Volume 0, Issue 0 (Articles accepted at the time of publication 2024)
Abstract
Distributional semantics is a neo-constructuralist method that focuses on the use of words in real texts to understand the approximate meaning of a word, compared to other words. Since one of the goals of applying semantics in Quran, is to know the meaning of words according to practical context, the use of this method in Quran becomes important. In this research, in order to introduce the application of distributional semantics in the Qur'an, with the descriptive-analytical method, the steps of implementing, the challenges and solutions to overcome it, have been explained by examining a case study.The steps are: determining some words to compare with the main word, determining distributional features (surah, equivalent to document, and phrase), linguistic pre-processing of the Qur'anic text and removal of stopwords, forming context vector and co-occurrence matrix and weighting its elements, finding semantic similarity of words and its analysis. The most important challenges of using this method in Qur'an are the small volume of the Qur'anic text, the lack of suitable software for calculations in Quran, and the great difference in the length of surahs in the word-document pattern. Paying more attention to the basis of the distributional method (distributional hypothesis), not using this method for very low-frequency words, and comparing the results obtained from the word-document and word-phrase patterns are solutions to overcome some challenges. For the root-word Farah, it is obtained that the meaning from the Qur'anic context (close to the meaning of pride) is different from the meaning mentioned in dictionaries (joy).
Volume 5, Issue 10 (Fall & Winter 2019)
Abstract
The proper translation of sentences from one language into the other is of utmost importance and, in order to accomplish this, the translator should not merely translate the words directly to the target language. Rather it is necessary to consider the concept of conditional sentences in the source language, then the closest structure that makes the same sense in the target language has to be chosen. This is important in translation of the conditional sentences of the Holy Quran into English, due to some differences in the structure of the two languages and the capacity of the target language, and it requires more precision from the translator. In this research, it has been tried to use the descriptive-analytical method to study the various conditional sentences forms in the Holy Qur'an and their exact equivalence in English. Then the most important mistake positions in translation of the conditional sentences of the Quran into English such as the attention to the time of the verbs, the concept of unrealness and unlikeness, the concept of requirement of if clause for the accomplishment of the main clause etc, is mentioned and eventually the function of five translations Arberry, Rodwell, Pickthal, Yusuf Ali and the Saheeh International is analyzed. One of the results of this research is the expression of specific priciples in the translation of Quranic conditional sentences, which improves the translations, and criticizm of the performance of the five translators in question.
