Translating the untranslatable

ABSTRACT

Apart from the issue of the translatability of the Qur’an, the practice of translating the Qur’an into Indonesian has captured the attention of scholars. Some studies argue that there was a pause in activity after the composition of Tarjumān al-Mustafīd, a translation from Arabic to Malay in the 17th century. This viewpoint is primarily influenced by the expectation of finding a complete translation work similar to Tarjumān. However, this article contends that translating the Qur’an has always been an ongoing practice before and after Tarjumān. The aim of these translation practices, however, is not necessarily to create a work translated from one language to another, but rather to serve as a pedagogical activity that produces knowledge about the meaning of the Qur’an. This idea stems from the concept within translation studies that the term ‘translation’ encompasses not only the conventional act of translating between languages but can also involve intralingual translation and inter-semiotic translation. This proposition finds reinforcement in the presence of numerous Jalālayn manuscripts dating back to the late 19th century, which were employed within educational institutions known as pesantren and surau in East Java and West Sumatra.

ABSTRAK

Terlepas dari masalah dapat atau tidaknya Al-Qur’an diterjemahkan, praktik menerjemahkan Al-Qur’an ke dalam bahasa Indonesia telah menjadi perhatian para ilmuwan. Sebagian berpendapat bahwa ada jeda dalam aktivitas penerjemahan setelah penulisan Tarjumān al-Mustafīd, sebuah terjemahan dari bahasa Arab ke bahasa Melayu pada abad ke-17. Anggapan ini muncul karena harapan untuk menemukan sebuah terjemahan lengkap yang serupa dengan Tarjumān. Artikel ini berpendapat bahwa penerjemahan Al-Qur’an adalah praktik yang berkelanjutan sebelum dan setelah Tarjumān. Tujuan praktik penerjemahan tidak selalu untuk menciptakan sebuah karya terjemahan dari satu bahasa ke bahasa lain, tetapi lebih sebagai aktivitas pedagogis yang menghasilkan pengetahuan tentang makna Al-Qur’an. Argumen ini dibangun dari teori terjemahan yang menyatakan bahwa istilah ‘terjemahan’ dapat mencakup tindakan menerjemahkan antar-bahasa (inter-language), seperti yang selama ini banyak dipahami, maupun terjemahan intralingual dan terjemahan inter-semiotik. Dalam artikel ini, argumen tersebut didukung dengan melimpahnya manuskrip Jalālayn yang berasal dari akhir abad ke-19 dan digunakan dalam lembaga pendidikan di Jawa Timur dan Sumatera Barat yang dikenal sebagai pesantren dan surau.

KEYWORDS:

• interlinear translation
• Jalālayn
• makna gandhul
• Qur’an translation
• tafsīr manuscripts

KATA KUNCI:

• terjemahan antar-baris
• Jalālayn
• terjemahan gundul
• penerjemahan Al-Qur’an
• manuskrip tafsir

Acknowledgements

I wish to express my gratitude to Prof. Ronit Ricci at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, for providing invaluable support, guidance, and feedback throughout my research and writing of this article. The research is part of ‘Textual Microcosms: A New Approach in Translation Studies’ project with funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, Grant Agreement No. 101001731.

I thank the British Library’s Endangered Archives Programme and its archival Indonesian partners Lembaga Pengkajian Agama dan Masyarakat, LPAM (Institute for the Study of Religion and Society) in Surabaya, and Museum Adityawarman in Padang, West Sumatra, for permission to reproduce the figures as well as the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto, Canada, for Figure 6.

I also wish to convey my appreciation to the anonymous reviewers who provided extensive feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For further discussion on this issue, see A.L. Tibawi (1962: 4–16).

2 Bitextuality can be defined as ‘ … as texts that are presented bilingually, with portions in one language mixed together with portions in another … ‘ (see Walker 2020: 675–700).

3 The very probability that a large part of Tarjumān is a translation of Jalālayn supports my assumption that the practice of learning Jalālayn heavily influenced ‘Abd al-Rauf in writing his Tarjumān. On the sources of Tarjumān see Riddell (1984: 113–118).

4 Linguistically speaking, the term sorogan comes from the Javanese word sorog, which conveys the idea of presenting something, face to face. The term bandongan derives from the word bandong, which means ‘group’; thus, bandongan signifies ‘learning in a group’. Unlike the two previous terms, musyawarah originates from Arabic, which means ‘discussion’.

5 Ḥarakāt is a system to mark a vowel sound in the Arabic text because written Arabic does not indicate vowels. We can only pronounce a word by memorising the sound and knowing its grammatical position in a sentence.

6 Any book on Islamic teaching typically written in Arabic.

7 This was an armed conflict in Minangkabau (Sumatra) between reformist Muslims, known as Padri, and local chieftains who had help from the Dutch (see Encyclopedia Britannica on Padri War <https://www.britannica.com/event/Padri-War>

8 MSS 01055, <https://archive.org/details/tafsiraljilalink00unse/page/2/mode/2up>

9 I suggest further research to delve deeper into these materials. But in the meantime, we may draw a quick conclusion from the most cited sources in the manuscripts in the examples given in the text.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Arif Maftuhin

Arif Maftuhin is a professor of Islamic law at the State Islamic University of Sunan Kalijaga, Yogyakarta. He has published numerous works covering various classical and contemporary Islamic studies. His dissertation, which delves into Islamic historiography, focuses on the manāqib literature of the fuqahāʾ. As a postdoctoral researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Maftuhin was involved in the ‘Textual Microcosms: A New Approach in Translation Studies’ project under the supervision of Prof. Ronit Ricci. Email: [email protected]