T. B. Irving, The Qur’an: The First American Version; Translated and Commentary (1985)
undertaking directed also to those non-Muslims who need an introduction to the basic scripture of Islam. I also would like to thank the many people whose enquiries and requests for information and material have kept me working at the job. I hope that in this new translation I have in some small measure achieved a version of the Noble Reading, al-Qurʾān al Karīm, which can open up its treasures and lay the basis for Islamic piety within the English language and throughout the English-speaking world. Thus for over twenty-three years, I have been reading the Qurʾān carefully in Arabic “at daybreak” (17:ix), with the aim of presenting it in a form which will live for a few decades longer, God willing, or at least until some more gifted worker takes up the challenge and improves on this version.
Grammar and Syntax
A translation from one language to another requires that the translator have the “feel” of both languages he is working with, that of the textual one which is being translated, and that of the target language. Many Qurʾānic translators, however, have been fluent even in a third tongue which has ended by confusing them; a close attachment to Latin, Urdu or French can hinder the smooth flow of Arabic words and phrases into English. Several previous translations of the Qurʾān have likewise been rendered grotesque by relying on antiquated grammar and twisted syntax, without mentioning other problems like terminology or the correct rendering of individual words. There is no reason why our holy Book must be quoted in awkward English: if the Arabic is clear (16:xiv, 26:xi) then why do we need to worry about it?
My aim has been to remain scrupulously faithful to the Arabic text, and still create a version which represents good American English prose and can be used confidently by English-speaking people. Arabic is paratactic in its structure while English syntax involves more clauses and phrases, although it does not approach the complexity of either Latin or German to which it is related.
Conjunctions and connectives pose one of our first problems, for one cannot turn English into parataxis and begin each sentence or phrase with a series of “and’s” as is done in Arabic and Hebrew. Arabic actually has two common words for our single “and”; wāw (which is a prefix in Semitic) refers to the simultaneous “and”, while fā (also a prefix) expresses the consecutive connector. The letter fā, can be rendered at times by ‘then’, ‘next’ and ‘so’, or even by the interjection ‘why…!’ as a further possibility. In English we use “so”, “thus”, “well”, “then”, “as well as” to connect sentences and thought groups in the same manner; we use “so” and “plus” constantly in this fashion in normal speech. On the other hand the simultaneous wāw- can be ‘while’ with following or linking verbs and ‘as well as’ with long lists of nouns, especially for the final one at the end of a list which needs to be included and have attention focused on it: “to Heaven and Earth, and to the mountains…” (33:ix). The common Semitic paratactic sentence is deadly in dealing with these long lists if it is not handled judiciously in translation. Conjunctions should bind the late-coming concept into the body of the main thought, and not just let ideas
