Applying House’s Translation Quality Assessment Model (2015) on Quranic Narratives

Abstract

This study is an attempt to evaluate and assess the quality of the translation of the Quranic narrative of the Yunus into English, by Marmaduke Pickthall in his work The Meaning of the Glorious Quran (1930), in light of House’s model. The analysis covers the story of Yunus, the source and target texts comparing the source text’s profile and target text’s profile at the register level i.e. (field, tenor, and mode) suggested by House’s 2015 model. The analysis of the source text and target text has revealed that there are differences lexically and syntactically but there is a great effort to maintain the poetic and literary qualities of the original Arabic language. The statement of quality at the end states no translation can fully capture the depth and richness of the Quran.