AWEJ for Translation & Literary Studies, Volume 10. Number 3. August 2026 Pp.187-206
Jubail Industrial College, Royal Commission for Jubail and Yanbu.
Saudi Arabia
This study examines the translation of the polysemous Qur’anic term fitnah in three English Qur’an translations: Abdullah Yusuf Ali (1934, 2007), Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall (1930, 2006), and Saheeh International (1997). The study contributes to research on Qur’anic polysemy by demonstrating how translation strategies influence the preservation of semantic continuity and theological coherence across Qur’anic contexts. Building on classical tafsīr, it shows how fitnah acquires context-dependent meanings, including divine testing, religious oppression, temptation, and punishment. Using qualitative and quantitative methods, the study compares the renderings of fitnah in 10 representative verses selected to cover its major exegetical meanings as identified in classical tafsīr. The analysis is based on Venuti’s Domestication–Foreignization framework, together with insights from Munday and Pym. The findings showed that Yusuf Ali employed a hybrid strategy, combining both Domestication and Foreignization, in 90% of the analyzed cases, whereas Pickthall relied exclusively on domestication (100%), and Saheeh International combined Hybrid (50%) and Foreignization (40%) strategies. Pickthall’s idiomatic renderings often obscured the lexical relationship among occurrences of the root fa-ta-na, whereas Yusuf Ali’s Hybrid Strategy preserved both contextual meaning and lexical continuity through transliteration. Saheeh International, though generally following a Hybrid approach, occasionally retained the transliterated term without explanation. The study concluded that combining domestication with preservation of the original polysemous term more effectively maintains the semantic continuity and theological coherence of fitnah than domestication alone.
Almoghirah, W. A. A. (2026). Navigating Fitnah: Domestication, Foreignization, and Hybrid Strategies in English Translations of Qur’anic Polysemy. Arab World English Journal for Translation & Literary Studies 10 (3):187-206
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Dr. Walaa Alkulaib Almoghirah is an assistant professor in the Department of English Language, Jubail Industrial College, Royal Commission for Jubail and Yanbu, Jubail, Saudi Arabia. Her research interests include translation studies, Qur’ānic translation, cognitive linguistics, pragmatics, and discourse analysis. Her recent research focuses on conceptual metaphor, lexical semantics, and the translation of culturally and theologically significant Qur’ānic expressions. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0002-7268-0319