The Comparative Study of English Translations in Al-Munafequn (The Hypocrites) Chapter of the Holly Quran from a Comprehensive Appraisal Theory Perspective

Introduction

Appraisal theory, which has been becoming very famous in the fields like linguistics and psychology, makes an attempt to find out about the emotional and ideological dimensions of text which is produced by a writer or speaker (García et al., 2011). This theory was related to the studies of language via Systemic Functional Linguists (SFL), and this field has helped expand Appraisal theory in language disciplines such as translation and L2 teaching.

Appraisal theory is also connected to axiology as the study of institutional values, which are themselves connected to ethical decision-making. That is why translation ethics can learn some new ideas about ethical decision-making through a use of Appraisal theory (Munday, 2012).      

Like the general corpus of related studies, this paper will also use Appraisal theory to study translation, but the focus of this paper is religious translation.

1. Statement of the Problem

Throughout the history of translation, several branches have been proposed for examining the various qualities of translation. The accuracy and exactness of each branch depends on the strength of the variables it uses. As a very famous field for determining and measuring quality of translations Translation quality assessment (TQA) usually relies on well-defined and objective criteria (House, 2009; Williams, 2001).

In such fields, the variables under study are mainly qualitative and may have psychological or aesthetic impacts on readers. For instance, the rhetorical influence on a text on the reader (Baker, 2011), cannot be assessed numerically but it can only be validly “evaluated.” This special aspect of evaluation also applies to psychological variables and literary criticism.    

Whether the focus of quality is literary or instrumental (pragmatic) translation, the concern for excellence in translation dates back to centuries ago, when Cicero and St. Jerome proposed their theories of translation (Munday, 2008). One of the very first genres in the history of translation quality is religious-literary, which was once an original motivation for learning a foreign language under the guidance of Grammar-Translation method of teaching (Munday, 2008).

It is so obvious that evaluation involves many levels of subjectivity, even in deciding the criteria. This problem becomes even more difficult when one tries to view translation from a psychological perspective. Although House (2009) has strongly mentioned that TQA cannot be based on psychological variables, the problem of quality in terms of psychological impact still needs more attention and research.

As mentioned above, there are some genres in which psychological aspects, especially emotional response, are very important, such as literary and religious texts. As a recent and relatively systematic field of study for evaluating emotional response to translation, Appraisal theory is becoming very famous in Translation Studies (TS).

This theory can play a significant role in the evaluation of emotional and interpersonal variables and can be helpful for estimating the quality of religious texts. Nonetheless, there are few studies available to show how this evaluative process can be achieved and many more studies are needed to guide researchers and more importantly translators about the emotional quality of their words in religious translation. In the present paper, attempt will be made to contribute to this developing research field by studying Appraisal theory in evaluating four Quranic translations.

1.1 Objectives of the Study

A study from the point of view of Appraisal theory within a religious genre can follow many objectives, out of which this paper will focus on the following ones:

1. Finding all of the cases of the three sub-systems of Appraisal (Attitude, Engagement and Gradation) in four English translations of the Holly Quran;
2. Evaluating each translation individually; Finding the translation that minimally altered Appraisal sub-system variables as probably the most accurate translation.

1.2 Research Questions

As Brown states (1988), selecting research type and design directly depends on the nature of the variables. As a result, the two questions were as follows:

1. Based on Appraisal theory sub-systems: (a) what are the choices made by the four translations of the Al-Munafequn Chapter; and (b) how can the translations be evaluated individually?  
2. Which of the four translations is most qualified in terms of Appraisal theory sub-systems?

2. Literature Review

2.1Appraisal Theory                   

Appraisal theory is a part of the interpersonal meta-function in Systemic Functional Linguistics to discover the speaker’s attitudes and positioning (Martin & White, 2005). Appraisal is a framework for investigating the mechanisms language employs for taking a stance by those who produce discourse (Martin & White, 2005). Primarily, the theory was guided by research in the field of educational linguistics and the development of Australia’s genre-based literacy programs.

