Form Follows Function:

Notes on the Arrangement of Texts

in Printed Qur’an Translations
Johanna Pink
ALBERT-LUDWIGS-UNIVERSITÄT, FREIBURG

The existing research on printed Qur’an translations largely focusses on either

philological or dogmatic issues, trying to make sense of or to evaluate translators’
choices in terms of language and content. One topic is conspicuously absent from this
research, however: the relationship between the Arabic Qur’an and the target language
text as manifested in typesetting and text layout.

Layout decisions might seem like a rather technical affair, mainly catering to
considerations of readability, production costs, and/or aesthetics. However, I argue
that layout decisions in Qur’an translations stand in close relation to the target group
envisaged by the translator or publisher and to the uses that the translation is supposed
to be put to. Moreover, significant shifts have occurred after the advent of the printing
press, especially in those languages that have ceased to use the Arabic alphabet
and have adopted left-to-right scripts instead. Based mainly on observations from
the Indonesian context,1 complemented by a broad survey of English and German
translations, I will outline some of these shifts in an attempt to highlight an issue that
deserves more attention and further research.

When speaking of translations, it needs to be pointed out that this is a genre

that cannot always clearly be distinguished from non-Arabic Qur’anic commentaries.
Non-Arabic engagement with the Qur’an ranges from direct renditions of the Arabic
text without additions or notes to extensive fifteen-volume commentaries. The
intermediate formats such as translations with notes, in particular, are difficult to
classify. For analytical purposes, the focus here is on works in which the text in the

Journal of Qur’anic Studies 19.1 (2017): 143–154

Edinburgh University Press
DOI: 10.3366/jqs.2017.0274
# Centre of Islamic Studies, SOAS
www.euppublishing.com/jqs
144 Journal of Qur’anic Studies

target language is not considerably longer than the Arabic text of the Qur’an and only
contains a marginal amount of commentary.

Historically, there have been various forms of rendering the Qur’an’s meaning into
non-Arabic target languages in writing, besides the large tradition of oral tafsīr.
Probably the most common forms were:

1. Interlinear translations where the meaning of the individual words of the Qur’an
was noted between the lines, usually with no intention of producing meaningful
sentences in the target language; the aim was to provide a comprehension aid (fig. 1).
In later centuries, the interlinear text often offered a coherent translation.
2. Paraphrastic translations or commentaries where fragments of the Qur’an were
explained in the target language in a running text; the Qur’anic text was sometimes
visually separated from the explanations, for example by the use of a different colour
(fig. 2).
3. Glosses where either the Qur’anic text and/or a famous Arabic commentary (such
as Tafsīr al-Jalālayn or Tafsīr al-Bayḍāwī) were placed at the centre or inner margin
of the page and the commentary at the outer margin or flowing around the main text
(fig. 3).

In the early print age, common manuscript layouts continued to be reproduced for a
while, but were eventually replaced by modernised forms that were closer to European
patterns and seemed to be more accessible to a readership increasingly composed of
religious lays. An additional problem presented itself when languages stopped using
Arabic script and opted for Latin or other left-to-right scripts, such as was the case in
Turkish or Malay. It was impossible to continue publishing paraphrastic non-Arabic
commentaries that integrated the Arabic Qur’an with non-Arabic text; this type of
interpreting the Qur’an therefore ceased to be relevant in these languages and was
replaced by other patterns.

The other forms were continued into the print age and transformed along the way;
there were also significant new developments.

