Mistranslation of sex-related euphemistic expressions with reference to translations of Quran

Abstract EN

Many studies and researches have dealt with euphemism in Western communities and cultures, and very few have examined the phenomenon of euphemism in Arabic communities.

Therefore; this study investigates the sexual euphemisms as one of the major challenging areas in the face of the translators of the Qur’an.

So, these euphemisms are obviously mistranslated to the extent that most of the Quranic English translations fail to give the functional dynamic equivalence of the said euphemistic expressions in the target language.

For the purpose of this study, several sex-related Quranic verses in five translations are analyzed in terms of both Tafsir and translation to discover the source of difficulties translators encounter and the translation strategies they adopted as well.

The main purpose of this study is to show to what extent these wrong translations of euphemisms affect the understanding of the target reader to the meaning intended in the source culture .Also, this study proposes some alternative translations to the expressions cited here.