The “Fa” Letter Meanings in the Qur'an and Challenges of Translation in Persian; A Case Study: Translations of Elahi Qomshei, Fuladvand and Khorramshahi

Abstract

The Holy Quran has a sturdy syntactical, morphological and rhetorical structure. The interpretation process of this heavenly book requires great attention to the syntax and grammar of Arabic language. The letter “Fa” is one of those meaningful letters in Arabic language that has high diversity, and this fact makes it complex for the translators to interpret it into Persian. The Persian translators have proposed “then”, “after that” and “next” as its equivalents, which considering the diversity of this letter seems to be insufficient. The aim of the present study is to conduct a grammatical analysis of how some translators such as Elahi Ghomshei, Fouladvand, and Khorramshahi have translated this letter in Quran into Persian. One of the results that we have reached upon is that these translators have had a satisfactory performance in translating Communicative Fa but have failed to translate Communicative Fa, Appealing Fa, Causal Fa and Excess Fa. As a result, their equivalents for Appeal Fa and Excess Faare incorrect, since this type of Fa shouldn’t be translated at all. Also, in translating Causal Fa, they have not paid due attention to the cause and effect and have not conveyed the causality relation. Furthermore, in translating Communicative Fa, they have only considered the emotional aspect, and have not considered that part of the sentence that has been omitted, and this fact has caused them to go awry in translation.

Keywords

• interpreting quran
• elahi qomshei
• fouladvand
• khorramshahi
• various types of fa
• arabic grammar