"TRANSLATION CHALLENGES OF ISLAMIC CULTURE-SPECIFIC UNITS INTO ENGLISH: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS"

Аннотация

This paper investigates the multifaceted linguistic, semantic, and jurisprudential challenges associated with the cross-cultural translation of Islamic Culture-Specific Items (CSIs) into English. Operating at the intersection of religious discourse and translation studies, the research systematically examines fifteen pivotal Islamic concepts categorized into theological, ritualistic, and socio-legal domains. Methodologically grounded in Mona Baker’s taxonomy of non-equivalence at the word level and Lawrence Venuti’s dual macro-strategies of domestication and foreignization, this study utilizes a qualitative, descriptive-comparative research design. The corpus under analysis is extracted from classical Islamic texts and authoritative English translations of the Qur'an and Hadith literature.The empirical findings indicate that an over-reliance on domestication via Eurocentric or secular Western lexical equivalents (e.g., rendering Zakat as "charity" or Mahram as "chaperone") triggers severe semantic reduction and legal de-regulation. Such strategies strip the source text of its precise legal binding and spiritual parameters, superimposing alien religious frameworks onto Islamic discourse. Conversely, extreme foreignization through pure transliteration risks cognitive alienation and reduces accessibility for non-Muslim target readers. To mitigate these translational gaps, this paper proposes a structured Hybrid Strategic Framework that pairs linguistic borrowing (transliteration) with immediate inline descriptive glosses or explicit footnotes. Ultimately, this study demonstrates that preserving the socio-legal and conceptual boundaries of Islamic culturemes is essential for maintaining textual fidelity and achieving objective intercultural mediation in global academic contexts.