@Emmo,
I had not intended on replying but reading several intolerant posts galvanized my need to. First off there aren't stupid questions but there are proper ways to ask questions in order to avoid offending others.
I concur.
- Secondly prayers are remembered and recited in Arabic to preserve the original meaning of the text. It is impossible to make a perfect translation from one language to another without losing meaning or the original efficacy of the text.
This only means that the understanding of the reciter is in abeyance just so that the "original meaning of the text" be preserved. Which again doesn't make any sense, because it is popularly said among Muslim scholars that the Qur'an cannot be translated - let alone understood. If a book loses its meaning because of translations (however scholarly that translation is), then it does not make any sense to seek to understand it at all; since the understanding would have been otiose all the same from an untranbslatable book.
- I'm sure you can think of many words that exist in your native tongue that don't exist in English.
That's true; but the English langauge has quite an extensive and well developed vocabulary to capture such words in close enough meanings.
In that scenario a translator usually has to come up with a less precise equivalent, which may or may not change the overall meaning and effectiveness of a message. (Example: spit or saliva in Chinese( Cantonese dialect) is translated as mouth water). Without knowing both languages, how is an individual supposed to know what mouth water is in reference to? This where you start getting into numerous issues surrounding interpretations of translated text.
It is quite a simple thing. There will always be scholarly challenges to existing translations or interpretations; so that when one person comes up with 'mouth
water', another can come up with 'mouth
drops', etc. We as Nigerians may be misled to thinking that 'mouth water' refers to 'sapele water' (vernacular for 'ogogoro'); and the other 'maouth drops' may be thought of as a medicinal syrup. Only scholars versed in both languages can rightly direct us.
But in the case of the Qur'an, whether or not there are scholars well versed in both Arabic and English (or Chinese for that matter), we are told that the Qur'an cannot be translated! If Arabic is removed from the Naira so that people can understand its true value, Muslims in the north will protest over a language that is untranslatable! If Adidas or Nike produce a shoe logo, Muslims will protest yet again that the logo design looks like the name of 'Allah'. Everything just has to be Arabic, and yet Muslims tell us that the Qur'an written in Arabic cannot be translated!!
- Even if you could make a perfect translation from Arabic to English, all this does is open doors for more translations. Hypothetically speaking, lets say you want to translate from Arabic to Quechua( Language of the Inca Empire/South America). There may not be someone available to do that translation, that has a high degree like a PhD in both languages( you shouldn't translate text 'especially religious text' for mass production unless you have a high degree) because speaking fluently is completely different from written fluency. So what you have here is a situation where the text has to be translated from Arabic to English then to Quechua or even Arabic to English to Spanish then to Quechua. You get a long chain of translations of translation that further pervert the original meaning of texts.
I'm sure that the various English and Spanish translations of the Qur'an were not so handled. This is just hypothetical and abstract; not reality.
There doesn't seem to be a justifiable reason why non-Arabic speaking Muslims should not use their native language to express their prayers and worship to God. Did you know that the Yoruba and Igbo languages are so rich in their own rights? Ol' boy. . . you need to listen to Yoruba and ibo proverbs to get my drift!
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