The poor Arabic translation of Picktall another wannabe Arab!

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), Apr 3, 2007 at 07:26

Our dear M&M, rule number one in literature: when you read literature you must read it in its the primary language and in the case of the Qur'an you must read it in Arabic and as you know by now I provide you with a linear translation then what is called tarjamat al-ma3na (oh do not panic I mean ta'weel oh I forgot again that you know no Arabic) What is amazing about your chutzpah is that you are debating an issue in book the Qur'an that is that you cannot even read in Arabic and understand what it is really saying and you have to depend on poor translations.

And by the way I'm not telling you anything here that is not known and that is: Islam is the religion of the arabs!

Now let us examine our dear Picktall poor and tendentious translation of Q14:4

1. "and" this is coreect as the first word in the aya is wa.

2. "we never sent" Wrong and poor translation as the aya says "ma arsalna" the literal translation is: "did not send" but because this is Arabic grammatical aspect it must be read in the present tense as: _We do not send_ So here is the first mistake.

3. "a messenger" no the Arabic here is "min Rasulan" (notice I3rab) or "from a prophet" (notice the rasul/nabi dicotomy) . So the "from" or "min" is missing. So how do you account for the missing min?

4. "save" no the word "ila" means except or unless and in this case it means unless and does not mean save. Poor translation again.

5. "with the language of his folks" No it says in the aya: "bilisani qawmuhu" or

"Bilisani" means "in the tongue" which means "lugha" or language

Qawmuhu means his people and in the case of Muhammad his people were the Hijazi Arabs and they were for sure not Pakistanis.

So the correct translation here is: in the language of his people

So the aya says so far: "And We do not send a prophet unless he comes in the language of his people"

Simple elegant and to the point. Now feel free to prove me wrong.

6. Then the real gem of this poor translation is Picktall adding: "that he might make (the messneger) clearer to them"

Bogus, as these words do not exist in the aya!

So how do you account for Picktall adding these words that do not exist in the aya?

Now do you see how your case falls apart because you do not know Arabic and it is because Arabic and Arabism is central to Islam and you ain't no Arab. Shame.

---

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".