1. The interlinear form seems to temporarily have fallen out of use after the advent of
print culture. Apparently, the initial interest of printed translations was to provide
readers with the general meaning of the text, not a word-by-word comprehension aid
that would only have made sense for students of Arabic whose proportion of the
literate population was decreasing fast. Interlinear translations have seen a
renaissance, however, in the form of elaborate works that combine the Arabic
Qur’an with a word-by-word translation, transliteration, and conventional idiomatic
translation, meant to facilitate memorising the Qur’an for readers without a solid
education in Arabic. Some such works are glossy and highly polished; they might add
a host of additional material such as ḥadīths and summaries of classical Qur’anic
 Form Follows Function 145

commentaries (fig. 4). The aim is to facilitate an understanding of the Arabic text, not
to provide a substitute for it.
2. The gloss, on the other hand, was retained in a modernised form: the Arabic text
of the Qur’an, in the same rectangular grouped-style layout as in any monolingual
Arabic muṣḥaf, is placed near the inner margin of the page at the top, with the
translation flowing around it (fig. 5). This is clearly meant to convey the impression
that the translation is not an equivalent to the Arabic text, but rather a type of
interpretation or even commentary. In that, it is similar to the interlinear translation,
but it does not make an attempt to facilitate direct access to the Arabic text since a
reader with little command of Arabic will have difficulties even correlating it with the
target text.
3. Somewhere between the gloss and a tabular layout (see no. 4) is the two-page form
where the Arabic muṣḥaf is printed on the right and the translation on the left page
(fig. 6). The Arabic is conventionally typeset as a running text, grouped style, with
line breaks occurring within verses, while the non-Arabic text is printed verse by
verse. The effect is nearly the same as the gloss since there is little correlation between
Arabic and non-Arabic text.
4. The tabular layout seems to be a modern innovation. In this layout, each verse of
the Qur’an is printed individually with the Arabic on the right and the non-Arabic
translation on the left, the uppermost lines being at the same height (fig. 7). This
format expresses the expectation that at least some of the readers will try to compare
the translation to the Arabic text or use it in order to understand the latter. It obviously
has in mind a Muslim readership with a more than superficial interest in the Qur’an
and some knowledge of Arabic.
5. Monolingual—i.e., non-Arabic—Qur’an translations are apparently not available
in Indonesia, and the same seems to be true for many other, but not all, Muslim majority
contexts. Turkey is a notable exception, possibly because the idea of a ‘national
Qur’an’, while never uncontested and never fully realised, was more widespread here
than in most other countries.2 Monolingual non-Arabic ‘Qur’ans’ are widely popular in
western languages such as English and German. In most cases, it can be assumed that
the publisher has a non-Muslim readership in mind that would have no interest in the
Arabic text. An American pedagogical Qur’an translation for children gives another
reason to omit the Arabic text: this lowers the risk of students desecrating the muṣḥaf by
making notes or even throwing away the used book.3 Instead of the Arabic text, it
includes a transliteration that will, however, hardly be helpful unless supported by the
Arabic text. The recitation and/or memorisation of the Arabic Qur’an is, of course,
traditionally a standard component of Islamic religious education. Many Muslim
religious educators in the west continue to consider acquiring the skill to recite the
Arabic Qur’an an important objective of their instruction; yet it appears that this goal is
146 Journal of Qur’anic Studies

increasingly under pressure, largely due to pragmatic considerations. Whether such

instruction should convey an actual understanding of the Arabic text that is recited
remains contested.4

Besides opting for one of these layout styles, publishers of bilingual Qur’an
editions—where the non-Arabic language is in Latin or other left-to-right scripts—
have to make one additional decision: the reading direction. Many bilingual
Indonesian Qur’an editions start on the left, thereby suggesting the primacy of the
Indonesian translation over the Arabic text for their intended audience. For precisely
the opposite reason, some translators, particularly those favouring the gloss style
layout, have opted for right-to-left editions, indicating the need to consult the Arabic
text first and the Indonesian second, in order to better understand the first. This choice
was made by the latest, and controversial, translation from the conservative Islamist
spectrum, that of Muhammad Thalib,5 but also by various publishers of the official
translation by the Ministry of Religion. Thalib even has the columns of Indonesian
text running from right to left which is unusual and sends a strong message about the
preferable reading direction (fig. 5).

