By Mark Anderson
Anyone who doesn’t know Arabic faces many obstacles reading the Qur’an. The last thing they need is an archaic translation. Though cheap and popular, Marmaduke Pickthall’s The Meaning of the Glorious Koran: An Explanatory Translation is very archaic, making it hard for modern readers to grasp. Yusuf Ali’s The Meaning of the Holy Qur’an suffers from archaic speech also, though its Sunni commentary (in the footnotes) can be helpful. A.J. Arberry’s The Koran Interpreted: A Translation remains a scholarly standard in many respects, but archaic English weakens it too.
Read the rest of the article here.