STYLISTIC ANALYSIS THE ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF SURAH REHMAN: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF MULTIPLE SOURCES

Abstract

The aim of this study is to present stylistic analysis of English translations of Surah Rehman. Translation of the Holy Qur’an is a difficult task since the Qur’an is no ordinary text. This divine book is loaded with pragma-linguistic and cross-cultural limitations. The translation from Arabic to English involves careful understanding and interpretation of the message contained in Arabic and its transference to English language. For the current study, translations of the Qur’an by five translators (both Muslims and non-Muslims) were used for analysis. The first six verses of the Surah Rehman were analyzed for the current study. Every word was coded in terms of grammatical category like Object, Event, Abstract and Relational. The findings of the study show that the Muslim translators like Abdullah Yousaf Ali and Dr. Tahir ul Qadri were subjective according to believes and culture of Muslims. They not only followed the sense for sense approach in translation but also provided explanations in parenthesis. On the other hand, the Non-Muslim translators relied on content, style and choice of words whereas machine translation adopted word to word approach.