Leiden University Student Repository

Lucas, Suzanna (2025)

TRANSLATING THE QUR’ANIC SOUND AND MUSICALITY BY PRESERVING ITS ORAL NATURE AND AURALITY: Translating meaning and sound of the Qur’an into natural and accessible Dutch

Master thesis | Middle Eastern Studies (MA)

In this thesis research has been conducted regarding the following question: is it possible to translate the long Qur’anic surah sūrat al-Raḥmān into Dutch, whereby the following three criteria are met: 1. the meaning is preserved 2. the oral and aural aspect is conveyed 3. the translation is presented in natural and accessible Dutch. To meet the criterion of aurality and orality the translation must meet the testible criteria of rhyme, metre, parallelism, lexical echoes, conciseness, the relation between the sound of words and the atmosphere of a verse or surah, and repetition, which are the most important linguistic structures underlying orality and aurality. Recognizability for Muslims is part of the criterion of meaning. A translation method according to these criteria has been used in the testcase and the translation process has been described. The above resulted in a translation that met the criteria of the research question.

Qur'an, Qur'an translation, aurality, orality, translationstudies, translation of poetry, sūrat al-Raḥmān, translation strategies, retention of rhyme, retention of metre, saj‛, test case, translation sūrat al-Raḥmān

Author

Lucas, Suzanna

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Specialisation

Qur'an translation/Arabic

Supervisors

Sijpesteijn, P.M.

ECTS Credits

20

Language

en