Investigating Translations of the Qur’anic Elaborative Discourse Marker Wæ in an English and Persian Parallel Corpus

1. Introduction

As translators deal with two languages simultaneously, translation is viewed as a bilingual process. In bilingualism, people can communicate in two languages. The language and meta-language procedures of decoding and encoding information in translation are triggered based on various norms and patterns of target culture and discourse. When a translator decodes a text, he or she uncovers the concept of that text in a way that makes sense to him or her. As encoders, translators first determine how the message is going to be received by the audience. Then they make adjustments to the message to make it reliable, coherent, and understandable for the reader (Chesterman, 2016). Meta-communicative components such as conjunctions, adverbs, coordinators, fixed expressions, prepositional phrases, and filler words and phrases such as furthermore, therefore, afterward, 'in other words', and 'I see' are known as discourse markers (DMs hereafter), which as Brinton (1996) notes, is the most preferred term by researchers to refer to the aforementioned components. DMs are the most creative, recurrent, resourceful, and meta-communicative variables in the decoding and encoding of information by interlocutors. Interlocutors apply these meta-communicative components to comprehend, generate, and establish a kind of discourse that is sensitive to linguistic, communicative, and cultural contexts of language use (Aijmer, 2002; Faghih Malek Marzban, 2007; Fraser, 2006; Frank-Job, 2006; Mohammadi, 2020, 2021). The outcome of this innovative and flexible process is monitoring discourse pragmatically. The employment of DMs in human communication is inevitable. DMs are ambiguous, highly flexible, and sensitive to the context. They play no syntactic role in the text and possess no propositional meaning. Such features result in various types of challenges for translators (Furkó, 2014).

The discourse maker is represented in English by and is the most common, complicated, and intricate elaborative DM in numerous languages including English and Persian (see e.g., Nejadansari & Mohammadi, 2014). Against this backdrop, the present study was an attempt to investigate a Persian and an English translation of the Qur’anic elaborative discourse marker (EDM) wæ respectively by Ali Maleki (2017) and Tahereh Saffarzadeh (2015). The theoretical framework of the study was established based on the coherence theory in discourse analysis (Glanzberg, 2018) and translation spotting in translation studies (Cartoni & Zuferry, 2013). This study also examines the constructive and dynamic courses of actions and procedures in decoding and encoding information in translation to provide the addressees with coherent, logical, and fluent text. Moreover, the characteristics of natural language processing in the processing, construction, and utilization of discourse in translation were analyzed.

1.1. Research Questions and Assumption

The present study addressed the following research questions:

1. How is the Qur’anic EDM wæ encoded in the Persian and English translations studied?
2. Which DMs are utilized in the encoding of the Qur’anic EDM wæ in the two Persian and English renderings?
3. What are the theoretical foundations, bases, and justifications verifying the Persian and English translators' procedures and approaches in rendering the Qur’anic EDM wæ?

Realizing the natural processing of language as an imperative process in transferring messages in translation, the researchers predict that Persian and English translators may have appealed to different modifications in translating the Qur’anic EDM wæ into Persian and English. As Zuffery (2017) holds that parallel corpora investigation results in exploring the approaches and procedures used in the establishment of practical, rational, and proper pragmatic connections between languages and cultures, the researchers assumed that the evaluation of a parallel corpus would allow discovering patterns and presenting models for conducting studies on language processing in social contexts.

2. Literature Review

The following research studies can be mentioned as examples of focusing on analyzing Qur’anic DMs in translation. Mohammadi (2022a) investigated two Persian translators’ strategies in rendering the Qur’anic temporal DM thumma into Persian and found that various categories and combinations of Persian DMs, consisting of contrastive, elaborative, inferential, and temporal DMs, were applied by the translators. He maintains that the Persian translators have approached the process of translating the Qur’anic DM flexibly and innovatively and constructed dynamic discourse in this bilingual communicative process. Mohammadi (2022b) also analyzed the translations of two Qur’anic temporal DMs īz and īzā. The findings have revealed that these temporal DMs were not rendered literally or on a word-by-word basis but were rather translated communicatively. The researcher reported that translators applied various approaches in their renderings: using adverbs of time and manner, paraphrasing, conditional structures, different DMs, and imperative forms. Pragmatic novelty, flexibility, and creativity were observed in their translations. It should be mentioned that the present study is unlike similar research conducted by Mohammadi  (2021, 2022a, 2022b) in terms of not hinging on underspecification, analyzing non-identical corpora, and looking at a different DM or type of DMs.

