Hapaxes in the Qurʾān: Semantic and Cultural Loss in the Translation of fatīl, naqīr and qiṭmīr

المؤلفون

1 قسم اللغة الإنجليزية - كلية الآداب - جامعة حلوان

2 قسم اللغة الإنجليزية- كلية الآداب- جامعة حلوان

المستخلص

Despite the great attention, devoted by classical and modern Muslim exegetes, to various aspects of the Qurʾān, on both the micro-level, i.e., that of the word, and the macro-level, i.e., that of the verse or the sūra, little research has focused on hapax legomena or al-alfā al-waīda, as one of the Qurʾān’s most salient features. As the term signifies, al-alfā al-waīda are the words that occur in the Qurʾān only once, including but not limited to abb, īza, masghaba, al-ṣamad, and others. Specifically, this paper examines the translation of three Qurʾānic words, namely fatīl, naqīr and qimīr, which are basically found upon a date-stone, indicating a whit. These three quantitative words, with which the Arabs were already familiar, are culturally bound terms. To explain, they are idiomatically employed, as in fulān lā yamliku an-naqīr ’aw al-fatīl ’aw al-qimīr, meaning so-and-so experiences want or need. This paper attempts to identify the causes of semantic and cultural loss inherent in rendering them into English, revisiting Baker's (1992) typology of non-equivalence at the word level, in particular, represented by culturally specific or semantically complex concepts in the source text and lack of lexicalization in the target language. Thus, the use of footnotes as a compensation strategy is highly recommended to reduce translation loss, semantically and culturally.

الكلمات الرئيسية

الموضوعات الرئيسية