Ah, Arberry!
i met this very cool lady the other day - she’s also bengali, and she’s a linguist (she knows like 6 languages, mashallah) and into literature and stuff - and i had heard from a guy at school (a non-muslim guy who’s studying arabic because he’s a classics major - latin, greek, and maybe even yiddish now) that some fellow named “arberry”‘s translation was quite good; well, this sister had a copy and i finally got to look at it and i must say - subaanallaah! i am blown away, really - what he did was like 85% what i had in mind for this project! it is BEAUTIFULLY laid out, the author (who surprisingly was not muslim, but an authority on arabic linguistics, and died fairly recently in 1969) took pains to keep much of the rhythmic style of the quran, which is often QUITE neglected when translated, and the volume is simply designed, with little added, in order to keep the focus on capturing the beauty, power, and resonance of the original; it is truly a work that can reach out and strike at the heart of the reader; i also had an idea to lay out a quranic translation with the numbering often found in literature - not to dismiss the referential value of it, but to keep it at a minimum, to “dim the lights” so to speak, in setting a mood for the reader of the book, and so does arberry; he uses a minimum of parenthetical interjections and other academic distractions (which of course can be found in other works) which i also felt would be a point most in keeping with the objective at hand; at any rate, contrary to how many people (and honestly, this comes also from a good place - the protectiveness of god’s word) view translational work - i think each work has its own unique objectives, and think as many good translations and styles (obviously as long as it is kept within the technical possibilities demanded by the arabic language as well as orthodox extrapolation), the better; and also something which many people do not understand - i, like many other artists and workers for the religion, do not necessarily do what i feel like doing - rather, if a great idea comes along and it hasn’t been done, i often feel positively COMPELLED to do it (ie i will not feel rest until it is done); and this feeling has little actually to do with how widely i want to see it circulated (often i want very little, if any, since that is most comfortable actually) but is a drive simply to put it out into the universe, to see it exist, if allah wills, to bear the responsibility of seeing it “done” (no matter by who); and so it was a pleasure to see this particular project done, and done so well; the only disappointment i feel is “o brothers and sisters, where art thou?” - why is it we as a nation are still stuck with the mental residue of colonialism, still the followers when we were once the experts and the innovators; why is it some of the best work done in the modern era regarding islam (heck, even arabic and hadith with hans and other orientalists) comes from OTHER THAN its own adherents?! perhaps we are too busy fighting each other in religious matters and following everyone else in worldly matters; it surprised me a little to hear that shaikh nuh highly praised this work, and i admire his honesty and integrity in giving credit where credit is due, since it truly is a great achievement; for some time i have felt that scholarship is one thing and artistry another - the prevailing “wisdom” in the current regime of muslims is that academic study is the only way and the arts merely a sinful waste of time; but no, art has always had the power to shape the way people saw things and the prophet sallallaahu ‘alaihi wa sallam himself would listen to it or commission it if it served a purpose; it is about time we saw someone who had not only the academic capacity but the utter love of words and sounds put down a translation for a book which in its day was a miracle to non-believers simply by virtue of the way it SOUNDED; my only sorrow is that our magnificent holy book has been “reduced” to an “oxford world classic”, on par with other temporal, albeit masterly, works! and seeing it with the “oxford university press” stamp on the back does distress me somewhat; anyway, i did breathe a sigh of relief and feel that for now, i can put the driving compulsion to do this particular project (a very daunting one actually), away, at least for now; obviously, the work is not perfect, nor can any work ever be, and many people (a common objection is also that we already have translations, so why more?) do not understand that WORDS, that LANGUAGE and meaning change over time, that each generation needs to be brought not only the “message” of islam, but needs to be able to catch even a glimpse of what used to cause the most hard-hearted to sway; i may very well come back to this later (the work does have a few outdated/strange usages for anyone not in the ivy league, some of the connotations could be rendered less like a biblical passage and more in a universal construct, and of course there are some stylistic improvements that could still be made regarding design, etc.), but at least it doesn’t have to be NOW…