A Descriptive Study on Translation Strategies of the Quranic Proper Nouns in Five English Translations

Proper nouns are important elements in every text because they reflect culture. This importance is higher in religious texts, such as the Quran, because some historical aspects of the previous ages can be tracked down through such nouns. This article is a descriptive study of the translation strategies of the Quranic proper nouns by George Sale, John MedowsRodwell, Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall, Arthur John Arberry, and Abdullah Yusuf Ali. The proper nouns were chosen based on the classification of the Encyclopedia of the Quran and they were coded based on Van Coillie's (2006) model. The data was analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively through SPSS. The results revealed that the most frequent strategies for the translation of the Quranic proper nouns into English were respectively: replacement by a counterpart in the target language (exonym), translation (of names with a particular connotation), phonetic or morphological adaptation to the target language, non-translation plus additional explanation, replacement of a personal name by a common noun.