Assessment of some Selected Translations of Ihtibak in Qur’an: A Pragmatic Approach

The main goal of the present paper is the assessment of three translations of ihtibak in some selected Qur’anic verses, through a pragmatic analysis using Speech Act Theory’s illocutionary act by Austin. The study is conducted on three levels: pragmatic, ihtibak, and translation levels. Pragmatic level has considered elaborating the intended meaning of reciprocal ellipsis contextually, based on three exegetes; Ibn ‘Adel, Al-Tabry, and Al-Qurtuby. Secondly, ihtibak level considers the clarification of ihtibak parts, the deep structure, and the type of ihtibak. Ihtibak is divided into five types; oppositional, similar, negative versus affirmative, analogical, and mixed. In brief, oppositional ihtibak relies on the concept of oppositeness, where antonyms are employed to clarify ihtibak, similar ihtibak is based on the sameness concept of meanings between the ihtibak components, negative versus affirmative ihtibak is the type in which the first part negates a word that is affirmed in the second; while the second part negates a word that is affirmed in the first, analogical ihtibak relies mainly on the presence of some common features between the two parts, but not a typical similarity like the one observed in similar ihtibak, and mixed ihtibak combines two types within one verse. Finally, translation level assesses the translations by Itani, Yuksel et al, and Abdel Haleem to confirm how good are these translations in rendering the intended meaning of the verses into English. However, Abdulrahman (2012) has provided some translations that are assessed as well.