- A back-translation is a translation of a translated text back into the language of the original text, made without reference to the original text. Comparison of a back-translation with the original text is sometimes used as a check on the accuracy of the original translation, much as the accuracy of a mathematical operation is sometimes checked by reversing the operation.
As I see it, back translation would be a giudline test for accuracy in texts of scientific nature, where things might agree in sense and reference; but, any attempt to back-translate a literary text would be silly, useless and non-scientific. Let alone to back-translate the Quran; just check how many translations are available!!!
No ,I think the translation of the meanings of the Noble Quran is almost impossible and loss of meaning will be too much . Any back -translation will produce a different text with different meanings . Back-translation as an assessment tool is applicable only for scientific texts in which there is one to one correspondence to a certain degree .
I think it is useless to apply back-translation to the Noble Quran . Even as an assessment tool the result will be something else .
I think doing back translation may be harmful for the Quranic text. This is simply because back translation is like a technician repairing a car then come out with some screws unfixed in their place.....
اعتقد بأنه على الرغم من عيوب ترجمة النص القرآني وأنه قد يفقد الكثير من الدقة والصياغة الا انه في نفس الوقت لايمكن إيصال النص القرآني الشريف للمتحدثين بغير اللغة العربية
If you check all, in fact interpretations not translations, of the Holy Quran you will notice that each of which follows one Tafseer; therefore each translation tackles one, in fact small, part of the meaning and we have limitless number of exegeses. Sometimes in some professional interpretations you will see that the margins or the footnotes exceed the size of the translation many times. Until this moment of speaking, Islamic scholars extract new teachings from the Holy Quran that are fit with the current situations. It is a miraculous text that resist translation. For non-Arabic speakers, reading an interpretation is just a way of having a general overview. If you want to Know the meaning, you should simply learn Arabic. Otherwise, you should read a Tafseer along with the interpretation. Back translation is applied on other texts not the Holy Quran.
The Glorious Qur'an is a Divine Book in which both the message and the words expressing the message are sacred. An authoritative translation of such types of religious texts which would be binding for the people who practice the faith is not possible since translating such texts is, by definition, ruled out. The sacred words of the source text cannot be rendered into the words of the target language without losing their divine value. All translations of this type of texts are religiously unbinding, although they are very useful in that they help the believer to understand the divine message. They cannot replace the original text which every believer must use when s/he practices his religion (c.f. Yowell Y. Aziz & Muftah S. Lataiwish). I can say that all the translations of the Holy Qur'an are no more than a type of exegeses. So, any attempt to back translate them will produce different texts and hence doom to failure.
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