The Effect of Ideological, Jurisprudential and Linguistic Schools of Thought in The Translations of the al-Qur’an into The Malay Language

Abstract

This study aims to highlight the relationship between translation and interpretation and to show the effects of specific doctrinal interpretation in translating the Quran into Malay language, as well as to reveal the impact of specific jurisprudential interpretation in translating the Quran into Malay. On another note, it aims to present the translators' choices of homonym words. To achieve these goals, an inductive approach was employed, where the researcher gathered information from relevant books and studies, followed by a descriptive method to describe the effects of translators' differences when dealing with specific theological and jurisprudential interpretations, alongside their approaches to homonym words. Furthermore, the researcher employed an analytical approach where 90 instances of the three types of Quranic verses were examined: similar verses, verses of legislation, and verses of homonym. Next, the researcher relied on a comparative method in studying these differences in the Malay translations; "Hidayat al-Rahman" by Abdullah Basmeih, "The Quran and its translation into Indonesian," and "Translation of the Quran into Malay" by Mahmud Yunus. The study concluded several results: Firstly, translation and interpretation are essentially the same, as the translation process involves extracting the meaning from the source text, leading to diversity in interpretations among individual translators. Also, translation can represent the original, producing more than one text in agreement. Secondly, the three Malay translators were influenced by the opinions of interpreters in translating ambiguous verses, using various translation methods such as affirmation, delegation, and interpretation, which can result in different final translations. Thirdly, a specific jurisprudential interpretation may influence the choice of translation for words into Malay. The difference may occur due to the translators' inclinations to choose a specific jurisprudential interpretation in the target community's context when dealing with verses of rulings. Fourthly, the selection of one of the meanings from the homonym words may impact the process of translating the Quran into the target language, where translators choose words or meanings that align with a specific interpretation. Thus, the selected meanings for translating Quranic vocabulary may be influenced by a specific interpretation or random choices without relying on a specific interpretation.