I just finished reading a remarkable little book on Languages.

My interest in language acquisition began only when I chanced upon a reading of Mohammad Asad’s tafseer of the Quran. The remarkable thing about M Asad’s approach towards the Quran is that his work, according to his own admission, is the first in its category. The category of translating the Quran not literally, but contextually. (If you do not own one, I strongly urge you order yourself a copy right now)

Any person with the even a vague interest in languages and their acquisition will know that translation, to begin with, is a lost battle. For the uninitiated lucky enough to know say, Urdu and English, the translation of any one of Iqbal’s Urdu verse into English will lay bare the problem inherent in translation i.e. it is impossible to convey the same flavor of the message as the original verse. The same problem of translation is obviously found in translations of the Quran (regardless of which language the Arabic of the Quran is translated into). But here is something that most of us are unaware; for some reason still unclear, most translations of the Quran have been literal. This normally is not the case with any other work of translation, where the translator tries to capture the essence of the verse rather than reproduce (read: translate) it word-per-word. In translating the Quran, a lot of effort has gone into understanding the literal meaning of the Arabic words, but not enough work has gone into understanding the context of that word with the surroundings. In some cases, it is something like translating Iqbal’s verse

“Khudi ko kar buland itna keh har taqdeer say pehlay”

as

“Make your ego so high that before every fate” … and yes, literally, Urdu’s ‘kar’ will translate into ‘make’ and you will not be allowed the obvious transplant of ‘make’ to ‘take’. “Take your ego…” will be a wrong literal translation, but as anyone reading the two texts will tell you, literal translation is not only off the mark, it is dead wrong. A remotely acceptable translation of just the first part “khudi ko kar buland itna keh…” could be

“Ensure that your (self) consciousness is at such a highly evolved form that…”.

Now compare that with the literal,

“Make your ego so high that…”

Any decent English-speaking person will tell you that the above two are completely two different sentences not only in structure but in meaning as well.

(But the above is only half of the problem, if that. The whole tone, the rhythm, of the verse is completely and irrecoverably lost in translation. )

This kind of almost-blatant disregard to context while translating the Quran is found not only in Urdu translations of the Quran, but are much more rampant in the English translations. A small example, and a personal one at that, has been the translation of the word ‘taqwa’ as it appears in the Quran.

‘taqwa’ is an Arabic word, and to most Muslims will be a familiar one (or rather, should be a familiar one). Pick up any Urdu or English translation of the Quran, and chances are that ‘taqwa’ of Arabic is translated as ‘darr’, ‘parhaizgaari’ or ‘khuaf’ in Urdu, and as ‘fear’ in English. Many Urdu translations of the Quran simply write ‘taqwa’ as the translation of the word ‘taqwa’, much like one would translate the English word ‘school’ as just that ‘school’ in Urdu (although the Urdu words such as ‘darrs-gah’ are readily available in the Urdu vocabulary). ‘taqwa’ as a word of the Arabic language has successfully started its journey from Arabic to Urdu, but with different meanings, which is always a problem. For ‘taqwa’ in Arabic is, as admitted by many Urdu and possibly English translators alike, is a very hard word to translate into one word. ‘taqwa’ not only encompasses the idea and concept of ‘fear’ of God, but it encompasses ‘love’ of God as well and possibly in equal proportions. M Asad, in his translation and commentary on the Quran, translates it most aptly as ‘God-consciousness’. Now, if you ask any English-speaker that whether the concept of ‘fear’ and ‘love’ are both to be found in ‘God-consciousness’, he will probably reply, ‘it depends’ but will agree nonetheless, that the word ‘God-consciousness’ can and does encompass the idea of ‘fear’ and ‘love’, it is the overall acceptance that ‘yes, there is a God who is the Creator of All Things, who is the Un-Caused Cause of all effects, who Own all there is to Own and who knows all that I am planning and doing and have done’. This acceptance can lead one to sometimes feel love and immeasurable appreciation towards the Master Creator, and sometimes stand in awe of the mighty justice that comes without relent, and sometimes downright fear and sometimes modest carefulness – all of this, and more, is encompassed in the English word God-consciousness.

So this brings up my main point: we really ought to know Arabic. Not just the spoken variety, but the classical Arabic of the Quran, which are as different as spoken Urdu is different from Iqbal’s or Ghalib’s works. We do this to not only to take out the guesswork from understanding the Quran, but we do this to also truly enjoy the Book and rightfully consider it as our main source of guidance in the realm of human interaction (ikhlaaq) and our self-surrender to the One God (ibaadat).

Another point of interest is that in Surah AlBaqarah (02) of the Quran, we find out that Adam was given the knowledge of ‘names’ (Al-Ism in Arabic) and that knowledge made Adam superior to angels. M Asad, in his commentary on this verse, elaborates that this knowledge of ‘names’ is usually – and rightly – taken as the knowledge of concepts. I think it is use of those concepts to come up with names that are later used in one’s thoughts – that starts the very essence of human existence: thought and free will. And as I only recently found out, linguists find this ability of humans to use concepts to come up with names without any ‘pre written’ definition that links the concept with the name, this ability is found to be most baffling. And to top it all of, this knowledge of ‘names’ that God gave to Adam, seems to be in our genes. People for long used to think that children learn languages mainly by imitation of their environment. And it somewhat made sense: children imitate whatever Ami and Abu saying, and viola, a language is learnt. This theory is now considered, in most part, null and void, and is slowly – but surely – being replaced by a notion put forth by the contemporary Noam Chomsky, that perhaps children are born with a language gene and regardless of their environment, children either learn or make up a language to communicate. This notion keeps getting verified by new findings, and the facts keep pointing towards a higher purpose for us humans than just eat, grow, breed, die.

Note: the above remains, at best, my opinion. All references to translations can be verified, although at time of writing, I did not find the time to open each translation – hence a possibility of some error exists. Other than that, pretty much all facts about language is taken from Trask’s remarkable introduction to the field of linguistics titled Language: The Basics.