A Descriptive Study of Coherence in Seven English Translations of the Surah An-Naba

This study is concerned with coherence in seven translations of the Surah al-Naba’ in the Holy Qur’an. Considering Charroles’ (1983) descriptive model that establishing coherence may involve adding new information to the target text, it aimed to find the frequency of supplemental and explanatory coherence and reveal whether translating coherence may result in an explicated translation or not. For this purpose, Charolles’ (1983) dichotomous modes of coherence in translation, namely supplemental (implicitation) and explanatory (explicitation) was considered as the framework of the study. The data to be analyzed were selected according to the method of purposive data collection in sacred scriptures. Also, seven renditions of the Holy Surah al-Naba’ by seven celebrated translators were taken into account, and the coherence relations were discovered by the interpretations to unravel the frequency and essence of the translated verses. The results indicated that most renditions had the same coherence level compared with the source text, by providing only minimal information existing in the verse, which was most often in accordance with the mode of supplemental coherence. As the nature of explicitation is still hypothetical in translation, the results of the study would offer a great opportunity to improve renditions in case of Qur’anic translations.

A Descriptive Study of Coherence in Seven English Translations of the Surah An-Naba Keywords:

Explanatory coherence , source language , Supplemental coherence , Surah An-Naba , Target text