Malayalam Translations of the Qur’an: A Methodological Analysis

Abstract

The question of translatability of the Qur‘an from its ‗unique‘ Arabic text into other languages is one of the most controversial and enduring themes of Qur‘anic Studies and continues to undergo scholarly disputes from the early Islamic centuries till the present. Numerous translations of the Qur‘an were mostly revolved around monolingual nations, depending upon the influence of some specific languages, societies and cultures. Thanks to the often multilingual populations, a nontrivial number of societies in India have developed different translations of the Qur‘an in their respective local languages. Malayalam, belonging to the Dravidian family of languages and predominantly spoken in the southwest Indian state of Kerala, is the richest Indian language in terms of the number of Qur‘anic translations. Spoken by some 38 million people, this language has more than thirty complete translations of the Qur‘an utilizing diverse exegetical and translational methodologies. Present paper comparatively and methodologically analyses selected Malayalam translations of the Qur‘an. In order to have a comprehensive analysis, the researchers have selected six Malayalam works with different approaches of Qur‘anic translation; namely, a. Traditional approach. b. Modern approach. c. Ahmadi approach. d. Literal approach. e. Conceptual approach. f. Poetic approach. The translation works of CN Ahmad Moulawi, KV Muhammad Musliyar, Muhammad Abul Wafa, Muhammad Amani Moulawi, Dr. Bahauddeen Muhammed Nadwi and KG Raghavan Nair respectively were analyzed for the implicational details of each method. The research relies on inductive, analytic, comparative and critical methodologies to reach the desired results. The study points out that Malayalam language has a distinctive range of Qur‘anic translations with different ideological and methodological backgrounds. It also recommends further studies concentrating on their methodology.