The (Un)Translatability of Qur’anic Idiomatic Phrasal Verbs: A Contrastive Linguistic Study

Description

Qur’anic idiomaticity, in its all aspects, poses a great deal of challenge to Qur’an readers, learners, commentators, and translators. One of the most challenging aspects of Qur’anic idiomaticity is Qur’anic idiomatic phrasal verbs, where significances of proper Arabic verbs are entirely fused with significances of prepositions following them to produce new significances that have nothing to do with the basic significances of those verbs and prepositions. By examining a corpus of ten of the most influential English translations of the Qur’an, this study scrutinizes how some translators of the Qur’an have dealt with the phenomenon of Qur’anic idiomatic phrasal verbs, the difficulties that they have encountered when translating them into English, and the strategies that they have employed in their attempts to overcome the inherent ambiguity of such expressions and provide their functional-pragmatic equivalents for English readership. The study proposes a working model for analysing and assessing the translation of the Qur’anic idiomatic phrasal verbs and provides a number of theory-based recommendations for translators in general and Qur’an translators in particular. Cover Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Contents List of figures and tables Acknowledgements List of abbreviations Table of transliteration 1 Introduction 1.1 Statement of the problem 1.2 Aim of the study 1.3 Outline of the study 1.4 Limitations of the study 2 (Un)translatability of the Qur’an: A theoretical perspective 2.1 Introduction 2.2 The Qur’an’s (un)translatability 2.2.1 The Qur’an’s (un)translatability as viewed by Muslim intellectuals 2.2.2 The Qur’an’s (un)translatability as viewed by English translators 2.3 Conclusion 3 Arabic idiomatic phrasal verbs: Nailing down the phenomenon 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Establishing a parameter for AIPVs 3.3 AIPVs’ components 3.3.1 Arabic proper verbs 3.3.2 Arabic preposition 3.4 AIPVs’ syntactic and semantic properties 3.4.1 a l-Ta’alluq (verb–preposition relation, attachment, or dependency) 3.4.2 al-Ta’addī (verb transitivity) 3.4.3 al-Inābah (preposition substitution) and al-Taḍmīn (verb implication) 3.5 AIPVs’ register variations 3.6 Conclusion 4 Qur’anic idiomatic phrasal verbs 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Syntactic idiosyncrasies of QIPVs 4.2.1 QIPVs’ word order 4.2.1.1 Nonsplit QIPVs 4.2.1.2 Split QIPVs 4.3 Semantic idiosyncrasies of the QIPVs 4.3.1 QIPVs’ semantic fields 4.3.2 QIPVs’ semantic categories 4.3.2.1 Metaphorical QIPVs 4.3.2.2 Figurative QIPVs 4.4 Pragmatic idiosyncrasies of the QIPVs 4.4.1 Direct speech acts performed by QIPVs 4.4.2 Indirect speech acts performed by QIPVs (QIPVs’ implicatures) 4.5 Conclusion 5 Research methodology 5.1 Theoretical framework 5.2 Data collection 5.3 Research questions and data analysis 5.4 Research procedure 5.5 Towards a model for analysing and assessing the translation of QIPVs 5.5.1 On translating metaphorical and figurative expressions 5.5.2 Speech acts 5.5.3 Conversational implicatures 5.5.4 Adequacy/inadequacy 5.6 Model for analysing and assessing translations of QIPV 5.7 Conclusion 6 Qualitative data analysis, assessment, and discussion 6.1 Case study 1 6.1.1 Tertium comparationis 6.1.2 English equivalents provided 6.1.3 Analysis 6.2 Case study 2 6.2.1 Tertium comparationis 6.2.2 English equivalents provided 6.2.3 Analysis 6.3 Case study 3 6.3.1 Tertium comparationis 6.3.2 English equivalents provided 6.3.3 Analysis 6.4 Case study 4 6.4.1 Tertium comparationis 6.4.2 English equivalents provided 6.1.3 Analysis 6.5 Case study 5 6.5.1 Tertium comparationis 6.5.2 English equivalents provided 6.5.3 Analysis 6.6 Case study 6 6.6.1 Tertium comparationis 6.6.2 English equivalents provided 6.1.3 Analysis 6.7 Case study 7 6.7.1 Tertium comparationis 6.7.2 English equivalents provided 6.7.3 Analysis 6.8 Case study 8 6.8.1 Tertium comparationis 6.8.2 English equivalents provided 6.8.3 Analysis 6.9 Case study 9 6.9.1 Tertium comparationis 6.9.2 English equivalents provided 6.9.3 Analysis 6.10 Case study 10 6.10.1 Tertium comparationis 6.10.2 English equivalents provided 6.10.3 Analysis 6.11 Discussion 7 Conclusion 7.1 Summary of the study 7.2 Findings of the study 7.3 Recommendations 7.4 Suggestions for further research Appendix I: Concordance for the Qur’anic idiomatic phrasal verbs Appendix II: Frequencies Index