Problematicity of Translating Some Selected Arabic Qur'anic Collocations into English: Linguistic, Stylistic, and Cultural Perspectives

Rendering the Arabic Qur'anic collocations into English has always been a burdensome and daunting job. It is ever more problematic than the rendition of any genre. The recent research is a caveat-lector attempt that seeks specifically to investigate the problematicity of translating some selected Qur'anic collocations into English that is from linguistic, stylistic


Introduction
Research up to now has evidenced that collocations play a functional role in the effective utilization of languages whose use mirrors an idiomatic use of a language.Moreover, they have an adhesive purpose and create a particular meaning that is from the meaning of their constituent elements (Qassem, 2021;Izwaini, 2016).Understanding collocation is fundamental in translating from source language text to target language text because it allows the translators to transfer the stylistic characteristics of the original language text to the language receptor or target audience.Collocations are a gripping linguistic phenom in translation in general and the Quranic translation in particular.To attain native-like competence, translators have to improve collocational proficiency besides other aspects of linguistic competence.(Contreras,2010;Henriksen, 2013).Cowie (1981) defined a collocation as ''a composite unit which permits the substitutability of items for at least one of its constituent elements (the sense of other elements, or elements, remaining constant''.Moreover, Chan & Liou, 2005) opine that the term collocation refers to "the natural cooccurrence of a string of words whose meaning is inferable from literal concepts''.Larson(1984) states that 'collocation is concerned with how words go together, i.e. which words may occur in constructions with which other words'.In his turn.Larson (1984) also warns: The translator must constantly be alert to the potential pitfall of collocational clashes in the translation.To avoid this, he will consider as suspect any word not used in its primary sense.If translated literally, it will probably cause a clash.( 147) The Noble Qur'an is full of rich collocations.Some of these Qur'anic collocations are intensely and profoundly cultural.If the source language text culture and target language text culture is diverse, 'there will be instances when the source text will contain collocations which convey what to the target reader will be unfamiliar associations of ideas' (Baker, 2011).In that same vein, Farghal & Shannaq (1999) relate the predicament of rendering Qur'anic collocations to the certitude that they bear special linguistic and semantic characteristics that are culturally specific yet so extensive in meaning that equivalents in target text do not exist'.
One of the difficulties that we encounter with Quranic translators is how to render collocations.Many Quranic collocations are sometimes misrepresented to the intended audience or receptors because of a lack or inadequacy to perceive their linguistic, stylistic, and cultural facets.(Therefore, the importance of the translation of Quranic collocations in some verses is examined in this research paper.

The present study
The goal of the current research paper is twofold.The first is to throw light on how the Quranic translators cope with Quranic collocations when rendering them into English and whether the translated text has satisfied the cultural and stylistic features of the collocations or not.

Questions of the study
To achieve the above-mentioned twofold objectives, the study poses the following questions: RQ1.: What are the problems that impede the translation of the Qur'anic collocations into English from stylistic and cultural perspectives?RQ2.: To what extent do the three selected Quranic translators of the Noble Qur'an adequately translate the style and culture of the Qur'anic collocations into English?RQ3.What are the translation strategies utilized by the three selected Quranic translators in their renderings of the Qur'anic collocations into English?

Related Literature 4.1 The Concept of Collocations:
The term collocation etymologically is stemmed from the Latin col-locare/: '' to collocate ''which means '' to keep company '' or to '' put together ''. ( Larson 1984;Hamad, 2020;).Collocation is a global linguistic phenom.Collocations are typical, specific and characteristic word combinations.( Gibbs,1990).Benson and Ilson (1986:) define collocations as "loosely fixed combinations" of the type to commit murder, taking up a position between "idioms, on the one hand, and free combinations, on the other".Manning and Schütze (1999) define Collocations as a word combination whose semantic and/or syntactic properties cannot be fully predicted from those of its components and which therefore has to be listed in a lexicon In the 1930s, J. R. Firth coined the term collocations for such regular feature word combinations (as he named them).In his turn, Firth (1957 )defined collocations as'' abstraction at the syntagmatic level [that] is not directly related to the conceptual approach of the meaning of words''.Beyond the Neo-Firthian tradition, the term collocation has appertained to a broad spectrum of lexicalization phenomena to ensure the existence of a group of intensional definitions.Collocations are usually situated somewhere in the gray zone between fixed idioms and free combinations, often in a phraseological scheme.( Burger , et al.,1982;Evert, 2005;Krenn, & Evert, 2001,).Based on such definitions, collocations could be defined as conventional expressions that have a symmetrical pattern and do not change in a variety of contexts.

