A comparative and analytical approach to the two English translations of al-Sahifah al-Sajjadiyyah

Document Type : Research Paper

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Accurately and precisely translating the original Islamic texts into the living languages of the world, can be considered as a proper means to spread out the Islamic thoughts and beliefs throughout the world. Therefore, it is of importance to carry out a contrastive analysis and comparative study of such translations in order to assess the quality of their semantic equivalence, stylistic correspon dence and lexical adequacy. A translation could present the fluency of the text and natural essence of the language. However, semantically it may be different from the original text. Thus, remaining faithful to the original text is highly significant in translating the religious materials. This article is an attempt to perform a comparative and analytical approach to the two English translations of al-Sahifah al-Sajjadiyyah. The first translation has been done by SayyidAhmad Ali Muhani and the second one has been completed by William C. Chittick. The present study indicates that in both of these translations, there has been a great effort to convey the meaning of the original text as accurately as possible, so that each of them can be considered as a beautiful literary and mystic text in English language. However, none of the texts has the splendid outward beauty and the profound semantic and spiritual richness that the original text holds, as most of its characteristic features are translation resistant.

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