Studying "Qualitative and Quantitative Impoverishment" of Quran’s Words in Archaic Translations(Case Study: Sur Abadi Translation)

Holly Quran has the revelation message for all humanity. Being “Zekro lil-'Aalamiyn” makes it inevitable to translate the holly book to different languages. Eventually, this holly book was translated to Farsi against the objection of some religious scholars by a collective fatwa of the 4th century Transoxiana’s scholars. One of prototype of Quran’s Farsi translation is Sur abadi Interpretation (Fifth Hijri century). As Farsi paving the way in its regeneration era and gradually overcoming the dominance of Arabic language in this period of time, this research sought to study the capabilities of new-coming language and Sur abadi strategies in translating clauses and terms which are central in Quran language or dealing with diversity of terms in two axes: qualitative impoverishment and quantitative impoverishment according to Antoine Berman’s theory of “deforming tendency”. This is a descriptive-analytical research carried out through a comparative critique. The results of the research showed that Sur abadi’s concern in using simple and pure Farsi words made him pick some equivalents for words such as Al-taqwa, Al-jihad, Al-iman, Al-aziz, Al-hakim, and etc. that cannot convey lyrical and quality of Quran words. As for quantitative impoverishment, the weakness of Persian language or poor vocabulary of interpreters has caused a condition in which a set of Arabic synonym words with high literal diversity were translated into one or two Farsi words and it can be said that quantitative impoverishment and reduction in words diversity have occurred in Sur abadi interpretation.