French

Qur’an translation of the week #200: The Brave New World of machine translation

There is no reason to assume that the field of Qur’an translation remains untouched by the commercial opportunities inherent in machine translation and the predatory use of online content. And, indeed, if you search Amazon.com for English Qur’an translations, one of the many options offered to you is a prime example of both phenomena: The […]

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Qur’an translation of the week #177: The quest for a ‘translation of the middle way’: AbdAllah Penot’s Le Coran (2005)

Some translations are known for their controversial choices. Others come across as ostensibly uncontroversial, which is precisely their point and their selling proposition: Addressing those many Muslim and non-Muslim readers that have no predetermined ideological expectation of a Qur’an translation, they strive to represent a ‘middle way’ and to avoid flagging any kind of sectarian

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Qur’an translation of the week #168: The Turkish afterlife of a global scholar: Muhammad Hamidullah’s French Qur’an translation in Turkish

Aziz Kur’an is a Turkish Qur’an translation based on Le Saint Coran by Muhammad Hamidullah. Producing such a translation of a translation is an unusual decision given that there are already dozens of Qur’an translations on the Turkish market from the original Arabic. It speaks to the renown and appeal of this illustrious and prolific

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Qur’an translation of the week #155: Postcolonial ambivalences in West Africa: The Fula Qur’an translation by Oumar Bâ

In a period in which, one after another, the countries of francophone Africa gained independence, the renowned West African intellectual Oumar Bâ (1917–1998) embarked upon writing the very first Qur’an translation into the Fula (or Fulani, or ‘Peul’ in French) language. Or at least, it was the first translation that was put down in writing,

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Qur’an translation of the week #152: Between Mauritius and Saudi Arabia: The trilingual Qur’an translations of Houssein Nahaboo

On the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, a dentist called Houssein Nahaboo (1920–2000) published Qur’an translations in no less than three languages – Mauritian Creole, French and English – during the 1980s. Through the lens of the small Muslim community of Mauritius in general, and Nahaboo’s work in particular, we can observe both the local

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Qur’an translation of the week #146: Noor International: An emerging Saudi Arabian publisher of Qur’an translations

In around 2018, another publisher that specializes in ‘translating the meanings of the Holy Quran into international languages’ emerged in Riyadh, registered as ‘Noor International.’ During its first four years of operation, this publishing house has produced English, French, European Spanish and Latin American Spanish translations of the Qur’an. For its English translation, it simply

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Qur’an translation of the week #145: A meeting of languages and cultures: A French Qur’an translation from colonial Mauritius

In 1949, Zainul Abedin Rajabalee, a schoolmaster living on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, published the first part of his Qur’an translation. In the introduction, he wrote ‘If we are not mistaken, this is the first work of this kind in French’ – by which he meant the first to be written by a

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Qur’an translation of the week #138: Inspiration and plagiarism in translation: Cheikh Boureïma Abdou Daouda’s French Qur’an translation, published by Daroussalam

When does a translation draw inspiration from its predecessors and when is it plagiarized? The French Qur’an translation published by the private Saudi daʿwa-oriented publisher Daroussalam certainly raises this question. Compare these two translations of Q 100 (Sūrat al-ʿĀdiyāt): The one on the left was produced by Cheikh Boureïma Abdou Daouda from Niger and published

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Qur’an translation of the week #131: The ‘scientific miracle’ of the Qur’an brought to French readers: Le Noble Coran, Algiers 2022

The most recent French Qur’an translation, published in 2022, is also the first to be published in Algeria since the country became independent from France in 1962, or actually since the publication of the very first French Qur’an translation undertaken by Muslim authors, which appeared in 1931. This is probably at least partly due to

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Qur’an translation of the week #130: ‘To every age its book’: An Exiled Post-Ottoman’s The Wisdom of the Qur’an (La sagesse coranique)

In 1935, the Orientalist publishing house Paul Geuthner in Paris published posthumously the last oeuvre of an exiled Turkish Muslim who had only just died of a heart attack en route from Alexandria to Europe. This work, a partial Qur’an translation titled La sagesse coranique (‘The Wisdom of the Qur’an’), was printed at the behest

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