The Construction and Reconstruction of the Qur’an’s Meaning Through Translation
The Construction and Reconstruction of the Qur’an’s Meaning Through Translation
Johanna Pink, GloQur, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Germany
IQSA International Conference 2021 “Giorgio La Pira” Library, Palermo, Italy
Panel 8. Qur’an Translation and its Exegetical Dimension: Transfers and Transformations
Translation is often understood as the transfer of meaning from one language to another. In reality, though, it can be more aptly described as an attempt to reconstruct the source text’s meaning in a different linguistic, historical, and cultural context. In the case of the Qur’an, the gap between the milieus of source text and target language is so big that quite frequently, the translator is led to construct new meaning – building on exegetical traditions, interpretive intent, or the perceived needs of the target audience. This paper aims to conceptualize the process of meaning-creation in Qur’an translation, based on a range of case studies from translations in different languages. It shows how Qur’an translations may narrow down the source text’s meaning, expand it, or transform it, and what rationales inform their choices. Particular attention will be paid to the use of interpretive sources from the fields of lexicography and exegesis, setting the stage for the subsequent presentations.
Standardization & Exegetical Variety in Translations of the Qur’an: Recent Cases from the King Fahd
Mykhaylo Yakubovych, GloQur, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Germany
IQSA International Conference 2021 “Giorgio La Pira” Library, Palermo, Italy
Panel 8. Qur’an Translation and its Exegetical Dimension: Transfers and Transformations
Being one of the leading publishers of the Qur’an and its translation world-wide, the King Fahd Qur’an Printing Complex continues to produce new interpretations. The number of languages the Complex is covering has reached around eighty. Operating with the basic hermeneutical approach of the Salafi tafsīr, the Centre for Qur’an translation within the Complex developed a translation strategy that is used in most of its publications. This paper investigates this strategy, starting with an overview of the translations evaluated and approved by the Complex and finishing with a discussion of exegetical variety in translation choices. By comparing selected verses and supplementary materials from five translations especially produced for the Complex (Azerbaijanian, Kyrgyz, Macedonian, Russian, and Tajik), the analysis suggests the existence of a specific dynamic in exegetical strategies, according to which typical “Salafi” visions of the text (mostly in terms of theological issues) are combined with “domestic” interpretations of the Qur’an which are popular in local Islamic milieus. Despite a predominantly “static” ideological trend in exegesis, the translations dis- cussed in this presentation show some level of variation, which is linked to the way in which the overall exegetical framing of the translation is relevant to the local Muslim context. Thus, there are differences between individual translations, but that they are underpinned by a common exegetical approach.
Recent Publication: Impostures, translated by Michael Cooperson (NYU Press)
NYU Press has recently published a “groundbreaking” translation of Al-Ḥarīrī entitled Impostures: Fifty Rogue’s Tales Translated Fifty Ways by Michael Cooperson.
Publisher’s Overview: An itinerant con man. A gullible eyewitness narrator. Voices spanning continents and centuries. These elements come together in Impostures, a groundbreaking new translation of a celebrated work of Arabic literature.
Impostures follows the roguish Abū Zayd al-Sarūjī in his adventures around the medieval Middle East—we encounter him impersonating a preacher, pretending to be blind, and lying to a judge. In every escapade he shows himself to be a brilliant and persuasive wordsmith, composing poetry, palindromes, and riddles on the spot. Award-winning translator Michael Cooperson transforms Arabic wordplay into English wordplay of his own, using fifty different registers of English, from the distinctive literary styles of authors such as Geoffrey Chaucer, Mark Twain, and Virginia Woolf, to global varieties of English including Cockney rhyming slang, Nigerian English, and Singaporean English.
Featuring picaresque adventures and linguistic acrobatics, Impostures brings the spirit of this masterpiece of Arabic literature into English in a dazzling display of translation.
Praise for Cooperson’s Translation:
“To translate a work that has been called untranslatable for a thousand years requires more than just expertise in languages—it requires wit, creativity, and an ocean-deep reservoir of knowledge of history and literature and humanity. Michael Cooperson has all of that, plus the most essential, and rarest element: the courage to climb this Everest of world literature. The result isn’t just a translation—it’s a dazzling work of literary creation in its own right, with the linguistic gymnastics of Pale Fire, the genre-switching of Cloud Atlas, and the literary range of 2666.” ~Peter Sagal, Host of NPR’s Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me!
