Translation of Culture-Specific Items in Three Chapters of the Holy Quran: The Case Study of Translators with Different L۱ Backgrounds

Translation of religious texts, including the Quran, is a topic of interest to Translation Studies researchers. Recently, an increasing number of studies in this field have focused on translating culture within the source text. This study aims to highlight how cultural-specific items (CSIs) are translated in selected chapters of the Quran. To achieve this, data were collected from selected verses of three chapters of the Quran (Al-Baqarah, AL-Imran, and An-Nisa chapters), and analyzed using Ghazala's (۲۰۰۸) model of translation procedures, which was adapted from Newmark's model (۱۹۸۸). The model was employed by English translators with different L۱ backgrounds in their translation of the Holy Quran by Pickthall (۱۹۸۶), Dolati (in press), and Haleem (۲۰۰۴, ۲۰۰۵) as British, Persian and Arabic natives, respectively. The meaning of the data was taken from English Shia exegesis by Tabatabai (۱۹۸۵). The most frequently used procedure by all translators was cultural correspondence. While the dominance of cultural correspondence in the analyzed translated verses shows that the three translators attempted to translate culture, insufficient paratextual references may cause partial loss of meaning. The findings showed that L۱ background could affect the translator's habitus in terms of translation choices in religious texts. This research has implications for translators, translation educators, teachers and students, as well as policy makers in publishing religious texts.

Keywords:

intertextuality , Culture-specific items , Quranic Translation , Translation Studies