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The Cognate Accusative Construction in the Glorious Qur'an: A case of Translation Loss

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Last updated: 04 Jan 2025

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Abstract

The cognate accusative construction (CAC, hereafter) is viewed by many as one of the most unique constructions in the Arabic language, in general, and in the Glorious Qur'an, in particular. This uniqueness arises from two major reasons: first, the CAC is regarded as one of the most elegant and expressive rhetorical devices in the Glorious Qur'an, second, it is a construction which involves considerable difficulties, as far as translation is concerned. The present research assumes that most translations of the Glorious Qur'an have displayed significant translation loss regarding the morpho-syntactic, semantic and phonological features of the CAC. It is also assumed that translating the CAC into English displays a challenging task to both orientalist and nativist translators, which reflects one of the most significant aspects of the inimitability / untranslatability of the Glorious Qur'an. This corpus-based research sought to investigate, by means of comparison, four distinguished English translations of the Glorious Qur'an aiming to reveal how far these translations have succeeded in producing satisfactory renditions of the CACs, and hence conveyed the intended messages. Findings of the research indicate that the rhythmic nature of the Arabic language and the idiosyncrasy of the CAC can be held responsible for the failure to provide appropriate English equivalents for the CACs at all levels; lexical, syntactic, semantic, and phonological, as the CAC involves two morphologically, semantically and phonologically related lexical items, namely the main verb and the cognate accusative (CA, hereafter) which are both derived from the same radicals. In addition, this concomitant meaning loss has been engendered by a number of factors including the wide discrepancy between Arabic and English, ambiguity and versatility of Arabic lexis, word order, language-specific structures, and finally culture-specific differences

DOI

10.21608/opde.2015.106613

Keywords

Cognate Accusative Construction - Glorious Qur'an - Translation Loss, Untranslatability

Authors

First Name

Zakaria K. A. Alssiefy

Last Name

Alssiefy

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Volume

59

Article Issue

1

Related Issue

16131

Issue Date

2015-07-01

Receive Date

2020-08-09

Publish Date

2015-07-01

Page Start

281

Page End

306

Print ISSN

1110-2721

Online ISSN

2735-3591

Link

https://opde.journals.ekb.eg/article_106613.html

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https://opde.journals.ekb.eg/service?article_code=106613

Order

9

Type

Original Article

Type Code

1,140

Publication Type

Journal

Publication Title

CDELT Occasional Papers in the Development of English Education

Publication Link

https://opde.journals.ekb.eg/

MainTitle

The Cognate Accusative Construction in the Glorious Qur'an: A case of Translation Loss

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Article

Created At

22 Jan 2023