RENDERINGS OF
THE HOLY KORAN IN ENGLISH
"No doubt, the peculiar circumstances
of history which brought the Qur'an into contact with the
English language have left their imprint on the non-Muslim
as well as the Muslim bid to translate it. The results and
achievements of their efforts leave a lot to be desired.
Unlike, for instance, major Muslim languages such as
Persian, Turkish and Urdu, which have thoroughly exhausted
indigenous linguistic and literary resources to meet the
scholarly and emotional demands of the task, the prolific
resources of the universal medium of English have not been
fully employed in the service of the Qur'an."
- Translating the Untranslatable: A Survey of English
Translations of the Quran by A.R. Kidwai. Published in The
Muslim World Book Review, Vol. 7, No. 4 Summer 1987
The Holy Koran was
revealed in Arabic and cannot be "translated" into another
language. This is generally agreed among Muslims. There can
be no such thing as a "translation". Of all books, the
semantic and linguistic characteristics of the Koran are so
intimately bound into the original sounds of the Arabic that
it is utterly beyond "translation" in any ordinary sense. It
can only be "rendered" into another language in order to
give a mere impression of its most obvious level of meaning.
Jews believe the same of the Torah in Hebrew. It can be
rendered into another language but never truly translated.
The Hebrew itself is sacred. In Islam, the Arabic Koran is
sacred - the very speech of God.
Rendering the Koran into
English is therefore a perilous undertaking from the outset.
Muslims and non-Muslims have tried and failed. It is
nevertheless a matter of great importance that the Muslim
Holy Book be made more accessible to English speakers. If
Islam is not to appear as an alien and exotic faith to the
Anglosphere then the Koran must be demystified and brought
into a reasonable English rendering. The following are some
notes upon the major attempts to bring the Koran into the
English language:
Note - The
best procedure for English speakers is to use Pickthall's
rendering as the base text and to then compare it to others
such as Asad and Arberry. This will, in most cases, give an
accurate impression of the surface meaning of the Koranic
text and may, in some cases, give an impression of nuances
in the original.
GEORGE SALE
Mainly of historical value but also a
useful source of alternative renderings, George Sale's
classic "translation" is, in places, far better than modern
opinion allows. Sale at least attempted an "objective" and
"neutral" rendering for the purposes of Western scholarship.
PALMER
E. H. Palmer's version was published in
1880. It was a major undertaking by an English "orientalist"
and widely read in its time. The footnotes are sometimes
useful but the whole work leaves much to be desired. It
barely improves on Sale. There is little to recommend this
translation today.
REVEREND
RODWELL
A hostile rendering by an anti-Muslim
Christian missionary. Made popular in the Everyman series
and widely read in the earlier decades of the 20th century.
Rodwell attempts to reorder the surahs so as to expose the
Prophet Muhammad as a charlatan who took advantage of Arab
simpletons. The rendering itself is sometimes eloquent and
the footnotes are sometimes scholarly, but the whole
enterprise is undermined by Rodwell's lack of sympathy for
the entire Muslim faith. His work was motivated by
missionary concerns and this is reflected throughout.
MUHAMMAD MARMADUKE
PICKTHALL
Pickthall's heroic rendering is the great
English rendering, even if it must be admitted that it has
its faults, including an archaic idiom that has made it date
beyond the scope of contemporary Muslims. Pickthall - a
convert to Islam and a prolific writer - was urged by voices
from throughout the Muslim world to attempt a rendering of
the Holy Book into English. He was the most lucid English
spokesman for Islam in his time. He rendered it into a bold,
virile but extremely faithful English, archaic but noble. He
has stayed very close to the Arabic, capturing its stark
beauty and economy. This is still the preferred text in
English.
ARBERRY
This is the rendering preferred by
secular scholars and academics in the English speaking world
- mainly because Arberry was a secular scholar and academic
like them. His rendering is coloured by his "orientalism"
and his English is sometimes less than robust, nevertheless
it is a fine work with a supposedly "objective" and
"clinical" attempt at bringing the Arabic original into a
noble English. Muslims tend to frown on Arberry's efforts,
but mainly because the so-called 'Muslim" world has not come
to terms with the fact that the West is essentially
post-Christian. A rendering of the Koran made by a
post-Christian Western scholar is quite a different thing to
one made by a Christian polemicist, but the distinction is
too subtle, it seems, for Muslim externalists to grasp.
After Pickthall, Arberry's is the best rendering in English.
Sometimes Arberry is better than Pickthall, but there are no
grounds for supposing that Arberry is the only "scholarly"
translation and no real basis for it being the "scholar's
choice".
DAWOOD
Made popular by being published by
Penguin in various editions. Dawood's interests were
primarily literary in nature. He has no great sympathy for
the Muslim faith, as such. His rendering has many virtues,
including clear English prose, but it is no match for the
renderings of Pickthall or Arberry. Muslims are apt to shun
Dawood's work because he is Jewish. This is not the problem.
His rendering does not reflect supposed Jewish bias. Rather,
the problem is that he lacks insight into the spiritual
value of the text and consequently his rendering is somewhat
flat and prosaic and does not reflect the majesty and
spiritual qualities of the original.
MUHAMMAD
ASAD
This very good rendering is banned in
Saudi Arabia. The translator is a Jewish convert to Islam,
formerly Leopold Weiss, the Austrian journalist (d. 1992).
The English is restrained and clear and the annotations are
sane and erudite and refreshingly independent of Saudi
ideological domination. However, Asad takes interpretative
liberties, especially in regards to supposed "scientific"
aspects of the Koranic revelation. He translates the "seven
days of creation", for example, as the "seven aeons of
creation" to make the text conform to scientific assumptions
about evolution. The real value of this work is in the
copious footnotes.