Appraisal theory involves three sub-categories: Attitude, Engagement, and Gradation. Attitude encompasses the valuations concerning “emotion, ethics and aesthetics” (Read et al., 2007, p. 94). Engagement explains that “all text is inherently dialogistic as it encodes authors’ reactions to their experiences (including previous interaction with other writers)” (ibid.). Gradation, however, makes it possible for authors to put their valuations within a scalar range, expressing passivity or negativity of opinions (Martin & White, 2005).

2.1.1 Attitude

Attitude itself is divided into three further sub-systems:

• Affect : the characterization of phenomena by reference to emotion;
• Judgment: the evaluation of human behavior with respect to social norms;
• Appreciation: the evaluation of objects and products (rather than human behavior) by reference to aesthetic principles and other systems of social value.

1.1.1. 2.1.1.1. Affect

1.1.2. The purpose of Affect to deal with emotional response and disposition and is typically realized through mental processes of reaction. Examples of Affect are “This pleases me”, and “I hate chocolate” (see White, 2012-2015).

1.1.3. According to Martin (1997) values of affect occur as either positive or negative categories (love versus hate; please versus irritate), while meaning is positioned along a scale of force or intensity (from low to high): like, love, adore.

1.1.4. 2.1.1.2. Judgment                    

1.1.5. Judgment involves two sub-categories: social sanction and social esteem. Social sanction involves an assertion that some set of rules or regulations are important. Those rules may be legal or moral, describing that Judgments of social sanction turn on questions of legality and morality. From the religious perspective (which is related to the purpose of the present paper), breaches of social sanction will be seen as sins. From the legal perspective they will be seen as crimes (White, 2012-2015). In the same vein, Social esteem involves evaluations by which an individual subjected to Judgments is lowered or raised in the esteem of their community, but which do not have legal or moral implications, unlike the previous set of Judgments. As a result of esteem Judgments, negative values of social esteem will be seen as dysfunctional or inappropriate. Social esteem is of three subcategories (Martin & White, 2005):

-     Normality or custom; the degree an individual is normal or unusual;

-     Capacity:  the degree of a person’s ability;

-     Tenacity: the degree that a person is dependent.

2.1.1.3. Appreciation

1.1.6. Appreciation is the sub-system by which evaluations are made of products and processes. It encompasses values which fall under the general heading of aesthetics, as well as a non-aesthetic category of social valuation: which includes meanings such as significant and harmful (Martin & White, 2005). The difference between Judgment and Appreciation is that the former is about human behavior but the latter normally assess external natural objects such as texts or even more abstract constructs such agendas.

1.1.7. Human beings may also be evaluated by means of Appreciation, rather than Judgment, if they are viewed more as entities than as participants who behave (Read et al., 2007). For instance, “A key figure” refers to an important scholar in a field of study. Aesthetic expressions fall under this sub-system: boring, dreary, beautiful, lovely, and so on, as well as the same category of positivity and negativity (ugly vs. beautiful). There are generally three subcategories for Appreciation:

1.1.8. Reaction: is about the influence that a text has emotionally on the audience (both positive and negative reactions);

1.1.9. Composition: is about an evaluation of coherence and organization of a product or process (both positive and negative compositions: harmonious, imbalanced, incoherent, etc.);

1.1.10. Valuation: is about expressing values in terms of social norms within relatively separated fields (i.e. politics, literature, etc.).

2.1.2. Engagement        

According to Read et al. (2007, p. 94), Engagement “considers the positioning of oneself with respect to the opinions of others.” It is also defined as “all the resources by which the textual or authorial voice is positioned inter subjectively” (White, 2001, p. 14). According to White’s (2012-2015) Appraisal-specific teaching website, lexico-grammatical can be part of Engagement through modal verbs and adjuncts, reality phase and at least some types of attribution/reported speech.

