Mohammad (Marmaduke) Pickthall (1930), an esteemed Muslim translator of the Qur’an, highlights the symphony and the sound features of the Holy Message and concludes that the Qur’an is not imitable:
The Quran cannot be translated […]. The book is here rendered almost literally and every effort has been made to choose befitting language. But the result is not the Glorious Quran, that inimitable symphony, the very sound of which move men to tears and ecstasy. It is only an attempt to present the meaning of the Quran- and peradventure something of the charm in English. It can never take place of the Quran in Arabic, nor it is meant to do so.
From a linguistic point of view, language and culture-bound linguistic and rhetorical features are simply ‘inimitable’ and ‘unproduceable’ into other languages to a “satisfactory level that can create an equivalent mystical effect on the target audience similar to that on source language readers” (Abdul-Raof, 2001:12). They represent unique examples of linguistic and cultural untranslatability (ibid).
Al-Ghazali (1991, as cited in Abdul-Raof, 2001: 111) expresses his opinion on the impossibility of Qur’an translation. He (ibid) regards this mainly due to “the loss of rhetorical values and other secondary meanings which words denote.”
Another defendant of untranslatability is Asad (1980: ii, as cited in Abdul-Raof, 2001: 111) who declares that the Qur’an displays the ultimate beauty of expression and has no match in its ‘syntactic and rhetorical constructions and use of acoustic stress.’ He (ibid) continues that all this makes it ‘untranslatable.’
Another, yet, linguistic contributor to the untranslatability of the Qur’an is its texture which lies in the heart of Qur’an translation. Qur’anic texture is the main source of untranslatability. (Abdul-Raof, 2001: 109).
For Irving (1985: xxiv- xxi, as cited in Abdul-Raof, 2001:37) the Qur’an is literally impossible to translate and any accurate version is really a ‘Tafsir or commentary’ in the TL.
Arthur J. Arberry (2007: iii) regards the Qur’an a masterpiece and agrees with the orthodox opinion on the untranslatability of the Qur’an, which holds that the Qur’an, mainly due to theological factor, is inimitable. He states:
Since the Koran is to the faithful Muslim the very Word of God, from earlier times the orthodox opinion has rigidly maintained that it is untranslatable, a miracle of speech which it would be blasphemous to attempt to imitate. It is thus the duty of every believer to learn to understand its meaning in the original Arabic.
The very title of his book quite clearly proves his idea regarding the untranslatability of the Qur’an. He wisely and appropriately titles his work ‘The Koran Interpreted’. As discussed earlier, this brings to the mind that no translation of the Qur’an is ever to be found a substitute, but a mere reflection of its meaning. Arberry (ibid: xi) refers to this in his following account:
I have called my version an interpretation, conceding the orthodox claim that the Koran (like all other literary masterpieces) is untranslatable […].
Feqhizadeh (1995/1374: 154) quotes part of Tafsir Kashef on the impossibility of translating Word of Allah:
Translating Word of Allah and casting it in human languages is like squeezing the sea in a bowl and measuring the sunlight with a scale (my translation).
However, Rahimy (2004:26) doubts the existence of such concept as untranslatability and the reason he provides for this is that “despite all assertions on the concept, it does not seem to have the characteristics claimed”. He goes on to say that “the concept ‘untranslatability’ turns out to be developed and embroidered based on certain principles and perhaps conventionalized ones. Further, the existing difference or the variety among the attitudes toward the pieces of reality internalized by human beings form the world around them” (ibid).
Nejadhaqiqi (2009/1388:34) regards translatability as an issue which is treated on two extremes:
On the one hand, some ascribe the real authenticity and value of a work of art to its untranslatability, on the other hand, linguistics and discourse analysis hold that every word is translatable (my translation).
Mansouri (2004/1383:58) reflects upon translatability of religious texts and believes in a sort of conditional translatability. He says that “religious texts are translatable, but its translatability is of a certain kind” (my translation).
Pym and Turk (1988/2001: 276) believe that:
If something is not translatable here and now, in the particular translation situation we are looking at, it may nevertheless be quite translatable in another time and place, in a past or future state of the target language […]. Translatability would thus depend on the target language, and especially on the translation culture existing within it.
The untranslatability attached to the Qur’an is, as discussed before, mainly because of its divine nature which carries in itself very profound meanings in concise Ayahs. One can imagine the extreme difficulty of translating Ayahs of such quality and the serious challenges posed by looking at the translations so far done. What is crystal clear is that there has been no translation so far to capture all the features of the Qur’an. As a result every type of translation made till today, either literary, word-for-word, poetic, exegetical or explanatory suffers from shortcomings specific to itself. This means that every one of them while gaining and preserving some features of the Message, fails to capture the rest. Loss and gain is a very natural phenomenon when dealing with sensitive texts such as the Qur’an. In the following section I will try to elaborate on the concept of equivalence which is ‘the heart of translation problem.’