The Role of Collocation in Translation
Translationally speaking, collocations play a prominent role in translation because they aim at conveying the import of the source language text to the effectiveness and efficiency of the receptor, having the same impact on the target language text audience as it does the source language text on the source language text people (Alhaj,2015;Ghazala, 2008;Chiaro, 2008;Abdelkarim, & Alhaj, 2023).).Newmark (1988, as quoted in (Qassem,2021) states that the translator: [. ..] will be 'caught' every time, not by his grammar, which is probably suspiciously 'better' than an educated native's, not by his vocabulary, which may well be wider, but by his unacceptable or improbable collocations.Thus, sticking to the collocational formalities of the target language text implies attaining fidelity of the rendition, for instance, idiomatical expressions (i.e. and nativelikeness).(Protopopescu, 2015; Qassem,2021 ;Newmark,1988).
One of the dilemmas that translators encounter is how to render collocations.Many collocations are sometimes misrepresented to the intended audience because of a lack of identity in their linguistic, stylistic, and cultural aspects.Translators may strive to realize collocations when they emerge in the source language text or encounter difficulties in understanding their intentional meaning, especially as linguistic lexemes that inherently collocate in the source language text may not collocate similarly in the object-oriented language.As stated by Baker (2011) that, collocational examples often convey senses that are culturally specific, and she recommends translators to elude pursuing source language examples that are anomalous of the target language text except if there is a reasonable ground for accordingly.Baker (2011) also claims that 'translation of culture-specific collocations involves a partial increase in information'.According to Dweik and Shakra(2011) The difficult task of translating Arabic collocations into English is further aggravated when the translation of collocations deals with a religious text.Most of the problems encountered are due to the specificity of certain lexical items, which are rooted in the structure of the language and are deeply immersed in Arabic culture.( 10) In conclusion, rendering collocations is also a mountain to climb and an arduous task in that it is inadequate to render the items of the collocation only but also the semantic and cultural features equally.Another concern that can be met when rendering collocations is when the translator is, as Barnwell (1980) named it, "carrying over" the collocation from the source language text to the target language text, which seems abnormal and obscure for the target audience.

Related Previous Studies
Even though there is a colossal and huge amount of literature reviews on the renderings of the Noble Quran into the English language, very scanty studies on the translation of the Qur'anic collocations were carried out; for example, Ali (2019) explored the problems of rendering the Quranic Arabic collocational phrases into English.The research shows that literal translation and the verbatim translation may sometimes distort the meaning of the collocations discovered in the source language text, while free translation is able to communicate a greater sense of their implicative meaning.Qassem (2021) probs style and meaning in translations of the Qur'anic verb-noun collocations into English.The study exposes that linguistic and exegetical analyses are merits for appropriate rendering, which avoid divergence in meaning and rendering loss.It is also discovered that Qur'anic collocations employ special rhetorical devices and tropes, which impede and hamper their natural and appropriate translation into English.Bahumaid (2006) investigates collocation in English-Arabic translation.Findings revealed that collocations show a major challenge to translate from English into Arabic and contrariwise even for skilled and expert translators.The difficulty arises from, among other things, the significant differences in the collocability of lexical items in both Arabic and English.
Al Sughair (2011) conducts a study which ventures to throw light on how translators cope with collocations when conveying their implicit meaning to the target language text and whether the target text implements the linguistic and stylistic features of the collocations or not.The study demonstrates that calque translation seems to be the most common strategy in rendering collocation in literary texts.Al-Sofi, Maros, & Baker (2014) examine the problems that translators encounter when rendering Qur'anic collocations into English.Findings show that the paramount problems of rendering cultural collocations are retaining source language text, literal sense, realising collocations and culturally specific senses.Findings also show that it is difficult to tackle such problems; however, it is necessary that translators grasp the meaning of the source language text to its linguistic and cultural extent.Hamad (2020) studies collocations in the Noble Qur'ān and their renderings in English.The study concentrates on the rhetorical utilization of these collocations and underscores the difficulties.Quranic translators face in translating them.Findings show that the Quranic translators sometimes founder to mirror the rhetorical sense of Qur'ānic collocations and their rhetorical impact in the target language (English).

