Sometimes, a translation can be an adaptation.
You may lose the poetic content, but you will keep the whole meaning of the thing. This is possible, even if you must add a lot of words. Heck, it's a book, not subtitles! Who cares if the translated version has more pages than the original? If the original has words that can't be directly translated into the other language, you will have to use more words just to keep the meaning of the sentence intact.
Sometime ago, I read a National Geographic article on vanishing languages... there's a language that has some 100 different words to describe individual states of the animal they use as cattle: they have one word which describes the age, gender, health status and some other details about the animal. If we want to translate such a word, we need to fill out one or two lines of text... so be it!
Surely, I can't be the first person to think of such a translation of the koran, or q'uran, or quhran or whatever is the name of that arabic book.
You may lose the poetic content, but you will keep the whole meaning of the thing. This is possible, even if you must add a lot of words. Heck, it's a book, not subtitles! Who cares if the translated version has more pages than the original? If the original has words that can't be directly translated into the other language, you will have to use more words just to keep the meaning of the sentence intact.
Sometime ago, I read a National Geographic article on vanishing languages... there's a language that has some 100 different words to describe individual states of the animal they use as cattle: they have one word which describes the age, gender, health status and some other details about the animal. If we want to translate such a word, we need to fill out one or two lines of text... so be it!
Surely, I can't be the first person to think of such a translation of the koran, or q'uran, or quhran or whatever is the name of that arabic book.
