The Possible Reasons for Misunderstanding the Meanings of Puns in the Holy Quran from Arabic into English

Abstract

The Holy Quran is the central point of Islam and is the link, which connects humanity (the creation) with Allah (the creator). Translation of the Qur'an is still a problematic issue for each translator in the Islamic theology due to the Quran has numerous Islamic terms/words that hold multiple or double meaning, which causes problems in translation. These problems are due to the dissimilar translations of puns (tawriyah) and the misinterpretations between the intended meanings of puns with their inherent notions, which could result in a certain amount of ambiguity. Translators and interpreters of the Qur’an face numerous difficulties that make their translation an impossible task to be able to cater for this fact in their translations, consequently; they end up translating the superficial sense, which leads to tremendous loss of semantics, and rhetoric features. This research deals with the challenges of translating the meanings of puns (tawriyah) meanings from the Quran into English. The study examines the Quranic text and its two widespread English translations by Yusuf Ali (2014), Pickthall (1993). The research corpus is based on several verses (Ayat) selected from the Holy Quran. The study employs Delabastita᾿s (1996) typology of horizontal puns in order to apply it on the Holy Quran and identify the types of puns employed in the Quranic text. The objectives of the study are to determine the types of English puns that were produced by the two translators in the Quranic text according to Delabastita᾿s (1993) typology, to identify causes for misunderstanding the meanings of puns in the Holy Quran from Arabic into English.