Linguistic Problems and Challenges Faced by Translators in Rendering the Positive Character Traits in the Holy Quran into English: Justice as a Model

Abstract

This study intends at investigating the linguistic problems and challenges the translators of the Holy the Qurʾān face while rendering the Quranic justice words as the positive character traits from Arabic into English. It is based on the rendition of three professional translators namely, Mohammed. A. S. Abdel Haleem, Mohammed. M. Pickthall and Mohammed Khan and Mohammed Taj Al-Din Al-Hilali. The translations offer a hoc basis for the investigation of the linguistic problems and challenges while translating Qurʾānic texts into English in general and the Quranic justice words in particular. The corpus for the current study contains the translations of the positive character traits in the Holy Qurʾān namely, justice. The three rendered texts are compared to the interpretations of the commentator, whom the three translators have been conversant with, for example, Ibn Kathir (2007), Alt-Tabari (2003), Tafsir al-Jalalayn(2007) in order to probe the commentators' impact on the three translators as well as to which extent they maintain the intensity of the Message in general and the Quranic justice words in particular and determining to which extent the translations reflect their implied meaning in the target text. The study reveals that the translators of the Holy Qurʾān, compared to other literary genres, encounter many linguistic problems and challenges in rendering the Qurʾānic ST message in general and the Quranic justice words in particular that attributed to contextual, and socio-cultural causes which make differences and give rise to gaps or absence of lexicalization in the target text (English)