“Both engrossing and entertaining to read.” ~Asian Review of Books
“[An] astounding new adaptation of the Maqāmāt of al-Harīrī… The verbal profusion is ludicrous, joyfully so. Speaking to an interviewer, Mr. Cooperson remarked that the Maqāmāt is ‘a book that shows off everything that Arabic can do.’ Impostures shows off English in the same flattering light, demonstrating its dynamism, its endurance, its mutability and its glorious, weedy wildness. In this way, a translation that is so brazen in its liberties is faithful to the spirit of the original.” ~Wall Street Journal
About the Author: Michael Coopersonis Professor of Arabic in the Department of Near Eastern Languages & Cultures at UCLA. His translations include The Life of Ibn Ḥanbal by Ibn al-Jawzī for the Library of Arabic Literature, and The Author and His Doubles by the eminent Moroccan literary critic Abdelfattah Kilito.
Preliminary Considerations on the Corpus Coranicum Christianum: The Qur’ān in Translation – A Survey of the State of the Art | December 5 – 7, 2018, Berlin
The Corpus Coranicum project requires little introduction to the readers of this blog. Its emerging daughter project, hosted by the FU Berlin, Corpus Coranicum Christianum, developed out of the doctoral research conducted by Manolis Ulbricht, co-supervised by Angelika Neuwirth, on the early Greek translation of the Qurʾān preserved in Nicetas of Byzantium’s Refutation of the Qurʾān (c.870). At present, the long-term goal of this interdisciplinary project is to study qurʾānic translations from the seventh century to the early modern period, in the principal ‘Christian’ languages, i.e. Greek, Syriac, and Latin, comparatively, and to make these texts available online through a synoptic digital edition. The aim of this initial workshop was three-fold: (i) to bring together scholars from various disciplines working on qurʾānic translations; (ii) to establish a methodological framework for a future digital database and a comparative analysis for translation techniques; and (iii) to explore avenues for further collaboration.
The scope of the sources included in this preliminary workshop was intentionally broad, ranging from full translations to quotations, or mere allusions to the qurʾānic text. As most source material is available in Latin, the Corpus Coranum Latinum made up the most prominent part of the programme, with three panels. In a first panel devoted to the earliest sources, the translations by Robert of Ketton and Mark of Toledo were assessed with regards to the issue of the readership (Nàdia Petrus Pons) and the presence of scientific vocabulary (Julian Yolles). In addition, the qurʾānic quotations included in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Latin translations of Arabic scientific treatises were examined (Charles Burnett). A second panel examined the sources through which Latin Christians read the Qurʾān, with papers on the Latin glosses in Latin and Arabic Qurʾāns (José Martínez Gázquez), Robert of Ketton’s use of Ṭabarī’s tafsīr (J. L. Alexis Rivera Luque), and the question of the character of Ramon Marti’s Islamic sources (Görge K. Hasselhoff). The focus of the third panel was on early modern Qurʾān translations, with papers on the sixteenth-century translation by Egidio da Viterbo (Katarzyna K. Starczewska), the seventeenth-century translation and commentary by the Jesuit, Ignazio Lomellini (Paul Shore), and the recently discovered 1632 translation by Johann Zechendorff (Reinhold F. Glei). Finally, a presentation of the ERC-funded project on the Qurʾān in European cultural history, which will commence soon, should also be mentioned here (Jan Loop).
The single panel of Greek Qurʾān translations covered both the first appearances of the Qurʾān in Byzantium, as well as the late Byzantine Period. The former period was addressed with papers on the linguistic character of the eighth – ninth-century Greek translation, especially its non-classical vocabulary (Erich Trapp), and the historical background of Muslim-Byzantine rivalry behind its emergence (Jakub Sypiański). The late period involved papers appraising the knowledge of the Qurʾān and Islam by Gregory Palamas (Evangelos Katafylis) and John VI Cantacuzene (Marco Fanelli)
Papers on the Corpus Coranicum Syriacum, the language least represented at this workshop, were presented on the qurʾānic quotations in the Arabic disputation of Abū Qurra with the Caliph al-Maʾmūn, which were compared with those contained in the Garshuni version of the Legend of Sergius Baḥīrā (Yousef Kouriyhe), and on the double/triple occurences of qurʾānic verses in Dionysius Bar Ṣalībī’s Disputation against the Arabs (Alexander M. Schilling).
