The Employment of Functional Equivalence in the Translation of Hadith: An Analysis of the Translation of Lexical Items in An-Nawawi’s Forty Hadiths

Abstract

Abstract

The present study aims to investigate the extent to which Nida’s functional equivalence has been applied in the translation from Arabic into English of religious lexical items of the Hadith. To answer this question, ten religious lexical items were extracted for analysis from an English translation of An-Nawawi’s Forty Hadith. The qualitative analysis of these lexical items is based on the semantic domain of each lexical unit, in addition to its connotative and denotative meanings in both the Arabic and the English languages. The meaning of the original Arabic concept was examined by referring to a number of Hadiths commentaries and exegetic books. Additionally, to assess and compare the function of the translation in the source and target cultures, Christian theology books and references were consulted. The results reveal that the translator mainly rendered the literal meaning in the translation of the selected terms, and complete functional equivalence seems to be achieved only in the translation of lexical items that share the same theological and religious meaning in both the source and the target language and culture.