۲٫۵ The Problem of Equivalence Among languages
While (un)translatability of the Divine Message may prove pretty controversial, the problem of finding equivalence in the target language has proved to be even more challenging. It is a fact that there has not been a unanimous agreement on the nature of equivalence among translation scholars. Snell-Hornby (1995: 22, as cited in Abdul-Raof, 2001: 5), believes that equivalence is not a suitable basic concept in translation theory. She discusses that:
The term equivalence, apart from being imprecise and ill-defined (even after a heated debate of over twenty years) presents an illusion of symmetry between languages which hardly exists beyond the level of vague approximation and which distorts the basic problems of translation (ibid).
Hatim and Mason (1990:8, as cited in Abdul-Raof: ibid), maintain that absolute equivalence is not something achievable. They (ibid) instead opt for “the closest possible approximation to the source text meaning.”
Now the notion of approximation seems to be the prevailing term in translation arena, because as Belloc (1931a&b: 37, as cited in Nida, 1964:159), advocate “there are no such thing as identical equivalents.”
Nida (1964:156) also talks on a similar ground, thus stating that “since no two languages are identical, either in the meanings given to corresponding symbols or in the ways in which such symbols are arranged […] there can be no absolute correspondence between languages.” Hence, there won’t be any exact translation and that the total impact of a translation can be close to the original but not identical.
Jager (1975, as cited in Newmark, 1998:140), also believes that “the concept of the ideal translation is unreal.”
Baker (1992: 6, as cited in Abdul-Raof, 2001:5), also draws our attention to the fact that “although equivalence can usually be obtained to some extent, it is influenced by a variety of linguistic and cultural factors and is therefore always relative.”
Nida (1991:62) talks of the lack of synonymy within a language. He (ib
id) believes that there are no absolute synonymy within a language. Even if two terms denote the same thing, they “will almost always differ in connoting active aspects of meaning.”
Simms (1997: 6, as cite in Abdul-Raof, ibid), in a similar fashion stresses that “interlingual translation is impossible in a pure form, since just as there is no such thing as pure synonymy within a language, there is no such thing as pure lexical equivalence between languages.”
Nida in his older work (1964:53) accentuates the impossibility of absolute communication between persons, because, as he (ibid) alludes to, “no two people employ precisely the same symbols for the same types of experience and no two people employ the same symbols in exactly the same ways.” Although, it must be said that he believes in the possibility of “a high degree of effective communication” (ibid: 55).
Larson (1984: 153, as cited in Abdul-Raof, ibid), likewise makes the point that “since the target language is spoken by people of a culture which is often very different from the culture of those speaking the source language , this will automatically make it very difficult to find lexical equivalents.”
Thus one cannot hope to achieve total equivalence, as multiple layers of meaning in languages and the cultures in which they flourish are drastically different. Therefore, “the ideal of total equivalence is a chimera” (Bell, 1991: 6, as cited in Abdul-Raof, ibid: 7).
Nida (1975:48, 88) asserts that “Related ‘experience’ is broken up by languages into arbitrary segments.” (See further Nida 1964:81.)
Finally Abdul-Raof (ibid) gives a similar note of warning that “a translator who aspires to achieve total lexical and/or textual equivalence is chasing a mirage: total equivalence at any level of language is impossible, relative equivalence at any level is possible.”
One can discern the difference among languages by the fact that even “animal cries are differently recorded in many languages” (Newmark, 1993:15).
Other important factors which contribute to the disagreement between languages, such as phonological, grammatical, and lexical make Newmark (1998:138) call translation “an unnatural, artificial and artistic activity.”
The above accounts lead us to believe that non-equivalence among languages is a universal fact and a natural phenomenon.
Larson (1984: 57, as cited in Abdul-Raof, ibid: 9), makes the point that “lack of equivalence among languages at lexical, textual, grammatical, or pragmatic level is a common fact and a problem which is always encountered by translators.”
An example of disagreement in lexical significance is provided by Nida (1964:94). He (ibid) refers to a word like coon, a shortened form of raccoon, which is a ‘contemptuously figurative name for Negros’, but the equivalent of the term in question may ‘produce a culturally favoured figurative expression.’
Dagut (1978, as cited in Abdul-Raof, ibid: 10), holds the view that “semantic voids such as environmental, cultural, lexical and syntactic are unique examples of non-equivalence among languages.”
However, Newmark (1993:63) seems to be rejecting the idea that the number of words in a language is an indication of its capability to produce accurate translation. He (ibid) refers to R. Clabourne’s Life and Times of the English Language and states that English language has three times as many words as any other language and English dictionaries have 400 to 600 thousand words, therefore, in principle, “it should be easier to produce an accurate translation into English than into any other language, as English should have fewer lexical gaps.” He (ibid) concludes that words cannot necessarily help with an accurate translation as the other language may employ numerous meanings to a single word.
The limitations in the specific vocabulary of a language is certainly no indication that its speakers cannot make detailed distinctions […]. Lack of vocabulary does not indicate conceptual or cognitive inferiority: it only indicates that speakers of such languages have not found it necessary to make distinctions […] (Nida, 1975:188).
