A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF QURANIC PROPER NAMES: CORPUS BASED STUDY

Applying corpus based approach in translation, the present study was an attempt to firstly examine and probe the most common strategies used by four eminent Quran translators regarding to the translation of Quranic proper nouns. Secondly, it set out to determine to what extent employing these strategies facilitates the conservation of the universe of discourse of the source text in the English target text. It also investigated whether the sect doctrines of the translators might influence the application of these strategies. On the basis of the proper nouns functions in Quran, utilizing the Quranic Arabic Corpus website, and applying the Vinay and Darbelnet translation model, the present study compared and examined the ten opted Quran proper nouns (names of places, objects, calendar events and people) and their English translations done by four professional Shiite and Sonny translators. The findings substantiated that besides utilizing the English equivalents, the most frequent approaches applied by the translators were borrowing (transliteration and transposition) and calque (literal translation) strategies. Furthermore, the results demonstrated that to some extent the translators` sect has played a determining role on the translation of personal proper nouns.