The paper titled "Cultural and Lexical Challenges Faced in Translating Some Selected Verses of Surat Maryam into English: A Thematic Comparative Review" investigates the difficulties encountered in translating specific verses of Surat Maryam from Arabic to English. The study focuses on the cultural and lexical challenges that arise in the translation process and how these challenges affect the accuracy and meaning of the translation.
The study examines three prominent English translations of the Qur'an by Mohammed A.S. Abdel-Haleem, Mohammed M. Pickthall, and Mohammed Khan and Mohammed Taj Al-Din Al-Hilali. It aims to identify the lexical and cultural losses that occur in translating the verses and to analyze the strategies employed by these translators to address these challenges.
The researchers utilized a qualitative methodology, analyzing the selected translations to highlight the cultural and lexical challenges. They found that the translators faced significant difficulties in rendering the cultural and linguistic nuances of the original Arabic text into English. These challenges often resulted in losses of meaning and cultural context, which the translators attempted to mitigate through various translation strategies, including literal, verbatim, semantic, and communicative translation methods.
The study concludes that while each translation approach has its strengths, there are inherent limitations in achieving complete lexical and cultural equivalence when translating the Qur'an into English. The findings emphasize the importance of understanding the implicative meanings and cultural contexts of the original Arabic text to produce more accurate translations.