Recently in class we discussed the way
we often translate words from other languages into English. We recognized that
on occasion, we run into a word from another language that does not smoothly
translate into English. This happens when we attempt to translate a word into
English that we do not already have a word for. Regardless of a words
translatability into English, we still try our best to put meaning to the
foreign word.
Trouble with translating a foreign word can
happen when the foreign word does not have a specific use in our language. For
example, the word jihad. What first comes to your mind when we see this word?
Arabic, Muslims, terrorists, extremism, holy war? The word jihad has been
transliterated into English, and during this translation the meaning of the
word has been distorted.
According to Martin Kramer (2002) in his
article The Real Meaning of Jihad, the
word jihad in English has been removed from its actual cultural and religious
meaning and replaced with the meaning of military action with the goal to
spread Islam. He refers to the use of the word jihad in Osama bin Ladin’s
terror campaign, and how after the 9/11 attacks America took a strong interest
in finding out the “true” meaning of jihad.
Kramer (2002) discusses the statements
made by Barbara Stowasser, a professor of Arabic at Georgetown University.
Stowasser states that in its own cultural and religious context, the word jihad
refers to a person’s commitment to the Islamic faith. She also mentions that
the word refers to the struggle a person faces against evil intentions. The
word is only ever mentioned in the Quran (Islam’s holy text) as an armed
struggle or violence in the case of defensive measures (Kramer, 2002). Kramer
(2002) states that many Islamic scholars agree that terrorist groups who use
the word jihad to justify their actions are mistakenly misusing the word and
distorting it’s true meaning.
It is clear that meaning for the word
jihad is contested by many; including Arabic speakers, Muslims, and Americans. The
word has been forcefully transliterated into English, and unfortunately the
real meaning of jihad has been lost in the process.
References
Kramer,
M. (2002). The real meaning of Jihad [Electronic Version]. The Wilson
Quarterly, 26(3), 99.
This is a very interesting concept. In our hurry to translate a word so we can understand it, we can lose the true meaning that the word has in that language and in that culture. With a word like jihad, people make emotional assumptions about a word's meaning when the reality of the word in its own culture is completely different than the Westernized understanding of it based on a literal translation.
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