Qur'an or Koran?

Plowman

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af_thefragile

Qur'an is more accurate...

In arabic its القرآن which is pronounced as Al-Qur'an.
Al is similar to 'the'.
The lettler قـ is Q (and has a short vowel sounding 'U' so collectively it becomes 'Qu')
The letter ر‎ is R , آ is modified A to sound 'aaa' (like you're in pain, like in Nazi), ن is N.
And so that makes it Qur'an.

In arabic كـ‎ is the letter for K.

hivizman

Back in the Middle Ages, when Christian scholars and others heard the Arabic word "Qur'an", they spelled it phonetically as "Koran" or "Coran" - what is probably the earliest translation of the Qur'an into English, by Alexander Ross, published in 1649, is entitled: The Alcoran of Mahomet translated out of Arabique into French, by the Sieur Du Ryer...And newly Englished, for the satisfaction for all that desire to look into the Turkish vanities.

Today, some newspapers, such as The Times, stick to "Koran" for their house style, while others, such as The Guardian, use "Qur'an".

As the original poster notes, both Oxford University Press and Penguin publish two translations. For OUP, their original translation, under the title "The Koran", is by Arberry, and is widely considered to be a sound scholarly translation. However, Arberry was not a Muslim, and some commentators have suggested that he could therefore not be fully aware of all the subtleties of the Qur'an. The more recent OUP translation "The Qur'an" is by Muhammad Abdel Haleem, who is Professor of Islamic Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, and who is a Muslim. This is also a scholarly translation, but I think that it doesn't adequately capture the poetic aspects of the Qur'an. However, it comes very highly recommended on Amazon.

Penguin published the Dawood translation (dating from 1956) under the title "The Koran". Again, this is a non-Muslim translation. Dawood was born into a Jewish family in Iraq. In his original translation, Dawood rearranged the order of the surahs to what he thought was the chronological order of revelation, but more recent editions have restored the standard order of the surahs. The more recent translation "The Qur'an" is by Tarif Khalidi, who is Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the American University in Beirut. I quite like this translation, which I think does good service to the more poetic passages while dealing carefully with the more technical and legislative verses of the Qur'an.

No single translation will capture all the nuances of the original Arabic wording of the Qur'an. However, most of the widely-used English versions, such as those by Yusuf Ali, Pickthall, Asad, and Hilali & Khan, are available on the internet, which makes it easier to compare the translations.

Plowman

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hivizman

Plowman wrote: »

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You're very welcome.

hivizman

I have come across an interesting talk on English-language translations of the Qur'an from an organisation called Muslim Research and Development Foundation. This is set up on YouTube as a playlist, so follow this link.

The speaker mentions a few translations that I didn't know about, including a recent translation by Aisha and Abdulhaqq Bewley, which he rated very highly. The speaker's worst criticism seems to be "modernism" - he does not like it when translators criticise any passages of the Qur'an as no longer valid in the modern world.

In general, the speaker and I tend to agree about the various translations. He is less keen on the recent Khalidi translation (Penguin) than I am, because he suggests that Khalidi takes some liberties with the strict meaning in order to enhance the readability of his translation. However, he recommends in particular the Saheeh International translation (this is currently available online on various websites, but I'm not sure whether it's out as a printed book), the Bewley translation, and the translations by Abdel Haleem and by Khalidi.