Translation of the Quranic Divine Attributes: (a Gender-Based Approach to the Problems and Strategies)

Iran, ID LLCE2016-282;          The present study was an endeavor to investigate how Quranic Devine Attributes (DAs) appearing in twins were translated into English and Persian by male and female translators; namely Nikayin (2006), Saffarzadeh (2001), and Kusha along with his team (currently under the translation) individually or jointly – in the form of committee. To this end, firstly, certain DAs appearing in twins were selected from the Holy Quran. Secondly, the problems each of the translators faced with were explored based on Miremadi’s framework. Then, based on Chesterman’s model of translation strategy categorization, the types and adoption of the strategies for overcoming the problems by these translators were described. And at the end, the translators` works were compared in terms of the problems and the strategies. The study showed that “lexical compression”, “word class” and “voids” – semantic and syntactic voids -- posed the main body of problems for the translators. Furthermore, it was found that the most frequent strategy adopted by Nikayin and Kusha’s team was “near synonymy”, while Saffarzadeh mostly used “structure change” in her English translation, and “compression” in her Persian translation. Moreover, it was revealed that the most common strategy used by male translators under the study was “near-synonymy”, while the female translator's most commonly used strategy was “compression”. The most frequent strategy used in Persian renderings was “compression” and the strategy of “structure change” was the most frequently used strategy in English translations. The study also showed that the most consistent translation was the one produced by male-female translators jointly. Moreover, a new complementary phase to Showalter’s (1977) historical phases for women’s writing could be implicated from the findings. The new phase could be described as “female-male phase”. Furthermore, the need for the expansion of Miremadi’s translation problems was suggested.

Key words: Divine Attributes, Gender, Semantic Equivalence, Translation Problems, Translation Strategies