3. The Hilālī-Khān Translation

Abstract

Chapter Three, ‘The Hilali-Khan Translation: The First Interpretation of the Qur’an in a Foreign Language by Saudi Scholars’, provides the first comprehensive study of the textual history of this influential Qur’an translation into English―one which was first published in the USA in 1977 and prepared by scholars affiliated with the Islamic University of Madinah at the time. The Hilali-Khan translation provides a good illustration of how the original text of Qur’an translations can be subject to significant change in later editions, sometimes to the extent of completely changing the original and introducing new meanings that bear the hallmarks of a Salafi interpretation of the Qur’an. The Hilali-Khan translation (particularly the later editions published by Darussalam and the King Fahd Complex Glorious Qur’an Printing Complex) has also paved the way for a growing trend of ‘tafsīrisation’ of translation, the idea that the core meanings of the Qur’an will not be understood ‘properly’ by the reader if it is not supplemented by the ‘correct’ (in its Salafi or mainstream-Sunni sense) classical interpretation. This approach demonstrates the way that, in general, the Muslim tradition tends to view translation as a kind of commentary, seeing the translator (and also editor and publisher) as interpreters with the religious authority to undertake exegesis.