Research Methodology
This section of the present investigation purports to emphasize the methods of research used by the two researchers in data gathering for the ongoing research.

Research paradigm
A qualitative research approach was espoused to examine the problematicity of translating some selected Qur'anic collocations into English; The research approach is predicated on extrapolating the review of literature through a study for qualitative research studies of the previous investigation that explored the same problematicity.The present research approach is employed to elucidate and evidence many concerns in; this investigation, the first one, there is the problematicity encountered in rendering Qur'anic collocations into English.The second one is particularly important to spotlight and knuckle down to how to address this problematicity that is from linguistic, stylistic, and cultural perspectives.

Sampling of the Study
The current investigation purports to study from linguistic, stylistic, and cultural perspectives the problematicity of translating some selected Qur'anic collocations into English in three selected Quranic translations of Abdel-Haleem, Mohammed M.Pickhall, Muhammed M.Khan, and Mohammed Hilali.The twofold goal of the current investigation is to shed new light on how these Quranic translators cope with Quranic collocations while rendering them into English and whether the translated text has satisfied the cultural and stylistic features of the collocations or not.The study also intends to identify the translation strategies utilized by the three selected Quranic translators in their renderings of the Qur'anic collocations into English.In this context, the two researchers conscientiously and prudently chose some samples that comprise Quranic collocations by AbdelHaleem, Mohammed M.Pickhall, Muhammed M.Khan and Mohammed Hilali.

Data Collection
To fulfill the twofold objectives of the investigation, the analytical-qualitative research method is used by the two researchers.Moreover, this method is consistent with the recent study because the translation of the Noble Quran is a daunting and challenging task and cannot be exceedingly and greatly investigated employing any other possible methods.De facto, some Quranic collocations are collected and analyzed by the two researchers that are in the three outstanding translations of the meanings of the Noble of Mohammed, A, S, Abdel Hakeem, Mohammed M.Khan and Mohammed Taj Al-Din Al-Hilali and Pickthall.

Results and Discussion
In the present section of this study, some collected examples of the problematicity of translating some selected Qur'anic collocations encountered by the Quranic translators are analyzed by the two researchers to determine linguistic, stylistic, and cultural perspectives as well as translation loss.Also, the subsequent section of the study pursues to pinpoint the translation strategies and procedures adopted by the three Qur'anic translators, notably Mohammed, A, S, Abdel Hakeem, Mohammed M.Khan, and Al-Hilali.

The meaning of verse (29) of Chapter (22) sūrat‫الحج‬ Al-Hajj,) The pilgrimage
Then let them complete the prescribed duties (Manâsik of Hajj) for them, meaning ending Ihram by shaving one's head, putting on one's ordinary clothes, trimming one's nails and so on.and performing their vows, i.e., sacrificing the camel(s) that the one has vowed and circumambulate the Ancient House (the Ka'bah at Makkah).In reference, it is to the obligatory circumambulation (Tawaf) on the day of Sacrifice.(Ibn Kathir, Vol.3) of translational coincidences with the interpretation.Finally, Al-Hilali and Khan employed a free translation which hits a high degree of translational coincidences with the interpretation.

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To conclude, Quranic translators should not be restricted by the construction of the source language text; instead, they require to employ various strategies to convey the meaning of the source text( Arabic) into the target text(English).

Conclusion
In conclusion, in exploring the problematicity of translating some selected Qur'anic collocations into English that is from linguistic, stylistic, and cultural perspectives, it was found that the three Qur'anic translators, Mohammed, A, S, Abdel Hakeem, Mohammed M.Khan, and Al-Hilali and Pickthall did not a follow particular translation method or strategy when rendering Qur'anic collocations into English.In the aggregate, their renderings were achieved by adopting addition translation, literal translation, free translation, and semantic translation (see Tables 2 and 4).Some of the selected translations flop to transfer the connotative meaning of Qur'anic collocations scrupulously, and hence they have weak connotations.On the contrary, some renderings succeeded in conveying the implicative meaning of Qur'anic collocations, and hence they have strong connotations.(See Tables 1 and 2).The findings of the study show that the most commonly utilized translation method or strategy to translating the embedded meaning of Qur'anic collocations was that of verbatim translation or literal translation, and they also indicate that this resulted in a great loss of the intentional meaning, deform the perfect translation of Qur'anic collocations that is from linguistic, stylistic, and cultural perspectives.