Ideological and Cognitive Negotiation of Metonymy in Three English Qur’an Translations

The dominant view of early English Qur’an translations as uniformly literal has obscured significant strategic and ideological diversity, particularly in the handling of metonymic expressions. This study examines how Abdullah Yusuf Ali, Marmaduke Pickthall, and Mohammed Habib Shakir have rendered ۵۰ Quranic verses that contain clear metonymies. Using a qualitative comparative design, metonymies were classified by cognitive type, and translation strategies were coded as preservation of the original vehicle, sense-for-sense replacement, hybrid explicitation, or deletion. Analysis of ۱۵۰ renderings revealed that, while preservation predominated overall (۵۲.۷%), translators diverged sharply. Pickthall preserved the source vehicle in ۷۰% of cases, Shakir in ۵۲%, and Yusuf Ali in only ۳۶%, preferring sense rendering (۵۰%). Strategic choices aligned closely with translator habitus (devotional literalism, reformist rationalization, Azhari pragmatism) and formed a consistent theological-sensitivity hierarchy; divine attributes were almost universally retained, human-submission expressions unanimously domesticated, and cause-effect idioms produced the clearest ideological split. These findings challenge the monolithic literalist narrative, demonstrate translator ideology as the primary driver of cognitive continuity or disruption, and provide a framework for future analyses of figurative language in sacred-text translation.

کلیدواژه ها:

conceptual metonymy ، equivalence strategies ، Qur’an translation ، theological sensitivity ، translator ideology