A study of the Effect of the Translator’s Religion on the Translation of Eschatological Terms in the Holy Qur’an by Newmark’s Procedures

Abstract

The current study aims to compare and analyze the translation of the eschatological terms in the Holy Qur’an as rendered in English translation of three well-known translators namely, Arthur J. Arberry (1996), N.J. Dawood (2003) and Tahereh Saffarzadeh (2014). It attempts to examine the effect of the translator’s background religion and belief on the translation of the Holy Quran into English. Another aim of this study is to collect eschatological terms which have connotative meanings and how these three translators transfer these terms in the Holy Quran translations, using Newmark’s procedures (1988). To achieve the goals of the study, thirty eschatological terms from thirty verses in the Holy Quran were selected. The Persian Interpretation of the Holy Qur’an by Makarem Sirazi (2010) and Almizan Exegesis (1987) by Alameh Tabatabie were used First the three English equivalents of terms in each verse and how each translator dealt with this term were compared, then the comparisons were classified and analyzed based on the Newmark’s procedures to find out which procedures will use more by the three translators. The findings obtained from the analyses based on the Newmark’s procedures (1988) indicated that “Through- translation” used more often than any other translation procedures.