Although most of the relatively tiny Muslim population of the Republic of Korea (around 150,000 out of a total population of some 51 million) are foreigners, for example foreign students or migrants, there are already three full translations of the Qur’an into Korean. The most recent (and probably the most popular) is the translation by …
A guest contribution by Marina Pyrovolaki, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Theology School The Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat (AMJ) published their first ever translation of the Qur’an into Greek in 1989, as part of their longstanding project to translate the Qur’an into multiple languages, exactly one hundred years after the Ahmadiyya was first founded in 1889 in …
Qur’an translation of the week #170: Ahmadiyya missionaries and the Qur’an in Greek Read More »
Over the last few years, the Saudi-based Rowad Translation Center (Markaz Rawwād al-Tarjama) has grown to become one of the biggest private publishers of Qur’an translations. It publishes translations into a number of languages and is the main caretaker of the multilingual website QuranEnc.com, one of the biggest sources of Qur’anic interpretations on the web. …
Qur’an translation of the week #165: The Rowad Translation Center – A Saudi Charity Read More »
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, …
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 …
If an ordinary Muslim for whom Russian is the mother tongue were asked today to recite Sūrat al-Fātiḥa from memory, it is very likely that their recitation would be based on Elmir Quliyev’s translation of the Qur’an. The ubiquitous presence of this Qur’an translation in print and online apps, and on peoples’ tongues, reflects the …
A guest contribution by Azhar Majothi, University of Nottingham (azhar.majothi@nottingham.ac.uk) Darussalam International is one of the Muslim Anglosphere’s most recognisable brands in Islamic book publishing today. Since its establishment in Riyadh in 1986, the publisher claims to have printed more than 1,400 ‘authentic’ Islamic titles in various world languages. Despite the publisher’s achievements, little is …
The history of this translation of the Qur’an into Portuguese, printed by the King Fahd Qur’an Printing Complex (KFQPC) in 1425/2004 and widely distributed all over Brazil, has its roots in the mid 1980s. In 1984, the Muslim World League contracted a scholar of Arabic called Helmi Nasr (1922–2019) to translate the Qur’an into Portuguese. …
Qur’an translation of the week #139: Nobre Alcorão: the Qur’an in Portuguese Read More »
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 …
The Conveying Islamic Message Society (‘Jamʿiyyat Tablīgh al-Islām’, or CIMS) is one of the oldest Islamic non-government organizations in the world, and is especially interested in Islamic missionary activity, or daʿwah. The ‘call to Islam’ has always been its main priority, and it directs its mission to both Eastern and Western audiences. Now operating from …
