Reza Yalsharzeh; Roya Monsefi
Abstract
The weakening of the concept of translation as a one-to-one equivalence between the source text and the target text and the growing attention to audience, which peaked in the 1970s and 1980s, led to the evolution of translation theory and the role of audience. However, most translations of the Qur’an ...
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The weakening of the concept of translation as a one-to-one equivalence between the source text and the target text and the growing attention to audience, which peaked in the 1970s and 1980s, led to the evolution of translation theory and the role of audience. However, most translations of the Qur’an into Persian, although semantic, prefer the style of Arabic writing to the Persian-speaking audience, which causes many harms in the translation of the Qur'an, including the lack of connection between Persian-speaking audiences and these translations. Ali Maleki’s readable translation of the Qur’an, focusing on Persian-speaking readers, has given a completely audience-based approach to the translation of the Qur’an which is free from many of the shortcomings of existing translations of the Qur’an. The present study seeks to compare the semantic translation of Fooladvand and the translation of Ali Maleki with the use of concepts such as Koller’s “pragmatic equivalence” (1979) and Nida’s “equivalent effect” (1964) to show that the audience-based approach to translating the Qur’an makes use of the potentials of the Persian language and is better than semantic translations. It can also help the audience to understand the Qur’anic verses correctly and quickly.