exegetical, and frequency-based analyses, which reveal that integrated lexical and exegetical analyses are perquisites for adequate rendition and prevent deviation in meaning and translation loss. Frequency-based approach in translation of collocations could assist in maintaining naturalness of rendition to some extent.