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Saif
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5611 days ago
122 posts - 208 votes 
Speaks: English*, Arabic (Levantine)*, French

 
 Message 25 of 32
02 February 2010 at 7:33pm | IP Logged 
Tombstone wrote:
Saif wrote:

I'm all for translations, as long as they are accurate. There are many poor
translations of the Qur'an that bigots use to bash Islam and Muslims. That's what
concerns Muslims. If you know Arabic, you would know that translating the Qur'an is a
more difficult task than translating the Bible.

Off-topic: If anyone is looking for a good translation of the Qur'an, I recommend Tarif
Khalidi's "The Qur'an: A New Translation".




You may be on to something there, but it cuts both ways.

I know a gentleman who graduated from the Defense Language Insitute Arabic program with
emphasis on the dialect spoken in Iraq. He then spent just over two years in Iraq.

He spent much of his free time there reading/studying the Qur'an in Arabic. He states
it helped with language maint. and gave insight to the people he dealt with every day.

No, he is not Muslim and had no plans to convert.

He says that when he returned to the U.S. (Detroit) he was able to acquire English-
language Qur'ans from three different mosques.

He then did side-by-side comparisons with the Arabic Qur'an he brought back from Iraq.

What he noted was that a number of the more "controversial" (his words) passages were
either altered or omitted altogether in the English language Qur'an.

Was the motivation to deceive? I don't know.
Was it to prevent misuse of passages by non-Muslims? Possiblty.
Could it have just been a poor translation? I have no idea.

But if it was done intentionally, is this acceptable?
Does this make those who did this translation "bigots" as well?


It does cut both ways. There are some Muslim and non-Muslim bigots who translate the
Qur'an for their own political-religious agenda. The reasons are varying. With regard
to your friend, I'd have to know the specific translations to answer your question
fully. The translator may have abrogated some verses. It may be intentional, it may be
due to poor Arabic and English skills where certain words have more than one meaning
within the context of the chapter and verse. It's tough to translate that concisely
into English without having a lot of footnotes to clarify. As for "controversial"
verses, you can't interpret the meaning of a verse from that verse alone. This should
make intuitive sense. Everything has a context. That's why you have many books of
tafseer using the Qur'an, Sunnah and hadiths to interpret the meaning of the Qur'an.

FYI: I don't like the popular Yusuf Ali translation. It robs the Qur'an of its poetic
nature (in Arabic, there's prose, poetry, and Qur'an ... not my quote) and he does
water down the Arabic to appease the Western reader. I read the
Qur'an in Arabic, but studying different translations is a hobby of mine. I'm not happy
with most of them. But that's my opinion. Some Muslims (and non-Muslims) disagree with
me.

Edited by Saif on 02 February 2010 at 7:39pm
1 person has voted this message useful



Paskwc
Pentaglot
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 5676 days ago
450 posts - 624 votes 
Speaks: Hindi, Urdu*, Arabic (Levantine), French, English
Studies: Persian, Spanish

 
 Message 26 of 32
02 February 2010 at 8:30pm | IP Logged 
Ulmo wrote:
Paskwc wrote:

True, but I wonder how much Islam's population boom will actually effect language
learning in the Americas. Even in so called Islamic places such as Pakistan, Iran, and
Malaysia, Arabic takes a back seat to the likes of English and French. Similarly, South
America, which is predominately Roman Catholic, does not show much interest in
Latin.


There's a great difference between Islam and Christianity concerning the holy books:
translating the Bible into as many languages as possible has been firmly encouraged
over the last few centuries, while a good Muslim, in order to avoid mistranslating, is
supposed to read the Qur'an in its original language.

After all, Latin isn't even Bible's original language.


