Stylistic and Semantic Incongruities in the Earliest Purported English Translation of the Qur’an by Alexander Ross

Abstract

Recognizing the unequivocal importance of English as the only and uncontested medium of global communication for disseminating the universal message of the Qur’an, this paper analyzes the ways in which translational incompetence or substantial incongruities could distort the very essence of the actual text and meaning of this last and  eternal message of Allah. Taking selected parts of the first two “ruku’s” of surah al-baqara as a case study,  it traces  some  salient  instances of such deviation  in the  earliest  purported English rendering of the Qur’an by Alexander Ross done  in the middle of the seventeenth century.  Besides  attempting  to make  readers wary of such misleading attempts,  it also  aims at  inculcating in them a sense of distinguishing the authentic works of genuinely qualified renderers from such  ill-motivated and ill-informed purported translations.