Found in Translation

Translating the Untranslatable
Is the word of God translatable? Followers of different faiths, including Islam,
have found various answers to this question. Throughout history, prominent
voices within the Muslim world have declared that the Koran can be explained
only through a foreign language version rather than properly translated from
Arabic. However, there have always been others who have argued for the need
of translation, pointing out that there was translation even in the very
beginnings of Islam.
Indeed, the sheer number of existing translations tells a story of its own. The
Koran has been completely translated into more than sixty languages. There
are more than forty complete published translations of the Koran into English
alone, of which more than a dozen versions have come out since 2000.
Tarif Khalidi, a professor of Islamic and Arabic studies at the American
University of Beirut who released an English translation in 2008, explains that
in the past, there was no consensus on this question among Muslim scholars.
“The arguments pro and con were both theological as well as linguistic. But
nowadays this is no longer an issue,” he claims. “Whatever objections might
have been raised in the past are now completely transcended.”
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But not all scholars agree with Tarif’s assessment. Nazeer Ahmed, a former
legislator in India and a senior U.S. scientist who was a chief engineer on the
Hubble Space Telescope, also published a Koran translation in 2010. Nazeer
sees his work as an expression of meaning rather than pure translation. “The

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Koran is the Word of God,” he muses. “As such its vibrations can only be felt.
It cannot be translated. Nonetheless, scholars have considered it an honor to
attempt to express its meaning as they have understood it in space-time.”
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Some of these arguments on the Koran’s translatability are theological,
some are linguistic, and some are aesthetic. Few people would argue that a
translation—in any language—could equal the original Arabic in beauty,
especially in its recited form. Witness the number of websites where you can
read translated versions and listen to their recitation in Arabic at the same
time.
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Even the Koran itself addresses the topic of its transmission language:
Sura 12:2 says
. According to Nazeer Ahmed’s translation,
this means “Behold! We have revealed to you the Quran in Arabic so that you
may understand.”
The Koran was originally written in Arabic, and to the faithful it represents
the very voice of God. But to those who don’t read Arabic, the translations
provide an essential accessibility. In fact, Tarif Khalidi believes that a
knowledge of Arabic is no longer necessary for understanding the Koran. The
many English translations allow the modern reader to reconstruct the general
meaning as well as the tone and style of the original, to some extent, thus
easing the entry for the Koran into the canon of the religious scriptures of
humankind.
Or, in the words of two other translators of a 1997 version of the Koran,
Muhammad B qir Behb d and Colin Turner: “To say that the Quran is
untranslatable is not to say that it should not be translated.”
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