This system too is divided into two major sub-categories which show how a text-producer positions himself against others:

-     Contraction: is about disclaiming (deny or counter) or proclaiming (concur or pronounce) another text-producer’s work; 

-     Expansion: is about providing more information about a work by entertaining or attribution (acknowledge or distance)

2.1.3. Gradation

The last sub-system of Appraisal theory is Gradation, which deals with values providing “grading” or “scaling”. This sub-system itself is composed of two further sub-categories: Force and Focus.

2.1.3.1. Force

Force includes values which have been labeled, intensifiers, down-tones, boosters, emphasizers, emphatics, and so on. There are some types of Force as briefed below:

-     Adverbs of intensification can be regarded as the most obvious aspect of this category (slightly, a bit, somewhat, rather, really) (White, 2012-2015).

-     Measures of quantity also can be part of this category (small, large; a few, many).

-     Lexical items in which the scaling value (typically a high value of intensity): plunged, skyrocketed, etc.

-     Low to high intensity: like represents a lower scaling of Force, when compared to “love”.

2.1.3.2. Focus

1.1.11. Focus is concerned with meanings which are categorized as hedges and of vague language (Martin & White, 2005). Consider these examples (as cited by White, 2012-2015):

-        He kind’v admitted it:kind’v  (kind of ) in this sentence modifies the intensity of the verb admitted.

He effectively admitted it: In this sentence the intensity of the verb admitted is enhanced by the adverb effective.

2.2. Axiology and Evaluation of Translation                                       

Axiology is the study of the patterns of our minds use when we think (Parra-Luna, 2001, 2008). It looks at the root behind why we act and think as we do. Studies of axiology have been proven to be valid, reliable, and predictably accurate. For instance, by measuring how someone thinks, we can predict what they will do.

According to Munday (2012), Bakhtin’s and Volosinov’s work has been highly influential in work on evaluation from a systemic functional and discourse analytic tradition. Axiological stance-taking is usually regarded as a subjective evaluation located within ideological systems and realized through discourse. According to Grant:

“social communications are a complex tension between dominant cultures and ideologies and the uniqueness of selves.”

This uniqueness and the asymmetries between self and others are factors of contingency which generate uncertainty (Grant as cited in Munday, 2012, p. 13).

All of these ideas are about Appraisal theory, which is a new field applied to TS. For instance, Munday (2012) has proposed a recent and highly systematic Appraisal-based qualitative research design for translation evaluation based on the data of different translations.

There has been empirical research on the topic too. For example, Hadidi and Mohammadbagheri-Parvin (2015) applied the sub-components of Attitude to “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Although their research is interesting, it lacks a comprehensive application of the theory including such sub-categories as Engagement and Gradation.

Also, Noori (2014) has used Appraisal Model (by Martin & White, 2005) to investigate the translation of emotional words in story and non-story sections of the Holy Quran. Results of the study revealed that there were significant differences in translation of emotional words in narrative and non-narrative sections of the Holy Quran, and there were mainly related to the meta-function of the Quran, when narrative section smoothly changed into a non-narrative and vice versa as qualitative changes. 

1. Methodology

3.1. Corpus of the Study

The textual corpus of the study involved four sources including the Quranic Chapter ST and four mainstream English Quran translations. The original source was the Chapter المنافقون (Al-Munafequn, The Hypocrites), and the four English translations were as follows: (a) Arberry (1955); (b) Irving (1985); (c) Shakir (1999); and (d) Yusuf Ali (1934).

3.2. Data Collection

The collection of the data was based on the purposive data collection through which the most representative data type for research was selected (Brown, 1988). For this purpose, The Quranic Chapter Al-Munafequn, (The Hypocrites) was purposively selected as it involved issues of Appraisal that fit into the theory sub-categories. This Chapter enumerates various characteristics of believers, showing a high rate of appraisal. Four translations of this Chapter were considered as data collected.

