Translating Qur'anic Ecological Metaphors: An Arabic–English Contrastive Analysis

الملخص

The Qur’an employs a wide range of ecological metaphors—such as water, vegetation, gardens, and natural phenomena—to convey complex theological, moral, and eschatological meanings. These metaphors operate on multiple semantic levels, blending literal depictions of nature with profound symbolic and ethical significance. Translating such metaphors into English presents substantial challenges due to their cultural embeddedness and the sacred status of the Qur’anic text. This study investigates how ecological metaphors in the Qur’an are conceptually structured and how they are rendered in major English translations. Drawing on Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) and integrating it with established translation models proposed by Nida, Newmark, Venuti, and Schäffner, the study offers a comprehensive analytical framework for sacred text translation. It identifies key ecological source domains and their mappings onto spiritual and theological target domains, examines the translation strategies employed, and evaluates the balance between formal/semantic and dynamic/communicative equivalence. Furthermore, the study explores how translations position themselves along the domestication–foreignization continuum when dealing with culture-specific ecological imagery. The findings aim to provide practical, evidence-based guidelines for translators of the Qur’an and other religious texts, contributing to both translation studies and Qur’anic scholarship.