This week we are looking at the poetic Qur’an translation by Theodor Adamovich Shumovskii (1913–2012). Not only is this translation a very unusual piece of work, but the translator’s life is also worthy of a book in itself. Luckily, Shumovskii left behind not only remarkable academic scholarship, works on popular humanities, poetry, and his Qur’an […]
by Lenni Lestari (IAIN Langsa, Aceh) A number of studies on the various works of Qur’an exegesis and translation produced in Aceh have been published, but so far researchers do not seem to have paid much attention to Tengku Mahjiddin Jusuf’s translation of the Qur’an. Produced in 1955, this work is significant because it constitutes
Qur’an translations tend to be categorized in various different ways, but one of the most common means of categorization relates to perceptions of the translator and the style of the translation. Accordingly, Qur’an translations can be put into several categories, such as academic or confessional, humanistic or ‘fundamentalist’, poetic or non-poetic, or ‘traditional’ or ‘modernist’.
The Qur’an is “not the word of a poet” but aspects of structure, rhythm and rhyme certainly evoke aspects of Arabic poetry. Can any of that carry over into translation? Should it? Shawkat Toorawa is Professor of Arabic at Yale, and his approach to teaching and translating the Qur’an draws from his broader interests in
Qur’an translation of the week #41: The Rhyming Cadences of Shawkat Toorawa Read More »
This fascinating work by a Turkish Alevi intellectual, Ali Adil Atalay a.k.a. Vaktidolu, renders the entire Qur’an into Turkish verse, complete with metre and rhyme. It has first been brought to the attention of researchers in Qur’anic studies by M. Brett Wilson, who discusses it in his seminal article on Alevi-Bektashi interpretations and translations of