In their research, comparable to the current one, Paknejad et al. (2018) studied DMs and their functions in three English translations of Surah Al-Imran by Shakir, Arberry, and Yusuf Ali, as well as three Persian translations (Nemooneh, Almizan, and Majmaolbayan), which have used a variety of DMs to facilitate the better understanding of the content of the Qur’anic text. The study recognized elaborative markers as the most frequent type of DM used to describe and explain the topics raised in the aforementioned surah. This type was followed by inferential and contrastive discourse makers, respectively. Finally, the elaborative discourse marker wæ (and) was found as, by far, the most frequent one. These findings are also corroborated in a similar study authored by the same researchers, i.e. Paknejad et al. (2021), looking at the sequence of translated DMs in Surah Al-Baqarah in the same six Persian and English translations mentioned above.

Functions of the Persian discourse marker væ were investigated by Kazemian and Amouzadeh (2022) who, in their analysis of written and oral corpora, used a forthcoming model of discourse markers proposed by Fraser, and found that this discourse marker shows versatility when used with other discourse markers and for a proper understanding of the behavior of the discourse marker væ relying on Fraser's model, the model needs some adjustments. Similarly, Najjar and Amir Kadhim (2022) studied the effect of translation shifts on the four resumptive, additive, circumstantial, and commentative functions of the repeated conjunctive particle wa in its inter-sentential repetition in the Qur’an, and found the resumptive function as more frequent.

As this review indicates, no study has so far been conducted on Persian and English translations of the Qur’anic elaborative DM wæ, hence there is a need to fill this research gap.

3. Methodology

3.1. Research Method

This research analyzed two translators’ situationally-selected strategies in the construction of discourse in the rendering of the Holy Qur’an. Given that the analysis profited from parallel data originated from the natural use of language in creating texts in translation, and that the research includes questions and is supported by theoretical frameworks, it is both descriptive and qualitative.

3.2. Theoretical Foundations

To analyze the situationally appropriate translation strategies in translating the Qur’anic elaborative DM wa, the researchers appealed to coherence theory in discourse (Schiffrin, 2006) and translation spotting in translation studies (Cartoni & Zuferry, 2013). In coherence theory, the accuracy of an idea and a belief depends on its relevance to other ideas and beliefs in the context of language use. These ideas and beliefs need to be communicated efficiently, fluently, and rationally in discourse (Glanzberg, 2018). In addition, the analysis of translators’ context-sensitive problem-solving strategies was accomplished based on the translation spotting theory. According to Caroni and Zuffery (2013), translation spotting is introduced based on the evaluation of competent translators' problem-solving strategies in the world of professional translation. Within the framework of this theory, researchers examine the target texts to determine the translation strategies and discover the universals of translation based on languages, cultures, and discourses (Cartoni & Zuferry, 2013).

3.3. The Model

Translators’ equivalents for DMs were categorized based on the model introduced by Mohammadi and Dehghan's (2020) inventory of DMs, which includes temporal markers besides the three classes of contrastive, elaborative, and inferential markers in Fraser's (2009) model. According to this inventory, there are four logical relations of elaboration, contrast, inference, and temporality between units of discourse in human communication. These logical relations are established by applying four groups of elaborative, contrastive, inferential, and temporal DMs by the interlocutors in discourse.

3.4. Corpus

Being parallel, the corpus consisted of one source text and two target texts. The source text, chosen randomly, was made up of six ajzā of the Qur’an, justifying 22% of the whole text (Table 1). And, the target text consisted of two translations of the same ayahs of the Qur’an: a) a Persian translation by Ali Maleki (2017), b) an English translation by Tahereh Saffarzadeh (2015). Purposive sampling was used for the selection of these Persian and English translations. That is, both translations are based on Almizan, the interpretation of the Holy Qur’an by Allameh Tabataba'i.

