T. B. Irving, The Qur’an: The First American Version; Translated and Commentary (1985)

The Arabic pronominal conjunction man is archaic when this is translated as ‘whosoever’ or even ‘he who’, and this usage confuses younger readers; generally I use ‘anyone who’ and only occasionally ‘he who’ for this pronoun.

On the English side, our word “day” shows lexical deficiencies, for the word can be contrasted first with the concept of “night” (layl vs. nahār), then with the sidereal day as this is found in calendar dates, in contrast to weeks and months (which is yawm). I use ‘daytime’ or ‘daylight’ for nahār, but ‘day’ only for the broader twenty-four hour period.

The simple possessive case occasionally seems to be difficult to translate properly into English, especially the form with the apostrophe. The Arabic word order induces this syntactic error since it apparently follows French or Romance style, especially for Western theological students who have studied Latin first; but it really is similar to elementary Germanic syntax, even to the omission of the article in the possessing element. However, since the sequence in Arabic is possessed-possessor, the opposite of English, it seems superficially to resemble French. If you write one under the other, however, then the reverse word order show’s up the affinity, a trick I have used successfully on the blackboard with attentive students in my classes in Arabic.

These examples in short are some of the textual difficulties which the translator faces in handling the Qurʾān. It has been a challenging task, but always rewarding.

Handling Dualism and Pairs

The dichotomy of life has always intrigued and puzzled people. They have tried to explain this phenomenon by saying the world is made up from pairs, just as they were born from a father and a mother, and themselves expect to marry. Some examples of these associated pairs are Heaven and Hell, Hell and Hades (or Jahannam and Jaḥīm in Arabic, by some alliterative coincidence). Heaven and Earth, night and day, heat and cold, light and dark.

Ḥalāl and ḥarām are alliterated twin principles too that appear in 5:3 and other places in the Qurʾān; dividing things into the permitted and forbidden is common for mnemonic purposes. The ‘hallowed’ or ḥarām is almost like the concept of taboo which the West borrowed from the Polynesians following the voyages of Captain Cook to the Pacific in the late eighteenth century. The ‘sacred’ or muqaddas is a similar state: Jerusalem is al-Quds al-Sharīf or ‘the Eminent Sanctuary’ which Muslims can no longer visit freely or without sorrow.

Consciousness and the Unseen give us dualistic principles for knowledge as well. Bodily pains contrasted with physical pleasures form another duality linked to Heaven and Hell in our minds. So good and evil form another pair (4:xi) as we find them throughout God’s creation; they both come ultimately from God, but are not co-equal (5:xviii). We need to turn evil into good (7:xii) since they all derive from God (5:xiii). God may have permitted the presence of evil, but He did not command its existence.