Languages differ considerably from on another syntactically, semantically and pragmatically (Abdul-Raof, ibid: 9). But “there may be cases where meanings of words may overlap between languages” but these meanings won’t cover all the semantic field of a word. Therefore, all translated texts “represent varying degrees of paraphrase” because the meaning of words and texts depend so largely on the corresponding cultures” (Nida, 1997: 189-195, as cited in Abdul-Raof, ibid).
Due to the non-equivalence among languages, the source text, here the Qur’an suffers structural changes and semantic and stylistic loss which is quite inevitable in translation.
Any Qur’anic structure threaded in its specific language will prove to be seriously challenging. This may be due to the fact that by reading any word or structure in a specific source language certain cultural, social and religious meanings are activated in the mind of the SL audience. The reason behind this seems to be the fact that native SL readers tend to make a connection between the linguistic items and the cultural, social, historical, and religious meanings inherent in those elements. This is while when a native TL reader reads the TL rendering of the same SL text, s/he is baffled, mainly because those meanings are absent in the TL and as a result there can be no connection established, or as a relative solution the reader relates these linguistic elements to already-known or similar meanings. This later happens when the reader sees an enough amount of meaning overlapping between words.
The main barrier in the issue of equivalence seems to be lying in the cultural aspect of terms. Nida (1964:161) discussing the problems of correspondence in translation, confers equal importance to both linguistic and cultural differences between the SL and the TL and concludes that “differences between cultures cause many more severe complications for the translator than do differences in language structure.”
Polysemy seems to be another problem of equivalence. As we know a term can come to acquire quite different meanings in different contexts. As Mansouri (2004/1383: 60) states a word contextualized differently in one language displays different semantic features in those different contexts (my translation).
It should be noted that complete and absolute equivalence is not possible among languages mainly because semantic fields covered by two terms in two different languages do not completely overlap. Therefore, only part of their semantic features overlap. Mollanazar (1997:6, as cited in Mansouri, 1386:60), in this regard divides the relationship between words into a number of sections and believes that “only one of these sections overlap in two languages” (my translation).
Russel, (as cited by Jakobson 1959) believes that equivalence among languages is of a nonlinguistic nature. If one has no nonlinguistic acquaintance with a word, s/he cannot understand that specific word. He says: “no one can understand the word “cheese” unless he has a nonlinguistic acquaintance with cheese”.
This is while Jakobson (ibid) holds the idea that any representative of a cheese-less culinary culture will understand the English word “cheese” if he is aware that in this language it means “food made of pressed curds” and if he has at least a linguistic acquaintance with “curds”.
Jakobson (ibid: 1) challenges Russel’s statement regarding the significance of nonlinguistic acquaintance with words. Jakobson continues that “we never consumed ambroisa or nectar and have only a linguistic acquaintance with the words “ambroisa,””nectar” […], nonetheless, we understand these words and know in what context each of them may be used.
He (ibid) believes that the meaning of “any word or phrase whatsoever is definitely a linguistic-
or to be more precise and less narrow- a semiotic fact.” He carries on his argument saying that “against those who assign meaning (signature) not to the sign, but to the thing itself, the simplest and truest argument would be nobody has ever smelled or tasted the meaning of “cheese” […]. There is no signatum without signum.” In his idea the meaning assigned to “cheese” “cannot be inferred from a nonlinguistic acquaintance with cheddar or with camembert without the assistance of the verbal code” (ibid).
He (ibid) further continues his argument stating that “the meaning of any linguistic sign is its translation into some further alternative sign, especially a sign “in which it is more fully developed”.
As it seems Jakobson (ibid), while accentuating the linguistic aspect of translation, implicitly refers to the fact that any unfamiliar linguistic sign can be interpreted and understood by means of language.
This simply means that even if a word lying within a language which is not understood by the user of a specific language, the user can ‘resort circumlocution, synonymy though not complete, or other words.’ In the case of other languages the whole message is replaced by the equivalent message in the target language.
He states that “a faculty of speaking a given language implies a faculty of talking about this language. Such a “metalinguistic” operation permits revision and redefinition of the vocabulary used.” He maintains that “any cognitive experience and its classification is conveyable in any existing language. Whenever there is a deficiency, terminology may be qualified and amplified by loan-words or loan-translations, neologism or semantic shifts and finally by circumlocution” (ibid).
Fedorov (1958, 1968, as cited in Newmark, 1988a: 9) believes that all experience is translatable, and rejects the view that language expresses a peculiar mental word-picture.
Newmark (1988a:54) believes that “an effective, if approximate, translation of any text into any language is always possible.”
Translation is always possible, more or less. Usually, in one place or another, it calls on properties, compensations, compromises (Newmark, 1993:7).
Safavi, (as cited in Rahimy, 2004: 27), explains “if for an As ( a word in SL), an At ( a word in TL) cannot be found as the equivalent the translator will be compelled to select a Bt ( the second closest word in the TL) that may carry the following two possibilities:

Bt−҃ As-I

Bt −҃ As+I

Where I refers to the Information that is more or less in Bt than As. Here the translator seeks to find out whether the ± I affects the whole text or not. Finally the translator accepts the Bt as the equivalent in case ± I does not affect the whole text; however, he will resort to a footnote or a note within the main text in order to convey the missed part of the information to his readership.