Re: Quran data (translations)

[Kareem Darwish <kareem at glue dot umd dot edu>]

AA,
   Let me through my 2 cents worth on the question of which English 
translation to use.  As the islamonline article indicates, there are 
serious problems with most of the available translations with the worst 
offenders being the one by Rashad Khalifa and the one by Mohsen Khan 
(which is the unfortunetly the one being Saudi Arabia).  Among the 
better ones are the Yousif Ali and Pickthall translations.  There 
problem is that the English is a little, shall we say, OLD.  Older 
translations can get you into trouble because the word usage of English 
has changed dramatically over the past 100 years.  Another good one is 
the one by Shakir.  The English is generally not too difficult and is 
seemingly fairly accurate most of the time.  You can find these 
translations at the following URL:
http://www.quran.org/quran/quran4/index.htm
and they should be free of copyright.
   There is another middle of the road translation is the one by 
Muhammad Farouqi.  The translator uses simple English, but as the author 
stresses it is translation of the meaning (actually all translations are 
actually approximate translations of the meaning).  It is easy to 
understand, but it attempts to interperate the verses (usually sticking 
with one of the tafseers for an ayah and happily ignoring all the other 
tafseers).  You can find a link to it at:
http://www.al-quraan.org/
   To the best of my knowledge the translation is copyrighted.
   I have to struggle with all these issues because I am in the process 
of recording the translation of the meaning of the verses of the 
Qur'an.  Please visit:
www.QuranNow.com
   What I ended up doing is simplifying Picktal and checking it against 
Yousif Ali, Shaker, Muhammed Farouqi, and yes tafseer Ibn Katheer.  I 
can send you guys samples if you want, but I only have very small 
portions of the Qur'an finished at this point in time.
Kareem

Nadim Shaikli wrote:

> Salam.  I'm not sure this is a 'developer' question, but since this
> topic was posted on in this forum before I thought I'd continue here
> (not sure that 'general' would have been any more appropriate either).
>
> I had posted a question to ask about which translations we could and
> should use within the Quran project and received a rather vague answer,
>
>  http://www.islam-online.net/fatwaapplication/english/fatwatoken.asp
>
> and then enter 'KTR4MR' as the Reference Number.
>
> I will be contacting "King Fahd Holy Quran Complex" (via the email
> noted) as they also seem to have translations on their site as well.
>
>  http://www.qurancomplex.org
>
> It would really be best if a couple of other people contacted other
> accredited associations and groups (Al-Azhar, etc) with regards to
> this topic as it seems vital to the project (right, M.Yousif ? :-)
>
> Any takers ??
>
> Comments/Suggestions/Thoughts...
>
> Salam.
>
> - Nadim
>
>
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