A special panel on the interdisciplinary nature of the overall project and its implications was entitled Corpus Coranicum Christianum – A Digitalized Trial Version. It consisted of papers on the Greek translation preserved by Nicetas of Byzantium (Manolis Ulbricht), the Syriac excerpts from the Qurʾān in Dionysius Bar Ṣalībī’s Disputation against the Arabs (Bert Jacobs), and the Latin translation by the seventeenth-century Fransiscan Germanus de Silesia (Ulisse Cecini). Prior to the workshop, these three scholars had agreed to provide micro-editions of selected common passages (Q 3:42-7; 90:1-4; 112), which were digitally processed in an online interactive edition by Joel Kalvesmaki (see http://textalign.net/quran/). The trial session continued with a presentation on the make-up and functions of this tool (Joel Kalvesmaki), and concluded with a brief comparison of the translation techniques applied to the selected materials.
Besides the work on the sources themselves, the workshop gave special attention to the use of digital humanities in the study of qurʾānic translations. This included an introductory workshop on the goals and techniques of the DH (Nadine Arndt, Oliver Pohl), as well as presentations on the Paleocoran Project (Oliver Pohl), the interactive digital edition of the New Testament (Holger Strutwolf), Ediarum (Nadine Arndt), and the valence of TEI for editing synoptic editions (Joel Kalvesmaki).
The proceedings of this first Corpus Coranicum Christianum workshop are planned for publication. A second workshop will be held in the near future.
Cover of Penn, When Christians First Met Muslims (University of California, 2015); http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520284944.
The first Christians to meet Muslims were not Latin-speaking Christians from the western Mediterranean or Greek-speaking Christians from Constantinople but rather Christians from northern Mesopotamia who spoke the Aramaic dialect of Syriac. Living under Muslim rule from the seventh century to the present, Syriac Christians wrote the first and most extensive accounts of Islam, describing a complicated set of religious and cultural exchanges not reducible to the solely antagonistic.
Through critical introductions and new translations of dozens of invaluable historical materials, Michael Philip Penn’s When Christians First Met Muslims allows scholars, students, and the general public to explore the earliest interactions between what eventually became the world’s two largest religions, shedding new light on Islamic history and Christian-Muslim relations.
* Description and cover image from publisher product page: http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520284944
Our Annual Meeting in Baltimore, MD (Full Schedule and Registration Details)
By Emran El-Badawi and Gabriel Reynolds (With special thanks to Charles Haws)
The International Qur’anic Studies Association is happy to announce the full schedule of its first annual meeting, taking place in Baltimore, MD from November 22-24, 2013. You may recall our earlier announcement informing you about our exciting program for the first day. See the schedule below, but note that room assignments are still pending.
(baltimore.org)
Given that this is IQSA’s inaugural meeting as well as the heightened public interest, the directors and steering committee have decided to make registration for to all IQSA panels on Friday Nov 22 (including the keynote lecture and response) free and open to the public. Those interested are further encouraged to attend IQSA panels on Saturday Nov 23 and Sunday Nov 24 by paying the registration fee of the Society of Biblical Literature– or – American Academy of Religion. Finally, you are encouraged to subscribe to our blog in order to receive weekly news updates about our meetings, as well as informed posts on Qur’anic Studies today.
On behalf of the co-directors, steering committee and partners we thank you for your enthusiasm and support for IQSA.We look forward to seeing you in Baltimore!
International Qur’anic Studies Association
11/22/2013
1:30 PM to 4 PM
Room: Baltimore Convention Center – 345
Qur’an Manuscripts: Text, Object and Usage
Gabriel Reynolds, University of Notre Dame, Presiding
Aziz al-Azmeh, Central European University, Respondent (10 min)
Discussion (20 min)
International Qur’anic Studies Association
Joint Session With: International Qur’anic Studies Association, Qur’an and Biblical Literature
11/23/2013
4:00 PM to 6:30 PM
Room: Marriott Baltimore Inner Harbor – Stadium Ballroom II
International Qur’anic Studies Association
Joint Session With: International Qur’anic Studies Association, Qur’an and Biblical Literature
11/24/2013
1:00 PM to 3:30 PM
Room: Hilton Baltimore Convention Center Hotel – Johnson B
Theme: Modern Muslim Critics of Bible and Isra’iliyyat
Brannon Wheeler, United States Naval Academy, Presiding
Qur’anic Studies is, now more than ever, a discipline wherein women scholars have demonstrated groundbreaking expertise and leadership.
