On the Impact of Global Coherence on Translation Comprehension of the Holy Quran: A Case Study of PhD-ESP Learners

Despite the huge bulk of research conducted on translation quality assessment, the
literature on the translation of the Holy Quran is in its infancy. Since jurists, commentators,
and Quranic interpreters analyze individual Quranic verses as a whole discourse and in
relation to other verses and Surahs, it is deemed necessary for translators to follow the same
procedure and consider the wholeness of the text in their translation of individual verses.
Coherence is among linguistic properties that contribute to the wholeness of the Quran as a
unique discourse. A literature review shows that coherence has a direct effect on the quality of
translations. Thus, this research intended to investigate the effect of coherence on the
translation quality of some famous translations of the Holy Quran from an instructional
viewpoint. To this aim, a mixed-methods study was employed in which the effect of
coherence on reading comprehension of ۱۲ Ph.D. candidates enrolled in an ESP course was
studied. In the qualitative phase, utilizing linguistic markers, samples of coherent translations
were extracted from the ۳۰th chapter of the Quran. Then, two reading comprehension tests
were developed from the coherent samples and the corpus without coherent markers. In the
next step, these tests were administered to participants. The data were analyzed through a ttest. Findings showed that coherent translations enjoy post-posed/pre-posed concessive, sense
continuity, backgrounding, explicitation, and addition as coherence markers. Also,
quantitative findings showed a significant difference between the tests taken by the
participants at two different times (t (۱۱) = ۴.۲۰۴ and p = ۰.۰۰۱) proving the meaningful
effect of coherence on translation comprehension.

کلیدواژه ها:

Coherence ، the Holy Quran ، Translation ، Linguistic Analysis ، Mixed Method