Table 1. Characteristics of the Source Text of the Corpus

3.5. Procedure

After the random selection of six ajzā of the Qur’an, composed of ajzā 1, 2, 14, 17, 28, and 29, the researchers manually identified 1475 examples of the EDM wæ in the source text, explaining 59.5% of the distribution in the source text of the corpus. The instances in the source text were then compared with the same instances in the target texts. Then, the equivalents in the target text were examined and categorized. Next, two raters evaluated a part of the extracts. Subsequently, the tokens and types of equivalent DMs were identified and tallied for both translators. Finally, using tables, example extracts of the four groups of elaborative, contrastive, inferential, and temporal DMs were presented, accompanied by an explanation of translators' general approaches.

3.6 Research Reliability          

The scientific status and the reliability of the research findings were substantiated by two university lecturers evaluating the extracts selected and analyzed in this research. They confirmed the examples of the translators’ equivalents for this Qur’anic EDM in Persian and English translations.

4. Results

The questions in this study focused on the system of encoding the Qur’anic EDM wæ in the Persian and English translations, the categories of DMs utilized in encoding this Qur’anic EDM in the Persian and English translations, and the theoretical foundations justifying the variations and adaptations of this DM in the Persian and English translations. In this section, the results of the study are presented and discussed.

Table 2 shows the frequency of the distribution of the English equivalents for the Qur’anic EDM wæ by Saffarzadeh.

Table 2. English Equivalents for the Qur’anic EDM Wæ

Totally, 1475 instances of this elaborative discourse marker were observed in the source text of the corpus. Of the 1475 examples of this DM, 970 instances were rendered by applying the English EDM 'and'. It possesses the highest frequency of distribution in the English translation by Saffarzadeh, that is, 66%. The omission of this Qur’anic EDM falls in the second rank, accounting for 18% of the distribution, that is, 262 instances. 243 cases were modified, substituted, and translated innovatively by the English translator, accounting for 16.4% of the distribution, which is the lowest frequency (research question 1).

Table 3. Persian Equivalents for the Qur’anic EDM Wæ

Table 3 displays the findings for the Persian equivalents in the translation of the Qur’anic EDM wæ by Maleki. Out of 1475 examples, 534 instances had been substituted, adjusted, and translated creatively. It is the highest frequency and accounts for 36.2% of the distribution. Rendering the Qur’anic EDM wæ with the Persian EDM væ possesses the second rank and explains 33.1% of the distribution. Finally, the deletion of this Qur’anic EDM with 452 examples has the lowest frequency, accounting for 30.6% of the distribution (research question 1).           

Tables 4 and 5 provide a classification of the categories and types of the English and Persian equivalents for this Qur’anic EDM in English and Persian translations (research question 2).

Table 4. English DMs for the Qur’anic EDM Wæ

Further, Tables 2 and 4 show that the Persian translation of this EDM by Maleki tends to be more creative because firstly his use of omission is less frequent than Saffarzadeh's, and secondly, he has substituted this EDM with other DMs more often than translating it into the Persian væ, whereas Saffarzadeh's predominant translation strategy is using the English equivalent and. 

Table 5. Persian DMs for the Qur’anic EDM Wæ

Overall, 40 different types and combinations of different English DMs were observed to have been employed in the translation of the Qur’anic EDM wæ into English by Saffarzadeh, and 78 different types and combinations of Persian DMs have been used in the Persian translation by Maleki. Both translators have applied similar categories of DMs in their translations. That is, both English and Persian translators have employed four groups of contrastive, elaborative, inferential, and temporal DMs to construct a discourse in the process of encoding this DM into Persian and English. These categories of DMs substantiate and establish four logical, linguistic, and discourse-oriented relations of elaboration, contrast, inference, and temporality in human communication. Furthermore, in both Persian and English translations, EDMs have the highest rank and distribution (31 instances in the Persian translation with 40% of the distribution, and 14 instances in the English translation with 35% of the distribution). The second rank belongs to contrastive DMs in both translations. Of course, in the Persian translation, inferential DMs have the second joint rank in the distribution too while inferential DMs fall in the third rank in the English translation. However, TDMs possess the fourth rank in the English translation and the third rank in Persian translation. Tables 6, 7, 8, and 9 present instances of the equivalents applied in rendering this Qur’anic EDM into Persian and English.

