Translation of Culture-Specific Items in Three Chapters of the Holy Quran: The Case Study of Translators with Different L1 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 (2008) model of translation procedures, which was adapted from Newmark's model (1988). The model was employed by English translators with different L1 backgrounds in their translation of the Holy Quran by Pickthall (1986), Dolati (in press), and Haleem (2004, 2005) as British, Persian and Arabic natives, respectively. The meaning of the data was taken from English Shia exegesis by Tabatabai (1985). 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 L1 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.

Translation of Culture-Specific Items in Three Chapters of the Holy Quran: The Case Study of Translators with Different L1 Backgrounds Keywords:

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