I think we will all agree that within all religions, ideologies, and secular
philosophies of life, there is a void between what the clergy insists upon and what
ordinary people deem feasible. With regards to Islam, yes, it is true that many members
of the clergy view translations of the Quran disdainfully. This, however, does not mean
that Muslims worldwide are clamoring to learn Arabic. Instead, most are happy to
delegate spiritual matters to the Arabic speaking clergy, just as Catholics entrusted
their Latin speaking clergy for centuries. In light of this, I think the logic behind a
relationship between an increased number of Muslims in the world and predictions of an
increased number of Arabic speakers is thin; especially when we're talking about a
population boom within a linguistically diverse group on one continent effecting the
language learning of another group on another continent.

Edited by Paskwc on 02 February 2010 at 8:47pm
1 person has voted this message useful



lichtrausch
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5959 days ago
525 posts - 1072 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Japanese
Studies: Korean, Mandarin

 
 Message 27 of 32
02 February 2010 at 8:44pm | IP Logged 
neurosport wrote:

I am pretty sure anybody growing up with broadband internet will know English.

You should visit Japan and South Korea...
1 person has voted this message useful



Saif
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5611 days ago
122 posts - 208 votes 
Speaks: English*, Arabic (Levantine)*, French

 
 Message 29 of 32
02 February 2010 at 11:03pm | IP Logged 
Tombstone wrote:
Saif wrote:
   As for "controversial"
verses, you can't interpret the meaning of a verse from that verse alone. This should
make intuitive sense. Everything has a context.




-- My answer to that would be "Yes and no."

Be it the Qur'an, the Bible, The Declaration of Independence, the works of Plato,
Solzhenitsyn or even Dr. Suess, sometimes a single statement does indeed speak for
itself.

- "Love your neighbor as yourself."
- "All men are created equal."
- "It is only the dead who have seen the end of war."
- "A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny."
- "I do not like green eggs and ham."

But one must err on the side of caution. But if you read a passage along with the
passage before and after, with the full sentences before and after, or within the
context of the entire chapter, at some point the argument "You took it out of context"
loses its potency.

As with the Bible, you can't simply say that it is taken out of context because the
book itself is one of love and righteousness.


Sometimes a single statement does speak for itself, but it must be obvious that there's
no other way to interpret it. If the statement is "God created the Heavens and the
Earth...", that does not need any context. It's absolute. But if the statement is,
"kill the unbeliever", then certainly you need to examine that sentence within the
context of what's going on within the chapter or less you're going to reach some very
negative conclusions.
1 person has voted this message useful



Sennin
Senior Member
Bulgaria
Joined 6033 days ago
1457 posts - 1759 votes 
5 sounds

 
 Message 31 of 32
03 February 2010 at 7:42pm | IP Logged 
lichtrausch wrote:
neurosport wrote:

I am pretty sure anybody growing up with broadband internet will know English.

You should visit Japan and South Korea...


Korean is a relatively big language on the web, bur even for smaller languages there it is enough of a non-English web. It's possible to stick to your native language.

See this http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm

Edited by Sennin on 03 February 2010 at 7:56pm
1 person has voted this message useful



Saif
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5611 days ago
122 posts - 208 votes 
Speaks: English*, Arabic (Levantine)*, French

 
 Message 32 of 32
03 February 2010 at 8:34pm | IP Logged 
Tombstone wrote:
Saif wrote:

Sometimes a single statement does speak for itself, but it must be obvious that there's
no other way to interpret it. If the statement is "God created the Heavens and the
Earth...", that does not need any context. It's absolute. But if the statement is,
"kill the unbeliever", then certainly you need to examine that sentence within the
context of what's going on within the chapter or less you're going to reach some very
negative conclusions.


-- Having never read the Qur'an I will defer to you on this.
Could you please give the "kill the unbeliever" quote in the context it is found to
show there is more to that statement than meets the eye?


http://al-quran.info/#&&sura=9&aya=5&trans=en-shakir&show=bo th&ver=1.00

The "kill the unbeliever/idolater" is one sentence of the highlighted verse 9:5 of the
above link. Read from 9:1 to 9:11 for the context. It explains the details of a
historical contract and the conditions and rules of fighting. Since this isn't a
religion forum, please PM me if you have more questions. I don't think the mods like
that we're having this discussion.   

Edited by Saif on 03 February 2010 at 8:35pm


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