The Translation of Complete Taḍmīn (implication of meaning) in the Fifth and Sixth Suwar (Chapters) in the Qur'an into English: An Ongoing Project

Abstract

his paper is a part of an ongoing project which investigates four English translations of complete taḍmīn in the entire Qur’an. It is an extension of Nouraldeen (2020; 2021a; 2021b; 2022) which have studied four chapters so far. This paper proceeds with discussing, analysing and assessing the fifth sūrah (chapter) al-Māʾidah and the sixth one al-Anʕām. The importance, yet the challenge, of complete taḍmīn lies in its invisibility to the translator and its absence in English. The four-element model that was put forward in Nourladeen (2020, p. 240) is used to analyse and discuss the four English Qur’an translations of complete taḍmīn. The theoretical framework of this study is established within the theories of Vinay and Darbelnet (1995, p. 342) and Dickins et al. (2017, pp 48-56), which suggest ‘explicitation’, ‘loss’ and ‘gain’. Textual analysis is applied to the source text and the target text based on two sources and two dictionaries. The four translators are mostly not aware of taḍmīn when translating the Qur’an, except for Abdel Haleem and Khattab in āyah 4 who translate the implicit verb ترك taraka (literally translated as ‘leave’), discounting the translation of the explicit verb طّفر farraṭa (literally translated as ‘neglect’). The Qur’anic style should be taken into consideration when translating the Qur’an unless the translation would sound awkward in English.