In the final ever instalment of ‘Qur’an translation of the week’, we present an ambitious ongoing project to translate the Qur’an into the language of the Rohingya, an oppressed and persecuted Muslim community from Myanmar, which has an added significance because it demonstrates the role that Qur’an translations can play in the preservation of endangered […]
A guest contribution by Sheam Abdul Aziz Khan, Cardiff University Although Muḥammad al-ʿĀṣī’s translation, The Ascendant Qur’an: An English Translation of the Meanings of the Qur’an, is relatively new on the translation scene, having been published only in late 2023, some iteration of its previous incarnation, as a constitutive element of al-ʿĀṣī’s tafsīr (also published
The history of one of the most popular English translations of the Qur’an, that of the Indian-British scholar Abdullah Yusuf Ali (1872–1953), is also a story about editorial changes to published works, in this case leading to at least three revised editions. The 1946 edition of Yusuf Ali’s, which was reprinted up until the 1980s,
In 1995, two preachers from Port Louis, the capital city of the island of Mauritius, published a Qur’an translation into Mauritian Creole. Le Saint Qur’aan did not actually claim to be a direct translation of the Arabic Qur’an, however, but was rather presented as a rendition of an Urdu Qur’an translation, the Kanz-ul-Īmān by Ahmad Reza Khan Barelwi (1856–1921).
It would be hard to dispute that ‘Saheeh International’ (first published in 1997) is one of the most popular modern interpretations of the Qur’an in English. This work has a few notable aspects that distinguish it from other works in the genre. First of all, it is the product of teamwork, rather than an individually-authored
When a translator entitles his work The Textual Translation For The Qur’an The Supreme in an attempt to render the Arabic phrase al-tarjama al-naṣṣiyya li-l-Qurʾān al-Majīd into English, this is a clear indication that he is taking the concept of ‘literal translation’ to the extreme. And indeed, this is the explicit aim of Abdulaziz F.
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 »
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
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
While QTOTW#140 covered Darussalam’s main publishing projects in English, and QTOTW#138 their translation into French, this post goes further in presenting their Qur’an translations into other languages. A Saudi-based multilingual international publishing house, Darussalam now operates in more than thirty countries and is positioned as one of largest publishers of translations of the Qur’an in
