آفاق الحضارة الاسلامية

آفاق الحضارة الاسلامية

The influence of the translator's mental perceptions of his information sources in the translation of the Holy Quran (Study of the words "Majnoon", "Ommi" and "Rabb" in the translations of Ansarian, Foladvand and Aiati)

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors
HASAN ESMAILZADE 1
Siyamak Asgharpour 2
Atafeh Asghari 3
1 Associate Professor in Arabic Language and Literature, Azarbaijan Shahid Madani University, Tabriz, Iran
2 PhD in Arabic Language and Literature, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran.
3 Ph.D. student in Arabic Language and Literature, Azarbaijan Shahid Madani University, Tabriz, Iran
10.30465/afg.2025.52096.2199
Abstract
 
Those sources of information that form the translator's mental perceptions also affect his performance in the translation process. The information sources of a translator may be things such as morphological, syntactic, rhetorical, linguistic, literary, social, historical, religious, political or context-based sources of a specific text that are influenced by factors such as specific discourse, philosophy, psychological issues, aesthetics, be semantic and so on. Language, society, and culture may also provide an independent platform that creates a series of information sources that influence the quality of impressions regarding texts and their translation process. These mental perceptions of the translator from his information sources in the translation of the Holy Quran can change the meaning and message. Based on the descriptive-analytical method, the present essay tried to explain the quality of the direct or indirect influence of the translators' information sources in the translation of the Holy Quran. The result showed that the translator's information sources are effective in changing the meaning and denotation of the target text by influencing his attitude, and despite the harmony of the translation produced with the taste and culture of the target language, it loses the necessary semantic accuracy that the words "majnun" ", "Ommi" and "Rabb" have been like this. These words have been chosen due to their semantic load based on the background of language, culture and society, which have faced challenges in translation. And it is cultural, it has been reduced to mere lexical meanings and other examples.
Keywords: information sources, mental impressions, meaning, implication, Holy Quran
Introduction
Some mental preconceptions and beliefs or assumptions and preconceptions lead the translator to take advantage of certain words. This lexical advantage may in fact separate those words from the context in which they were produced and which indicate the events of that context, and use them in other contexts with different meanings. This is one of the reasons for providing different translations of texts, especially the Holy Quran, because due to the wide range of information sources, mental perceptions are also conceivable, and these mental perceptions affect the original text and its semantic-semantic dimensions and networks in various ways.
Due to the existence of such subjective perceptions from various sources of information in the Quran translator's attitude, the produced translation also tends to be more consistent with those perceptions. Unintentional attempts to adapt the translated text to the text of the Holy Quran create semantic differences at the level of Quranic words and sentences, the least of which could be a reduction in the semantic scope of words and phrases. According to experts in the field of discourse analysis, translation, like other linguistic forms, is ideologically driven; therefore, translation is not neutral and the translator is influenced by cultural and ideological values. However, being ideological as the main actor of the translation process is not considered in the present study, but rather the influence of the translator's information sources has been considered, which is the main criterion of his knowledge and awareness, and in most cases it is not intentional.
These sources of information, in a way, constitute the translator's mind and language, which also affects his way of thinking and worldview, and he perceives the world in the way his language depicts it for him. Language provides a context for the translator to access a series of information sources within the context of that language, which guide him in what kind of interpretation of a text he should have. Among the most important contexts that language provides information resources for the speaker so that his mental perceptions are formed from the information resources of those contexts, we can mention three: linguistic context, social context, and cultural context.
Materials & methods
Based on the aforementioned issues, this research first identifies and introduces the contexts that form information sources, then defines and explains the areas of information sources for each context, and examines them in three Quranic examples of words from the Holy Quran, and shows their translational shortcomings. This is because some translators of the Holy Quran, for their specific religious and ideological reasons, believe that the appropriate translation of words should be based on their purely contextual and literal meaning, and the result of the translation in this case may be unpleasant, have a negative semantic load, and even have a negative effect on the audience. Therefore, the reinterpretation of the meanings and connotations of the three words "majnoon", "Ommi", and "Rab" in the linguistic, social, and cultural context is also examined in order to avoid the semantic reduction that is based on lexical-morphological meaning, and to explain these three words in the intellectual-cultural, social, and linguistic horizon of their time, as well as in accordance with the present time.
Discussion & Result
The purpose of the present study is to examine the factors that create the context for the formation of the translator's information sources, such as language, society, and culture, as well as to examine the role of various sciences and information sources of translators in translating the Holy Quran, and to express the precise views that deserve to be considered in translating Quranic words, because a translator's mental perceptions of his information sources are influential in the process of lexical and conceptual equivalence by ideologically shaping the translator's approach and translation. This can be explained by mentioning three examples: "majnoon", "Ommi", and "Rab", in whose translation challenging points can be raised at the level of semantic reduction to the situational and morphological dimensions of the word, in order to identify the weaknesses of existing translations of the Holy Quran.
The influence of the subjective perceptions of the translators of the Holy Quran from their sources of information in translating this book has sometimes been evident in the translation of the words "majnoon", "Ommi", and "Rab" in the translations of Ansarian, Foladvand and Ayati; in such a way that the dominance of subjective perceptions has in some cases caused the translation to suffer from a semantic degradation; such as the word "majnoon" which is considered to mean "mad" and has had a semantic degradation; Also, the words "Ommi", and "Rab" - which, due to the difference in social and cultural perspectives between the translators' lifetimes and the early Islamic era - have been used to imply things like "educational illiteracy" and examples like "the beloved of Egypt" in some verses. This is while the efforts of translators of the Holy Quran to achieve the meaning of the original text can, in some cases, be more effective in the process of discovering meaning if it is based on the existence of a meaning independent of their minds and their perceptions of their own sources of information.
Conclusion
The more precise and logical meaning of the words "majnoon", "Ommi", and "Rab" can be expressed in the process of translating various verses of the Holy Quran when the influence of linguistic, social, and cultural contexts is not ignored. In this case, it can be expected that the translated text of the Holy Quran will be largely equivalent to its original text. Because, despite the fact that the translator's information sources can in some cases make the translation further away from the original text's meaning, this same factor may have a positive effect in determining the precise semantic network of a Quranic word and play an important role in more accurately applying its meaning.
Keywords
information sources, mental impressions, meaning, implication, Holy Quran

