Can the Quran be translated?

Question

In the religion of Islam, the mainstream view is that the Quran cant be translated. Many Muslims believe its wrong to even try.

Think about this for a minute. There are 1.6 billion Muslims, the vast majority of which dont know Arabic. Therefore, straight away you can deduce that the majority of Muslims havent even investigated the validity of their faith because that would require learning arabic and reading the original Quran.

Is it true that Arabic cant be translated? First of all, when it comes to anything written fourteen hundreds years ago, in any language, you can do nothing else but translate. The original Quranic Arabic is not spoken today, thus an Arab is really no better equiped to knowing the certain meaning than anyone else.

So, no one on earth can be one hundred percent sure what is the "true meaning". In fact, when you read a "translated" Quran from a credible scholar, you are more likely to get the meaning than by trying to read the original as a non-scholar.

The reason why Muslims claim that it "cant be translated" is to insulate the Quran from analysis. Since few people know arabic, and no one knows true "Quranic arabic", no one can criticise the Quran.

Its circular reasoning at its finest. There are no errors in the Quran because you cant know the true meaning of the Quran!

Answer 1

Obviously, since it HAS BEEN translated, then it CAN be.

I think that one reason why many muslims don't WANT it translated is that translation exposes all of the faults, errors and failures.

Answer 2

A little correction here. The Quranic arabic is the same arabic that is spoken today and the official language in many arab countries. It is true that in some countries we use slang, and street languages, yet arabic has always been and will always be the same. Watch the news in any arab channel if you don't believe me.
Second, there is absolutely no reason that prohibits the translation of the Quran in any language, but only on some conditions:
*That readers be aware that this is merely a translation as interpreted by the translator (a human), so it is prone to error and subjectivity.
*That it could not be used for worship and praying. It only serves non-arabic speaking individuals to understand the meanings of the Quran. If you want to pray you will have to memorize even the smallest verse that will do the job.
One of the great miracles of the Quran is that it has preserved the Arabic language in its original form (see what happened to Latin for example). It also kept countries of the Middle East, and North Africa in lingual unity for more than 1400 year, and I think that was one of the reasons why the British and French occupations were trying to impose there languages as the official languages in the past decades.

By the way, learning arabic might seem to be hard but it is not impossible. Many students come from Pakistan, India, England, Italy, America, Eastern Europe, ...etc., study arabic and the Quran in our Arabic countries, and in a few months they can speak arabic better than us mother-tonguers.

Answer 3

The true, complete form of the Quran is in the Arabic form, yes. While translations are made, and are good to learn from, Muslims understand this is only one (or simply a few) person's/peoples view of the Quran. That's why it is suggested that people learn Arabic and understand the Quran. Nevertheless, the translations are helpful in the beginning for people to understand the jist and then continue on with more knowledge.

And, what do you mean by "Since few people know arabic"? Have you realized that actually, quite a few know Arabic? Look at the middle east.

Answer 4

I am not a muslim but i have an english copy of the Qur'an. Whether or not it is theologically sound to translate is open to debate but the idea that many of the worlds muslums are ignorant of their own religion is inaccurate considering that the Qur'an has actually been translated. I am assuming of course that if there are english translations than other languages exist as well...

Answer 5

there is no way arabic can be translated into anyother language correctly but the translated versions are close enough, however, somtimes this can cause misconceptions about the religion so i'd prefer to learn arabic in order the understand the quran correctly

Answer 6

we can't translate but we can say what it means and why people tried to do that but their was no words that matches with it each time they tried they couldn't find the right word to fit Arabic is very hard i know . but their are qurans Arabic English Arabic french and other languages
but they didn't translate the word they explain what does it mean only . hope that i helped

Answer 7

Translation of the noble Qur'an through Yusuf Ali... @ sisi : Yeah he must learn the bible, and discover what a bigoted, hypocritical and to not point out unscientific ebook it particularly is... which variant must he learn? Greek or Hebrew? Nearly all of the important texts were altered or not noted so anybody with a sane brain could surely waste their time studying it.

Answer 8

you can translate it but you must know that it will loss some meaning by translation cuz Arabic is complex and I dont think translation can give full meaning
any way this is translation of Quran to 25 Language
http://quran.elshabab.com/web/tragem.php?VerseNo=7&SuraNo=1&ShowByPartNo=1&PartNo=1&Action=English

Answer 9

I have two copies in english, one given to me by muslims. I think they prefer if you become a muslim that you also start to learn arabic. So it is obviously being translated. Without errors? well that's another story.

Answer 10

What we mean is the Quran cannot be translated 100% without any errors. Just look at the Bible it is available in so many forms and has so many errors.