A semantic criticism of the Persian translation of the Arabic term “doon” in the Holy Quran

Abstract

Today, syntagmatic and paradigmatic analyses are widely applied by literature researchers and experts as principal methods in understanding and interpretation of religious texts. Taking syntagmatic and paradigmatic analyses into consideration, this research seeks to explore the explicit and implicit meanings of the Arabic term (Doon), literally translated as “other than, instead of, besides, and apart from”, in the Holy Quran. It also aims to determine how much attention Quran translators have paid to the meanings of the term and in transferring them into the target language, namely Persian. The study, conducted based on structural semantics and using descriptive –analytic research methodology, has found that the term (Doon) has various meanings and functions in the Holy Quran, but in some cases, translators have failed to render them correctly. The original meaning of the term is “other than and inferior” which is seen almost in all phrases and lexical combinations in the Holy Book. Therefore, for instance, the phrase which has been transplanted as “other than, besides and apart from Allah” in famous translations, can be rendered as “[someone/something] other as Allah that is inferior”. (Inferior)" or " (Inferior to)" have been used as equivalents to (Doon) in old Persian translations of the Quran which closely correspond with the denotation of the Arabic word,since they contain both the sense of “other than” and “inferior”. However, (Doon) can bear different meanings in different contexts. © 2017, Tarbiat Modares University. All rights reserved.