We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2012
The Qur'ān is both inimitable and untranslatable. Yet many attempts have been made to imitate it and to translate it, even by Muslims themselves, despite the total prohibition or disapproval of such action on the part of religious authority.
ORIENTAL TRANSLATIONS
Many translations into the oriental languages of Islam exist. Persian translations have been recorded by Storey and Turkish by Hamidullah, preceded by Birge. The list of eastern languages in which translations exist is a long one; Chauvin knew of the following: Armenian, Arvi (Tamil written with Arabic characters), Bengali, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindustani, Javanese, Macassarese, Malay, Panjabi, Persian, Pushtu, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Tamil and Turkish. To this already long list we can add Amharic, Assamese, Burmese, Chinese, Georgian, Syriac. A translation into Maltese is being undertaken. Professor Muhammad Hamidullah has been active in publishing samples of translations. His Quran in every language came out in a third edition in Hyderabad-Deccan in 1936; at the time he had available in manuscript a fourth edition which gave examples of translations in 102 languages. A similar series of specimens, giving the first, short chapter of the Qur'ān (the fatihah) in a large number of languages, was published in Lapensee chiite (III–XII, 1960–2) and in a revised form in France–Islam(11, 1967 onwards).
AFRICAN LANGUAGES
In African languages several versions have been made into Swahili, including one produced by the Ahmadiyya community, whose Uganda Mission also produced one in Luganda in 1965.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