Table 6. Persian and English Equivalent EDMs for the Qur’anic EDM Wæ

The logical relation of elaboration deals with the description, development, enrichment, and generalization of ideas, concepts, and thoughts with a positive and supportive outlook. This kind of relation between units of discourse is substantiated by applying elaborative discourse markers. As Table 6 illustrates, the Persian translator has applied twenty different types and combinations of Persian EDMs in the translation of this Qur’anic EDM. Two groups of descriptive and additive EDMs have been employed by the two translators in the construction of discourse in the translation process. Descriptive EDMs provide further elaboration of units of discourse (extracts 3, 11, 12, 17, 19, 23, 29, and 30). Additive EDMs adjoin and attach further units to the list of units in discourse (extracts 1, 5, 6, 9, 13, 15, 25, and 27). The English translator has employed 14 types and combinations of English EDMs in the translation of this Qur’anic EDM. She also has utilized two groups of English descriptive (extracts 3, 12, 14, 16, and 21) and additive (extracts 2, 6, 8, 12, 18, 25, and 28) EDMs in her rendition. The results show variety and flexibility in the translators' approach to monitoring their discourse in this bilingual configuration of discourse.

Table 7. Persian and English Equivalent CDMs for the Qur’anic EDM Wa

The logical relation of contrast focuses on a negative and unsupportive perspective in description, elaboration, and development of units in discourse. This logical relation is established by applying contrastive discourse markers in the process of human communication. According to Table 7, 13 types and combinations of CDMs have been used in translating wæ into Persian. They consist of different synonyms of CDMs in the Persian language. The English translator, on the other hand, has employed 12 different types, combinations, and synonyms of this category of DMs in her English translation (Table 7). Here, the translators have approached rendering of the Qur’anic EDM wæ from a context-sensitive perspective and dynamically. Therefore, they have generally avoided a word-by-word or literal standpoint in their rendering, yet this is more visibly the case with Maleki as Tables 2 and 3 also demonstrate.

Table 8. English and Persian Equivalent IDMs for the Qur’anic EDM Wæ

The third kind of relationship between units of discourse is inferential. In this kind of logical communication, the interlocutors arrive at conclusions, results, and justifications in the process of the construction of discourse in human communication. Encoding the Qur’anic EDM wæ is carried out dynamically by the translations in Persian and English. Maleki has applied 19 different DMs in his translation, which consist of different groups: reasoning (extracts 2, 4, 11, 17, 18, and 21), concluding (extracts 7, 8, 10, 16, and 19), and emphasis (extracts 20, 24, 26, and 27). Also, Saffarzadeh has utilized nine different English IDMs in her translation, consisting of reasoning (extracts 2, 3, 5, 11, 15, and 24), conclusion markers (extracts 1, 3, 9, 20, and 22), and emphasis (extract 13). This category of findings reveals the translators' dynamic system in encoding this EDM in Persian and English languages.

Table 9. Persian and English Equivalent TDMs for the Qur’anic EDM Wæ

Temporal relations in discourse deal with the sequence of the time in which events in units of discourse happen. Nine different types and combinations of Persian temporal discourse markers have been applied in the translation of the Qur’anic EDM wæ into Persian. They include end-of-turn markers (extracts 2, 3, 4, and 14), the current state of time indicating DMs (extracts 6, 7, 9, and 15), and the ordinal sequence markers (extracts 10 and 13). In the English translation, four different types and combinations of the English temporal discourse markers were used. They consist of current time indicating TDM (extract 8) and ordinal sequence markers (extracts 11 and 13). This aspect of the findings also substantiates a creative and context-sensitive perspective in constructing discourse in translation. How this flexible, productive, and reflective encoding of information in the translation process can be justified? The authors will discuss their justification in the following section.

5. Discussion

We analyzed two Persian and English translations of the Holy Qur’an’s EDM wæ comparatively, descriptively, and qualitatively based on the coherence and translation spotting theories. The Qur’anic EDM wæ had not mostly been translated on a word-by-word basis or literally. Rather, various strategies were found to be utilized by the translators. Noticeably, it was encoded and translated communicatively and constructively by appealing to different linguistic procedures and by applying 118 different categories and combinations of various contrastive, inferential, temporal, and elaborative Persian and English DMs. This finding is in agreement with Mohammadi 's (2022a, 2022b) as well as Paknejad et al.'s (2018, 2021) studies. It also accords Mohammadi’s (2021, 2022a, 2022b) research analyzing the strategies used by an Iranian simultaneous interpreter.                       

