Review of Translation of Sura Al-Qara’a based on its Linguistic Context: A Case Study of Translations by Fouladvand and Makarem-eh Shirazi

Linguistic context is a collection of in-text elements that provide grounds of text significance in conjunction with each other and thus results in the correct transfer of the concept of the word as well as the general discourse of the text. Linguistic context is a general concept that consists of four levels of lexical, grammatical (syntactic), rhetorical, and phonetic layers. Consideration of the linguistic context ruling over the verses of the Holy Quran helps to understand the meaning of the message. Al-Qara'a's Sura is among the Suras that expresses particular signifiers of the great incident of the doomsday for its special language structure. Different translations of this Sura have often not been adequately addressed in its linguistic context as a signifying element in transferring the meaning of its verses. The present study, by adopting an analytical and comparative approach, investigates two examples of translations of the Holy Qur'an (Fouladvan and Makarem-eh Shirazi) from Sura Al-Qara'a based on the linguistic equivalence principle in the source and target texts, and at the end proposes a translation that observes the linguistic context based on three lexical, syntactic, and rhetorical elements. Finally, the results of the research indicate that despite the fact that some of the components of the linguistic context have been considered in translating of a number of verses, the total transference of implicit symbolizations arising from the whole linguistic context of the Sura in the translation of many verses is neglected.