3.3. Research Design

This study was a qualitative research type (Brown, 1988) which used all of the sub-categories of Appraisal theory as adapted to translation evaluation (Munday, 2012). Since the four translations were analyzed and evaluated in this study, an evaluative investigation was then implemented to find the points of strength and weakness in each of the translations. Therefore, the research design is descriptive-evaluative.

3.4. Data Analysis

As mentioned in Research Design above, the present study was a qualitative analysis of four translations of one of the Chapters of the Holy Quran. Since the study was qualitative and evaluative (Martin & White, 2005; Munday, 2012; Reed et al., 2007), the data for each translation were stored in a table along with descriptive discussions for each verse.

The main objective of Appraisal theory in translation is to show whether the evaluative categories (i.e. Attitude, Engagement, and Gradation) have been manipulated or not. Similarly, in this research first the axiological aspects of the sub-systems were found in the Al-Monafequn Chapter and then they were analyzed in the four translations. In doing so, the values of the ST were separated and inserted into a table along with the four TTs. This provided the descriptive answer to the first research question. In selecting and analyzing the pieces, consultation was arranged with an expert in Islamic theology to further enhance the validity of the terms found.       

To show the quality of TTs, three levels of qualitative valuation was used: “+” meaning acceptable, “-” meaning unacceptable, and “≈” meaning relatively acceptable. It must be remembered that it was hardly possible to perfectly determine the error in some cases and there were TTs which could more or less convey the sense. Appraisal is itself a theory of degrees and gradations. As a result, a new grade was considered in this study.   

To answer the second research question, the findings related to each of the TTs was evaluated individually within four separated sections. Finally, these evaluations were integrated in the Discussion section of the paper. It should be noted that the qualitative and evaluative nature of the study helped reveal the points of strength and weakness of each translation. As a result, the study did not follow any sort of numerical hypo paper testing, which was line with the literature reviewed in this work.

4. Application, Results and Discussion

Following the procedures of Appraisal theory, in this section the four translations of the Chapter under study will be evaluated. This section is divided into three parts: firstly, the application of the Appraisal theory to the corpus is reported. In this section, the TTs are fully mentioned along with the original Holy Scripture. Then the appraisals of the three sub-systems of Attitude, Engagement, and Gradation are separately addressed to make it the application as objective as possible. It should be noted that in this application the purpose is not to fully evaluate the TTs.    

After the first section, there comes the result of the application. In this second section four tables will be used to contain the findings of each translation, with the original piece of language, its phonetics, its equivalents, and the evaluation. To show the quality of TTs, three levels of qualitative valuation is used: “+” meaning acceptable, “-” meaning unacceptable, and “≈” meaning relatively acceptable. Following this separate evaluation the discussion of the results will be presented which will report the general pattern of the TTs, their comparison, and the comparison of results with other researches.    

4.1 Application of Appraisal Theory to the Corpus-Based Materials (SAMPLE)

• اذا جاءَکَ الْمُنافِقُونَ قالُوا نَشْهَدُ إِنَّکَ لَرَسُولُ اللَّهِ وَ اللَّهُ یَعْلَمُ إِنَّکَ لَرَسُولُهُ وَ اللَّهُ یَشْهَدُ إِنَّ الْمُنافِقینَ لَکاذِبُونَ
• 'IdhāJā'aka Al-MunāfiqūnaQālū Nash/hadu 'InnakaLarasūluAllāhiWaAllāhuYa`lamu 'InnakaLarasūluhuWaAllāhuYash/hadu 'Inna Al-MunāfiqīnaLakādhibūna
• TT1: When the hypocrites come to thee they say, We bear witness that thou art indeed the Messenger of God And God knows that thou art indeed His Messenger, and God bears witness that the hypocrites are truly liars
• TT2: Whenever hypocrites come to you, they say: “We admit that you are God’s messenger.” God already knows that you are His messenger, while God testifies that the hypocrites are liars.
• TT3: When the hypocrites come to you, they say: We bear witness that you are most surely Allah’s Messenger And Allah knows that you are most surely His Messenger, and Allah bears witness that the hypocrites are surely liars.
• TT4: When the Hypocrites come to thee, they say, “We bear witness that thou art indeed the Messenger of Allah.” Yea, Allah knoweth that thou art indeed His Messenger, and Allah beareth witness that the Hypocrites are indeed liars.

