Translating Synonymy in the Holy Quran into English

Abstract

The current research explores the concept of “synonymy in the Holy Quran” and suggests as an alternative, the term “near-synonymy” to be more appropriate in conveying linguistic structure and content. The study explores the translation of religious text and the main difficulties encountered by translators of Arabic and English languages. This research is particularly concerned with the language of the Quran and the complexity of translating religious words in an adequate way without alterning the meaning in order to facilitate the process of reading and understanding God’s sacred words. Furthermore, this work provides an explanation to the difficulties of translating synonymous words and exploring the main strategies used by previous scholars and translators in this regard