Stylistic and Semantic Incongruities in the Earliest Purported English Translation of the Qur’an by Alexander Ross

• Main Author: Prof. Dr. Abdus Salam Khalis
• Format: Article
• Language: Arabic
• Published: SZIC University of Peshawar 2017-06-01
• Series: الإيضاح
• Online Access: http://al-idah.szic.pk/index.php/al-idah/article/view/86

Recognizing the unequivocal importance of English as the only and uncontested medium of global communication for disseminating the universal message of the Qur’an, this paper analyzes the ways in which translational incompetence or substantial incongruities could distort the very essence of the actual text and meaning of this last and eternal message of Allah. Taking selected parts of the first two “ruku’s” of surah al-baqara as a case study, it traces some salient instances of such deviation in the earliest purported English rendering of the Qur’an by Alexander Ross done in the middle of the seventeenth century. Besides attempting to make readers wary of such misleading attempts, it also aims at inculcating in them a sense of distinguishing the authentic works of genuinely qualified renderers from such ill-motivated and ill-informed purported translations.