Linguistic Obstacles Faced in Translating Some Unique Qur’anic Cultural Lexical Items into English: Reexploring Some Translation Approaches

Abstract

This research paper aimed to identify the linguistic obstacles met in translating some unique Qur’anic cultural lexical items into English through the lens of translation approaches. The study used a qualitative descriptive method and Nord’s (1991) text analysis model in translation. The findings showed that the most used approach to translating the implication of Qur’anic cultural lexical items was that of word-for-word and verbatim translation, and this resulted in a deep meaning loss and manipulating the perfect translation. The study also found that Al-Hilali and Khan’s and Abdel-Haleem’s translation approach, contrastingly, seems to be predominantly translated text-oriented, and thus conforms to the strategy of free translation, putting pivotal descriptive details in brackets, footnotes, or as a paraphrasis. The study concluded that Pickthall was inclined to resort to a literal translation strategy, which often gives rise to obscurity and problems because it does not consider the idiomatic meaning and implicit meaning of the Qur’anic Cultural Lexical Items.