The Effect of the Translators’ Ideology in the Translation of Qur’an

Abstract

This study examines the translation of Qur’an by two translators. Each translator has different ethnic backgrounds such as religion. The study investigates the effect of religions’ ideologies in translating the holy Qur’an. One of the translators is Muslim and the other is Christian. The problem is that ideology of each translator may affect the translation of holy Qur’an negatively causing some difference in meaning while translating the original. The method used in this paper is content analysis methods of ten samples (verses) taken from each translation into English. Each sample contains a verse in Arabic and its translation into English by the two translators where George Sale is a Christian and Abdel Haleem who is a Muslim. The samples are based on Fairclough (2002), Hatim and Mason (2005), Chesterman (1997), Venuti (2005) and Nord (1991). The study concludes a meaningful reading of English version of Qur’an by a Muslim translator who is not going to be affected by different ideology rather than other translators of different religions’ ideologies. Ideologies are the tools that the translator manipulates to give different intention to the ST.