Layout and typesetting decisions, far from being formalistic matters with little more
than aesthetic and maybe practical impact, can be of highly symbolic value. This
becomes apparent when looking at the conflict that surrounded the Indonesian literary
critic H.B. Jassin’s Qur’an translation and edition. Jassin, while not going as far as
to claim that the Qur’an is poetry, had presented a translation that tried to take into
account the ‘poetic language’ of the Qur’an. He had, in fact, been influenced by
such respectable translations into European languages as that of Yusuf Ali and his work
contained no particularly offensive passages. Nevertheless, it sparked a major
controversy in Indonesia for several reasons, one of which was due to the fact that
he typeset his translation in verse, allowing his audience not only to read, but also to
recite it (fig. 8). Not only that, but he asked a famous calligrapher to produce a muṣḥaf
that was likewise set in verse, not in the usual grouped-style layout where verses are
simply treated as part of a running text. This touched upon a taboo, and Jassin’s
opponents pointed out that the Qur’an itself firmly declares that Muḥammad’s message
is not poetry (Q. 36:69 and Q. 69:41). Jassin’s muṣḥaf, despite being formally correct
and following accepted orthographic conventions including the symbols facilitating
correct pronounciation and recitation, was not granted permission for separate
publication as a monolingual muṣḥaf; so far, it is only available as part of the bilingual
edition.6

The taboos related to poetic renderings of the Qur’an invariably pertain to the question
of typesetting. Jassin’s translation is not, or is only in rare instances, in rhyme; it was
thus the verse layout that was at the heart of the controversy. Rhyming translations
that try to convey the Qur’an’s sajʿ style in the target language do exist; but they were
 Form Follows Function 147

written either by European non-Muslim writers, especially from the German-speaking

world,7 or from within movements that are considered heterodox by many Sunnī and
twelver-Shīʿī Muslims, such as the Alevis and Bektashis.8 In Indonesia, in particular,
most translations favour a rather technical style that either strives to be as close to the
Arabic syntax and wording as possible or tries to summarise major exegetical trends;
in any case, the style has no inherent aesthetic value, which was exactly what drove
Jassin to produce his own translation. The fact that aesthetic value is supposed to
remain a prerogative of the Arabic muṣḥaf is, in turn, expressed in the layout where
embellishment is often reserved for the Arabic text. Some monolingual translations,
often those that are targeted at a primarily non-Muslim readership, make use of
decorations and a layout that is more akin to poetry than to prose, though.9

The issues described here might soon become obsolete, or rather, replaced by other
concerns. Websites and, even more importantly, smartphone apps are gaining more
and more importance. These offer new opportunities of establishing correlations
between source text and target text, of integrating the original text with both
translation and commentary, of changing reading directions, providing word-by-word
translations, and pronunciation aids. Just as was the case with the introduction of print,
these new opportunities force publishers to make choices. What choices they make,
why they make them, and what kind of engagement with the Qur’an they aim to
encourage deserves a study of its own.

Fig. 1. Interlinear Persian translation (13th–14th c. CE).

Library of Congress World Digital Library, https://www.wdl.org/en/item/6784/
(retrieved September 9, 2016).
148 Journal of Qur’anic Studies

Fig. 2. Paraphrastic Qur’an translation/commentary on Q. 18 from Sumatra with the

Arabic text in red ink and the Minangkabau in black.
British Library Endangered Archives Project, Surau Lubuk Ipuh Collection
[1700s–1900s], EAP144/3/12 part 2: Tafsir Alquran, f. 1,
http://eap.bl.uk/database/overview_item.a4d?catId=141306;r=16944 (retrieved
September 9, 2016).
 Form Follows Function 149

Fig. 3. Gloss in Ottoman Turkish on Q. 36.

Photograph from Freer and the Sackler (Smithsonian) Museums, https://www.
learninglab.si.edu/resources/view/233167#.
150 Journal of Qur’anic Studies

Fig. 4. Modern interlinear Indonesian translation with running translation

at the margin and asbāb al-nuzūl material. Qurʾan Al-Hidayah, http://www.carigold.
com/portal/forums/showthread.php?t=187745 (retrieved March 8, 2017).
 Form Follows Function 151

Fig. 5. Modern gloss-style layout, right-to-left reading direction.