YUSUF ALI
Yusuf Ali's translation was first
published in 1934. It is not a particularly good rendering
but was favoured by the Saudi regime and so promoted
throughout the English speaking world with Saudi money.
Consequently, it has wide exposure and has been the
preferred translation of English speaking Muslims such that
many Muslims will trust no other version. Many Muslims are
unaware that its popularity is due not to its innate merit
but to Saudi sponsorship. The writing style is florid and
verbose in contrast to the rugged economy of the original
Arabic. As well as this Yusuf Ali has seen fit to
interpolate his own verse summaries throughout the text. His
footnotes are copious but give an externalist, naturalistic
interpretation. It is a rendering that is far more widely
read than it deserves to be.
AR-RAJHI REVISION OF
YUSUF ALI
In 1989 the Saudi Arabian banking
corporation Ar-Rajhi financed the U.S.-based Amana
Corporation to revise the rendering of Yusuf Ali in order to
bring it more in line with Saudi ideology. The Ar-Rajhi Bank
then supplied free copies of the revision to schools,
libraries and mosques throughout the world. It is viciously
anti-Jewish and infected with hatred of Christians and other
non-Muslims. A noxious revision of Yusuf Ali.
HILALI &
KHAN
The Noble Qur'an in the English Language.
Rendered by Muhammad Hilali and Muhammad Muhsin Khan. This
quite offensive translation of the noble Word of Allah
Almighty is now the most widely disseminated Koran in most
Islamic bookstores and Sunni mosques throughout the
English-speaking world thanks to Saudi endorsement. It is
supported by the University of Medina and distributed freely
throughout the world by the Saudi government. The whole
translation was Saudi financed and reflects Wahabi
fundamentalist ideology. It was designed to replace the
rendering of Yusuf Ali. It is the "official" translation
approved by Muslim externalists. Fundamentalist ideology is
obvious throughout. The entire translation is marred by
Muslim supremacist attitudes and spares no opportunity to
offend Jews and Christians. It is a hateful rendering that
empties the Koran of its depth and spirit. The translators
often take enormous liberties by interpolating whole
sentences that are not in the original. It is a travesty and
a blasphemy, the rendering of choice for fanatics and
haters.
RASHAD
KHALIFA
Billed as "Quran: The Final Scripture,
the authorized English version" this is the rendering of the
Quran-only sect started by the late Rashad Khalifa who also
proposed the famous "Nineteen Code" encryption of the
Koranic text. It is a surprisingly fluid rendering with some
virtues - simple English, modern idiom, useful
sub-divisions. But it is also marked by Khalifa's wild
theories and his hysterical hatred for the Sunnah of the
Prophet - upon whom be peace. Worse, the whole enterprise
took hold of Khalifa's ego and he started to believe he was
God-sent, a latter-day prophet. This work is therefore
deeply heretical. But it sometimes offers an interesting
alternative rendering of difficult passages.
SHAKIR
The work attributed to a M. H. Shakir
published in 1983 is worthy of some consideration, but it
rarely offers renderings that surpass Pickthall or Arberry.
The English is felicitous but also somewhat limp and
unmoving. It has been widely distributed. The rendering
makes little or no improvement on editions that came before
it. There is on-going controversy about the authorship of
this work. It has been claimed that it is a plagarized
reworking of a 1917 translation of M. M. Ali of the
Ahmadiyya Movement. Moreover, it is claimed that M. H.
Shakir is a pen name of an unknown plagarist. Mohammed Habib
Shakir, the supposed writer, was an Egyptian Islamic
jurisprudent who died in 1939. Why then was his Koran not
published until 1983? And there is compelling evidence, in
any case, that the real M. H. Shakir was opposed to any
translation of the Koran.
BEWARE OF THE
TRANSLATION OF HILALI & KHAN!
TOWARDS A
REVISED PICKTHALL
The main complaint with the
Pickthall rendering is that it uses archaic English which
causes contemporary readers unnecessary difficulties. For
this reason the present author (Abdu Razzaq Blackhirst) is
working on a revision of Pickthall in which the language is
up-dated without any significant changes to Pickthall's
admirable efforts. The necessary amendments are not
difficult to make. Pickthall's "thou art" becomes "you are",
"cometh" becomes "comes", "doth" becomes "does", "speaketh"
becomes "speaks", "verily" becomes "truly", "knewest"
becomes "knew" and so on. Thus the following passage:
2: 35. And We
said: O Adam! Dwell thou and thy wife in the Garden, and eat
ye freely (of the fruits) thereof where ye will; but come
not nigh this tree lest ye become wrong-doers.
when revised becomes:
2:35. And We
said: O Adam! Dwell you and your wife in the Garden, and eat
you freely of its
fruits where you
will; but come not near this tree unless you become
wrong-doers.
This retains a certain archaic
flavour - after all, the Koran is in classical, not modern,
Arabic - but it is considerably easier for modern readers.
This revision of Pickthall - with
additional notations - is a work in progress. Pickthall's
rendering remains the best in English and should serve as
the basis for a definitive English version rather than
attempting an entirely new translation. New translations are
not necessary. Far better that we work to bring Pickthall up
to date and make good its modest flaws.
NEW
RENDERINGS
Towards an unambiguous
Koran. In search of a noble contemporary English.
Comments are invited on my new "experimental" renderings of
the Koran.
Surah Ya Sin - A New
Rendering in English
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