Translating the sacred
Agency in translating verb-noun alternation in the Qur’an
Published online: 24 May 2022
https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.00273.sha
https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.00273.sha
Abstract
One of the contentious issues in religious translation since the legendary St. Jerome is the degree of the
translator’s agency. The point of contention has been whether the translator can exercise agency and freedom in translating sacred
texts or they should strictly adhere to the form and attend to what St. Jerome called the “mysterious syntax” of the sacred text.
Using a stylistic approach (. 2001. Qur’an
Translation: Discourse, Texture and Exegesis. London and New York: Routledge. 197. and Abdul-Raof, Hussein. 2006. Arabic
Rhetoric: A Pragmatic
Analysis. London: Routledge. ; Abdel Haleem, Muhammad. 1992. “Grammatical
Shift for Rhetorical Purposes: Iltifāt and Related Features in the Qur’ān.” Bulletin of the
School of Oriental and African
Studies 551: 407–432. ), we address the issue of the translator’s agency
in religious translation by examining the translations of a unique rhetorical feature, namely the verb-noun alternation, by seven
key translators in Verses 59, 64, 69 and 72 of Chapter 56, Al-Wāqi‘ah. Despite the general assumption that
religious translation is highly constrained and that the translators of this type of text have little freedom, the findings of
this paper show that religious translators, in fact, do exercise agency in their translation, whether in the form of adapting the
source text to the target text readers or in the form of reproducing the grammatical patterning of the source text for cultural or
ideological reasons.
Résumé
L’une des questions litigieuses de la traduction religieuse, depuis le légendaire Saint-Jérôme, est le degré
d’agentivité du traducteur. Le point de discorde a été de savoir si les traducteurs peuvent exercer leur propre agentivité dans la
traduction des textes sacrés, ou si au contraire ils doivent se conformer à la forme et s’accorder avec ce que Saint Jérôme a
désigné comme la « syntaxe mystérieuse » du texte sacré. En utilisant une approche stylistique (Abdul-Raof, Hussein. 2006. Arabic
Rhetoric: A Pragmatic
Analysis. London: Routledge. , . 2001. Qur’an
Translation: Discourse, Texture and Exegesis. London and New York: Routledge. 197.; Abdel Haleem, Muhammad. 1992. “Grammatical
Shift for Rhetorical Purposes: Iltifāt and Related Features in the Qur’ān.” Bulletin of the
School of Oriental and African
Studies 551: 407–432. ), nous abordons la question de l’agentivité du traducteur dans la traduction religieuse en examinant
les traductions par sept traducteurs clés d’une caractéristique rhétorique unique du texte coranique, à savoir l’alternance
verbe-nom dans les versets 59, 63, 69 et 72. du chapitre 56, Al-Wāqi‘ah, considéré comme un aspect de
l’inimitabilité stylistique du Coran. Malgré l’hypothèse générale selon laquelle la traduction du texte sacré est très
réglementée, ce qui implique que les traducteurs de ce type de texte devraient avoir un rôle restreint à jouer, les conclusions de
cet article montrent que les traducteurs des textes sacrés exercent en fait un pouvoir dans leur traduction, que ce soit par
l’adaptation du texte source aux lecteurs du texte cible pour des raisons idéologiques ou sous la forme d’une attention délibérée
à la structuration formelle du texte source pour des raisons aussi idéologiques.
Article outline
- Introduction
- Inimitability of the Qur’an
- Stylistic inimitability
- Verses under study
- Translating the sacred
- Conclusion
- Acknowledgement
- Note
References
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