In the western academy especially, Muslim and Non-Muslim women have helped give shape to the discipline itself. Among the former are scholars like Ingrid Mattson, former president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and author of The story of the Qurʼan: its history and place in Muslim life and Amina Wadud, whose Qurʼan and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman’s Perspective, explores the intersection between Gender and Qur’anic Exegesis. The latter includes Jane Dammen McAuliffe, author of Qur’anic Christians: An Analysis of Classical and Modern Exegesis and editor of preeminent, standard Qur’an reference works like Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an and the Cambridge Companion to the Qur’an. Included in the latter category as well is Angelika Neuwirth, director of the Corpus Coranicum, as well as author and editor of landmark publications including Der Koran als Text der Spätantike; The Qur’an in Context: Historical and Literary Investigations into the Qur’anic Milieu; and several others. Jacqueline Chabbi, similarly, has authored a number of important works on the Qur’an, most notably Le coran décrypté : Figures bibliques en Arabie, préface d’André Caquo.
Among Qur’an translators—most of whom are still men—a handful of women have distinguished themselves and built bridges between the western academy and those in Islamic societies, including Iran. Among them are Laleh Bakhtiar, author of The Sublime Qur’an, and the late poet Tahere Saffarzadeh (d. 2008) who authored The Holy Qur’an English and Perisan Translation with Commentary. In the Arab world the work of Olfa Youssef–author of Le Coran au risque de la psychanalyse— and Asma Hilali continue to both shape and enrich the discipline.
The expertise and leadership demonstrated by women scholars in Qur’anic Studies is perhaps demonstrated best in two recent talks delivered at the Qur’an Seminar, and ongoing conference at the University of Notre Dame co-directed by Mehdi Azaiez and Gabriel Reynolds. Below are the video of the talks delivered by two eminent scholars: Nayla Tabbara (Adyan Foundation, Lebanon) and Maryam Mosharraf (Shahid Beheshti University, Iran).
Lecture of Nayla Tabbara Director of Cross-Cultural Studies Department (Adyan Foundation, Lebanon) “The Qur’ān and Muslim-Christian relations” ; December 6, 2012
Maryam Mosharraf Associate Professor of Persian Language and Literature (Shahid Beheshti University, Iran)“The Qur’ān and Islamic Mysticism”; December 7, 2012
Perhaps the most obvious way in which studying the Qurʾan in the internet age differs from that of ages past is the ease of accessing numerous translations of the Qurʾan. In his 1953 article “Some Minor Problems in the Qurʾān,” Franz Rosenthal analyzes 46 different translations of the term al-ṣamad (Q 112:2). One imagines that his office must have been quite a mess of open books and tattered pieces of paper serving as bookmarks.
Today a single website – islamawakened.com – offers 41 different English translations of each verse with a single click (and tomorrow there may be more). These websites (of which there are a number; maktabah.org, for example, has translations of the Qurʾan in 66 different languages, and al-quran.info into 40 languages) are undoubtedly useful, but in using them a few cautionary notes might be kept in mind.
First, it often seems that the multiplication of verses has a diminishing rate of return; that is, a scholar interested in understanding a difficult Qurʾanic passage (say, Q 3:3-4; 12:110; 13:33; or 108:1), will usually not learn much more about it by consulting 40 different translations, as opposed to 4.
Second, many of these websites categorize translations in religious terms. Islamawakened does so as follows:
1. Generally Accepted Translations of the Meaning
2. Controversial, Deprecated, or Status Undetermined Works
3. Non-Muslim and/or Orientalist Works
The editors of the website put Yusuf Ali’s original translation under category 2, but the later (Saudi-sponsored) edited version of this translation under category 1. Evidently philological rigor may not always be the standard for privileging certain translations. It should also be noted that under “non-Muslim translations” most websites tend not to include those translations generally seen as standard in the academy. Thus George Sale’s outdated English translation is found on most sites, but those current in the academy like Blachère’s French translation and Paret’s German translation are almost never found (this is the case, for example, with both maktabah.org and al-quran.info).
The case of translations suggests that studying the Qurʾan in the internet age can be tricky in its own way. Other cases, however, are more auspicious. Websites with other tools for the study of the Qurʾan — such as tanzil.net and corpus.quran.com — are exceptionally useful, although an explanation of their usefulness will have to wait for a future post!
Impostures 