4.2 General Evaluation of TTs of Verse 1 (SAMPLE)

• Attitude:
• Affect: no emotion involved
• Judgment: (a) “hypocrites” is a Social Sanction evaluation of the quality of some people’s conduct; (b) LarasūluAllāhi creates a contrast against the term “hypocrites”, showing that the Great Prophet was “in truth Allah’s messenger”; (c) Lakādhibūna meaning lairs nominal expression of the lack of Veracity in their behaviors (negative Social Sanction).
• Appreciation: No appreciation involved.   

4.3 Results of the First Research Question

The first research question of the study was as follows: (a) what are the choices made by the four translations of the Al-Munafequn Chapter, and how can the translations be evaluated individually?

To answer this question, first the appraisal terms from the Holly Quran (The Al-Monafequn Chapter) were extracted. Then, their translation equivalents from the four English translations were listed. Later, the quality of each translation was assessed based on the sub-systems of the appraisal theory. The detailed results of this research question have been presented in Appendixes 1-4. Nevertheless, for the sake of clarity a brief sample demonstration of the analysis made has been provided in table 1 below.

Table 1. Evaluation of TT1’s quality of translation

4.4 Results of the Second Research Question

The second question in this study was, “Which of the four translations is most qualified in terms of Appraisal theory sub-systems?” To answer this question, the shortcomings of the four TTs were compared within a comparative table (Table 2).

Table 2. The Comparison of the TTs

*. In Table 2 only cases denoting shortcomings have been highlighted.

As indicated in Table 2 above, from among the four translations, TT4 (Yusuf Ali’s translation) could be deemed as the most accurate version in translating the Appraisal sub-systems.

5. Conclusions

To summarize the findings in the present study, the following points could be made:

TT1 (Arberry’s version) suggested acceptable translations in terms of the three aspects of Attitude, Engagement, and Gradation. TT2 (Irving’s version) showed a fairly acceptable translation quality by fulfilling most of the Appraisal features of the original verse with several shortcomings. TT3 (Shakir’s version) represented an acceptable translation as it dealt with many aspects of Appraisal in ST. Finally, TT4 (Yusuf Ali’s version) showed a highly acceptable transfer of Appraisals in its translation. As a result, from among the four translations, TT4 (Yusuf Ali’s translation) could be deemed as the most accurate TT in translating the Appraisal sub-systems.

Appraisal theory is becoming an interesting topic in various fields. In this paper a comprehensive Appraisal theory-based study on Al-Monafequn Chapter of the Holly Quran was provided. This research had three purposes: finding cases of Appraisal in the translated chapter; evaluating each translation individually; and finding the most qualified translation. All these purposes were explained and done in the previous sections of the present paper. After answering the research questions, there are discussed in this section. This study used a three-degree scale to enhance accuracy of analysis.

Some parts in ST were difficult for all TTs: Junnatan, KhushubunMusannadatun

TT1: major problems in Attitude sub-system in which Judgment was the dominant category.

TT2: a variety of difficulties in Engagement, Attitude (Judgment), and Gradation.

TT3: some mistakes in creating equivalents, but almost all of them were scored as ‘≈’; in Engagement (Disclaim) an Attitude (Judgment).

Noori (2014) used Appraisal Model to investigate the translation of emotional words in story and non-story sections of the Holy Quran; however, Noori used a binary acceptable vs. unacceptable scale. The present study used a three-degree scale .Yet, Noori concluded, “major differences in translation of emotional words in six studied translations.”

In this study the researcher also found difference among the four TTs, but mostly focused on the difficulties and problems.