The Effect of Explicitation on Translation Coherence: A Case of English Translation of Qur’anic Verses

Abstract

A main concern in translation from initial times has been how to translate a text, i.e., a translator should use a literal or a free translation. It has especially been the most controversial matter in all religions in the interpretation of Holy Scriptures into another language, as translators have to deal with ideologies and beliefs. In this vein, in the present study, the model proposed by Vinay and Darbelnet (1995) was applied to study the effect of explicitation on translation coherence of the first 13 surahs of Juz 30 of the Holy Qur’an. To this end, five English translations of those parts in which the translators had to add something meaningful into the target language were investigated to see how explicitation may affect the coherence of the content. The results indicated that, for the most part, using explicitation procedure in transferring meaning from source language to target language not only removed the ambiguity but also strengthened the coherence of the text, though in some renditions, translators preferred to keep loyalty and didn’t add anything to the source language. Also, in a few cases inserting more words made it redundant which disturbed the coherence