This is an innovative, and meta-discursive approach to the translation of these meta-communicative elements for the construction of a dynamic and audience-oriented discourse. We believe that in the actual, natural, and conventional processing of language in social settings, this dynamism can be validated (see Frank-Job, 2006; Frisson, 2009; Furkó , 2014; Mohammadi, 2020, 2021). It is because people’s mental state of affairs, conditions of places, and the requirements of the times are adjustable and dynamic. Therefore, these meta-communicative elements are interpreted and applied in discourse in different ways based on contextual and world knowledge of the interlocutors. Consequently, DMs take on various types of connotative meanings, pragmatic functions, and purposes, as well as social configurations (Egg & Redeker, 2008; Frisson & Pickering, 2001). 

As DMs are ambiguous, complex, and context-sensitive, their various demonstrations and materializations in perception, analysis, and creation or reconstruction of discourse turn out to be more inclusive in the process of translation. As a result, DMs might be replaced with numerous DMs by different translators (Crible et al., 2019). Another aspect of diverse readings, analyses, and reconstruction of DMs is due to their different functions in the construction of text (Redeker, 2006; Schiffrin, 2006). In addition, translation itself is also a very innovative discourse construction course of action. Accordingly, the substitution of DMs is considered as a natural course of action in translation (Hoek et al. 2017; Spooren, 1997).

The adjustments in discourse construction can also be explained using Grice’s cooperative principles, i.e. translators attempt to create a text in the target language that seems logical, coherent, and comprehensible for the addressee. Since the target text is expected to accord with the prerequisites of a different language, culture, and discourse, these expectations substantiate various sorts of alterations and enrichments of discourse from different semantic, pragmatic, structural, and cultural perspectives. That is why they put some kind of explanation, simplification, and disambiguation into practice. This procedure can be justified by resorting to the maxim of manner—one of the principles in Grice’s maxims.

6. Conclusion

Discourse analysis is an effective way to uncover the features of natural language processing in human communications. This research aimed to identify, through corpus-based analysis of discourse, the similarities and differences in how two Persian-native translators have approached and rendered the Qur’anic elaborative discourse marker wæ.

This study is significant from several angles. First is the contribution it particularly makes to discourse analysis as it investigates the use of wæ as a repetitive and functional elaborative discourse maker in two bilingual Qur’anic contexts. The second important aspect relates to this finding that the translators had used numerous creative equivalents to translate this discourse marker, which shows the different meanings and functions the same word can have in other languages, which in the case of the Qur’an is a distinctive feature apart from the idea of polysemy that exists among languages in general. The third aspect is the emphasis placed on the role of social contexts in the construction of discourse by translators. Translators and interpreters work within the framework of their linguistic, cultural, and pragmatic contexts. As a result, they have to adjust their approaches, strategies, and equivalents to linguistic and metalinguistic components in other languages, cultures, and discourses (Aijmer, 2002).   

The findings revealed innovation, flexibility, and adjustment in the selection of equivalents for the Qur’anic most frequent, ambiguous, and complex elaborative discourse marker wæ in Persian and English translations. Likewise, the analysis of the approaches selected by the Persian and English translators showed that translation is a dynamic and creative discourse construction and structuration process within the natural processing of language in social contexts. This research was, however, restricted in scope and coverage in terms of its corpus. Therefore, other researchers are expected to conduct studies between different languages and different translators. Such investigations will result in comparative discourse analyses and develop our understanding of universalities between cultures, languages, pragmatics, and discourses (Cartony & Zuferry, 2013).

Lastly, educational and research implications can be offered in areas such as material development, curriculum planning, translator training, discourse analysis, and pragmatics, and may result in the introduction of various models and theoretical perspectives for practice and research. As for translator training, for instance, trainers can simply expose translators' strategies and the varieties of equivalents used by them, and ask trainees to contemplate the upsides and downsides of each.