Is each particle in the Qur’ān translatable?

Abstract

One of the prominent features of the fawāṣil, i.e., recurrent clauses that occupy the final position of the Qur’ānic verse, is that they begin with the particle wāw, which is usually identified as wāw l-isti’nāf. In Arabic, this starts a new sentence that is semantically and grammatically independent from the previous sentence. Thus, according to this explanation, there is no logical connection between the fawāṣil and what precedes it, a fact that may harm the meaning of specific parts of the sūra. Because the Arabic sources, such as grammar books, Qur’ānic exegeses and morpho-syntactic books analyzing the Qur’ānic text (kutub l-’i‘rāb), do not much contribute to the understanding of the connection between the sentences, the approach adopted refers to different translations of the Qur’ān in five languages: Hebrew, English, German, Russian and French. These translations typically refute the lack of connectedness between the sentences because they do identify a semantic relation between the sentences, or a type of dependency between the sentences, a relation that is well-expressed in their translations. This article presents the various translations of this particular particle that indicate the different cohesive ties between the fawāṣil and what precedes them. It is noteworthy that in some cases there is a uniform translation of wāw l-isti’nāf, while in other cases various translations are to be found, which leads to different meanings of the same sentence. The article thus deals with the question of cohesive ties within the Qur’ān on one hand, and, on the other, examines the differences and variations that exist in the Qur’ānic translations.