“This work”, says the publisher, Lentera Hati, “was not named ‘The Qur’an and its Translation’, because its author, M. Quraish Shihab, was acutely aware that the Qur’an is a holy book that cannot possibly be translated into any other language. All that the exegetes can do is to reveal the meaning, not translate it!”Despite these …
To mark the arrival of a certain president-elect (!), this week’s post concerns another “muntakhab” – a project to standardise Qur’an translation according to the scholarship of Egypt’s Al-Azhar University. “Al-Muntakhab fi tafsir al-Qur’an” is better translated as ‘The Select Interpretation of the Qur’an’. This thread draws numerous points from Stefan Wild’s paper on “Muslim …
Qur’an translation of the week #26: Al-Montakhab Read More »
An Indonesian Qur’an translation for women – does this mean a feminist translation? No. It means that, in a country with a market economy and a large urban Muslim middle class, publishers have discovered women as a lucrative target group of bilingual Qur’an editions, just as there is a substantial market for children’s books teaching …
Qur’an translation of the week #25: Indonesian Qur’an translation for women Read More »
Muhammad Thalib’s “exegetical translation”, first published in 2011, is not so much a translation as it is a counter-translation. It constitutes a direct attack on the religious legitimacy of the Indonesian government, which publishes its own Qur’an translation. That translation, much to Thalib’s discontent, dominates the Indonesian market (see https://gloqur.de/quran-translation-of-the-week-01-al-quran-dan-terjemahnya/). Consequently, criticizing the government translation …
Interlinear Qur’an translation is often considered a thing of the past – but in many contexts, it is alive and kicking! This points to fundamental differences between translations of the Bible and the Qur’an. Translations of the Bible are typically stand-alone texts that are meant to be read and studied by themselves. By contrast, interlinear …
Qur’an translation of the week #10: Interlinear translations from Masjid al-Huda Read More »
“Al-Quräan dan terdjemahnja”, a hugely successful project of the newly-independent Republic of Indonesia, was the first Qur’an translation ever to be commissioned by a government and produced by a committee of scholars. The first volume was published in 1965. President Sukarno’s “Old Order” regime wanted it to represent the revolutionary “fire of Islam”. Sukarno was …
Qur’an translation of the week #01: Al-Qur’an dan terjemahnya Read More »
