The Translation of Arabic Wishing Verbs into English
Abstract
This research investigates the translation of the Arabic wishing verbs )) (Asa / , hara / , ikhlawlaqa / ) into English. These verbs operate on the nominal sentence. They govern two elements: their noun is the subject which is in the nominative case and their predicate is in the subjunctive case. Only asa is used in the Glorious Quran. It is used as an imperfect and perfect verb, and connection of the pronoun with asa such as (assaytum / ). The research shows how translators translate these verbs. The translations are based on authentic Quranic interpretations. Five English translations of three ayahs are selected, compared, discussed and analyzed to show to what extent the five translators are able to convey the meaning of asa into English accurately. Asa does not have a one-to-one correspondent in English. Difficulties of rendering asa is due to misunderstanding its complete and incomplete meanings and connection of the pronoun with asa in the Quranic text; this would result in inaccurate rendition. Accurate translation of asa is achieved by considering its deep meaning context in which it is used. The model of Larsons meaning-based translation theory is adopted to assess the translation accuracy.