Thalib, Muhammad, Al-Qur’anul Karim: Tarjamah tafsiriyah. Memahami makna
Al-Qur’an lebih mudah, cepat dan tepat, 2nd edn (Yogyakarta: Ma’had an-Nabawy,
2011), p. 2.

Fig. 6. Two-page form with Arabic muṣḥaf and German translation.

Bubenheim, ʿAbdullāh aṣ-Ṣāmit Frank, and Elyas, Nadeem, Der edle Qurʾān und die
Übersetzung seiner Bedeutungen in die deutsche Sprache (Medina: King Fahd
Complex for the Printing of the Holy Qur’an, 1422 H./c. 2001), p. 1.
152 Journal of Qur’anic Studies

Fig. 7. Tabular layout, left-to-right reading direction.

Al-Quran dan terjemahnya, based on the translation by the Indonesian Ministry of
Religion and published by the King of Saudi Arabia (Medina: King Fahd Complex
for the Printing of the Holy Qur’an, n.y.), p. 176.
 Form Follows Function 153

Fig. 8. Q. 1 (al-Fātiḥa) in H.B. Jassins literary translation.

Jassin, HB, Al-Qurʾān al-karīm. Bacaan Mulia (Jakarta: Penerbit Djambatan,
1978), p. 1.

NOTES
1 For an overview of the Indonesian Qur’an translations consulted, see Pink, ‘Literal Meaning’.
2 For an admirable in-depth study of the Turkish discourse on the Qur’an, see Wilson,
Translating the Qur’an.
3 Emerick, The Meaning, p. 5.
4 Cf. Berglund, Teaching Islam, ch. 3, pp. 67–109.
5 Thalib, Al-Qur’anul Karim. On Thalib see Munirul Ikhwan, ‘Fī taḥaddī al-dawla’.
6 Cf. Rahman, ‘The Controversy around H.B. Jassin’.
7 See Stewart, ‘Rhyming Translations’.
8 See Wilson, ‘Ritual and Rhyme’.
9 See, for example, Bobzin, Der Koran; this German translation has a left-justified verse layout
and is sparsely decorated with modern Arabic calligraphy. Karimi, Der Koran, has ornamental
154 Journal of Qur’anic Studies

decorations at the page margins, but a grouped-style layout. An extreme example is Sandow
Birk’s fully illustrated American Qur’an.

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Berglund, Jenny, Teaching Islam: Islamic Religious Education in Sweden (Münster:
Waxmann, 2010).
Birk, Sandow, American Qur’an (New York: Liveright, 2016).
Bobzin, Hartmut, Der Koran (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2010).
Emerick, Yahya, The Meaning of the Holy Qur’an for Kids—Juz Amma
(self-published: n.p., 2010).
Karimi, Ahmad Milad, Der Koran (Freiburg: Herder, 2009).
Munirul Ikhwan, ‘Fī taḥaddī al-dawla: al-tarjama al-tafsīriyya fī muwājahat al-khiṭāb
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(ed.), ‘Translations of the Qur’an in Muslim-Majority Contexts’, Journal of
Qur’anic Studies 17:3 (2015), pp. 100–120.
Rahman, Yusuf, ‘The Controversy around H.B. Jassin: A Study of his
al-Quranu’l-Karim Bacaan Mulia and al-Qu’an al-Karim Berwajah Puisi’ in
Abdullah Saeed (ed.), Approaches to the Qur’an in Contemporary Indonesia
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 93–94.
Stewart, Devin, ‘Rhyming Translations of Qurʾanic Surahs’, February 23, 2015, IQSA
Blog (retrieved September 9, 2016) https://iqsaweb.wordpress.com/2015/02/23/
stewart-rhyming-translations.
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an-Nabawy, 2011).
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——, Translating the Qur’an in an Age of Nationalism: Print Culture and Modern
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