format_quote Originally Posted by
Dave...
Hi everyone
Because I am a Christ who believes the Bible I do understand that there are llimitations in translations to English. All things considered, is there agreement among Muslims with regards to what would be considered a reliable English translation of the Qur'an?
Thank you
Dave
Peace Dave,
I am glad to see you understand the limitations of every translations and the best any can do is only an approximation. Like Sister Lily mentioned it is best to read several translations to get a fuller grasp.My personal choices for people to read are Abdullah Yusuf Ali, Pickthal and Asad. Above all avoid any translations written by non-Muslims. Too often I find they contain what seem to be deliberate errors. (Not all, but probably most, with the translation by Kalifa being the worse) I especially like Ali and Pickthal because here you get the input from an Native Arabic speaker who was fluent in English and an English Native speaker who was fluent in Arabic. Asad gives a nice view as here you get the input from a Jewish revert to Islam who is fluent in both Arabic and English.
The difficulty in Arabic is to fully understand a single word you need to understand the full context of the Surah it is found in.
Arabic while easy to learn is difficult for an English speaker to grasp the fullness of each word. For example there are nearly 100 different words that translate into English as camel. But, if you understand Arabic, each word is very different and by the word used you know the age, sex, color and other aspects of the camel, from that single word.