seinedoll replied to your post: I was curious if you thought there is a good English translation of the Quran to read. I don’t know Arabic but I’m interested in reading it not really for religious reasons but just for knowledge. Thanks
I recommend Muhammad Asad’s translation of the Qur’an. It has commentaries linked to the context of the revelations.
seinedoll raises a great point about Muhammad Asad’s translation. It is one of the most widely-used English translations partly because of its excellent commentaries linking the text to tradition but also because it sort of runs counter to the more politically-charged translations by Saudi salafists.
If we’re going to begin recommending English translations (I tend to shy from recommending any specific translation because it makes me feel like I’m implicitly endorsing an ideology), I would also recommend Arthur Arberry’s translation of the Qur’an which is the first real translation by an actual Arabic and Islamic scholar. I personally feel that it’s a bit more…dry, but it is perhaps the most widely used and cited by academics today.
I would suggest reading Asad’s translation alongside Arberry’s and, if one is capable of reading Arabic (even if only in a very limited sense), alongside the original Arabic so that you can see what’s taking place when the gulf of meanings and symbols is being crossed in the translation process.
