Quran translations

Translating the Quran is not an easy task; understanding the Quran can present challenges even for some native Arabic speakers. This stems from the fact that the meaning and usage of words have changed considerably between classical Arabic, the language of the Quran, and Modern Standard Arabic. Some of the difficulties stem from the inherent difficulty of any translation; in Arabic, as in other languages, a single word can have various meanings. There is always an element of human judgment in understanding and translating a text. Quran translations often contain distortions reflecting the translator's education, region, sect, and religious ideology. Every new interpretation and translation of the Quran inherently involves a new semantic restructuring of it.

Islamic teachings suggest that, the difficulty lies in the i'jaz of the Quran. Muslims revere the Qur'an as miraculous and inimitable, they argue that the Qur'anic text should not be isolated from its true language or written form, at least not without keeping the Arabic text with it. The original meaning of a Qur'anic passage will also be dependent on the historical circumstances of the prophet Muhammad's life and the early community in which it originated. Investigating that context usually requires a detailed knowledge of hadith and sirah, which are themselves vast and complex texts. This introduces an additional element of uncertainty that cannot be eliminated by any linguistic rules of translation.

According to Islamic theology, the Qur'an is a revelation very specifically in Arabic, and so it should only be recited in Quranic Arabic. Translations into other languages are the work of humans and so, according to Muslims, no longer possess the uniquely sacred character of the Arabic original. Since these translations subtly change the meaning, they are often called "interpretations" or "translation[s] of the meanings" (with "meanings" being ambiguous between the meanings of the various passages and the multiple possible meanings with which each word taken in isolation can be associated, and with the latter connotation amounting to an acknowledgement that the so-called translation is but one possible interpretation and is not claimed to be the full equivalent of the original). For instance, Pickthall called his translation The Meaning of the Glorious Koran rather than simply The Koran.