Subjects

تأثیر برداشت‌های ذهنی مترجم از منابع اطلاعاتی‌اش در ترجمه قرآن کریم (بررسی کلمات «مجنون»، «أُمّي» و «رَبّ» در ترجمه‌های انصاریان وفولادوند وآیتی)

حسن اسماعیل‌زاده باوانی[1]

سیامک اصغرپور [2]

عاطفه اصغری [3]

چكيده

آن دسته از منابع اطلاعاتی که برداشت‌های ذهنی مترجم را تشکیل می‌دهد، بر عملکرد وی در فرآیند ترجمه نیز تأثیر می‌گذارد. منابع اطلاعاتی یک مترجم ممکن است مواردی چون منابع صرفی، نحوی، بلاغی، زبانی، ادبی، اجتماعی، تاريخی، اعتقادی، سیاسی و یا مبتنی بر بافت یک متن خاص باشد که تحت تأثیر عواملی چون گفتمانی خاص، فلسفه، مسائل روانشناختی، زیباشناختی، معناشناختی و غیره باشد. همچنین گاهی هر یک مؤلفه‌های زبان، اجتماع و فرهنگ در واقع سکویی مستقل را فراهم می‌آورد که زنجیره‌ای از منابع اطلاعاتی را تشکیل می‌دهد تا در کیفیت برداشت‌های مربوط به متون و فرآیند ترجمه آنها تأثیر داشته باشد. این برداشت‌های ذهنی مترجم از منابع اطلاعاتی وی در ترجمه قرآن کریم می‌تواند معنی و پیام را دستخوش تغییر و تحول قرار دهد. جستار حاضر با تکیه بر روش توصیفی- تحلیلی کوشیده کیفیت تأثیر مستقیم یا غیر مستقیم منابع اطلاعاتی مترجمان را در ترجمه قرآن کریم تبیین نماید. نتیجه نشان داد که منابع اطلاعاتی مترجم با تأثیر در نگرش وی در تغییرات معنایی و دلالتی متن مقصد نیز مؤثر واقع می‌شود و علی رغم هماهنگی ترجمه تولید شده با ذوق و فرهنگ حاکم بر زبان مقصد، دقت معنایی لازم را از دست می‌دهد که کلمات «مجنون»، «أُمی» و «رَبّ» از این قبیل بوده است. این کلمات به دلیل داشتن بار معنایی مبتنی بر بستر زبان، فرهنگ و جامعه انتخاب شده‌اند که با چالش‌هایی در ترجمه مواجه بوده، مضامین هر یک دچار فروکاست دلالتی- معنایی شده و معانی آنها از دلالت‌های اصیل خود که در ابتدای نزول وحی مبتنی بر معانی اجتماعی و فرهنگی بوده، به صرف دلالت‌های لغوی و مصادیق دیگر فرو کاسته شده است.

کلیدواژه‌ها: منابع اطلاعاتی، برداشت‌های ذهنی، معنا، دلالت، قرآن کریم

                                                                                                         


[1] دانشیار گروه زبان و ادبیات عربی، دانشگاه شهید مدنی آذربایجان، تبریز، ایران. (نویسنده مسئول) as.esmailzadeh@azaeuniv.ac.ir 

[2] دانش‌آموخته دکتری زبان و ادبیات عربی، دانشگاه اصفهان، اصفهان، ایران. s.asgharpour.arabic@gmail.com 

[3] دانشجوی دکترای زبان و ادبیات عربی، دانشگاه شهید مدنی آذربایجان، تبریز، ایران. ati.asghari1998@gmail.com  

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آفاق الحضارة الاسلامية
Volume 28, Issue 2 - Serial Number 56
Autumn & Winter
February 2026

  • Receive Date 30 May 2025
  • Revise Date 27 November 2025
  • Accept Date 09 December 2025