A Study of Gain and Loss in the Translation of the Qurʾānic Arabic Words of Glad Tidings Known as Al-Bush'rā ( ى َ ر ْ شُ الب( Into English: An Islamic Professional Ethical Perspective Ali Albashir Mohammed Alhaj Department of English, College Sciences & Arts, (Dhahran Al-Janoub), King Khalid University, Abha, Saudi Arabia Mesfer Ahmed. Mesfer Alwadai College of Education, King Khalid University, Abha, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Abstract—The substantial lexical and cultural challenges facing the translators of the Holy Qur’ān in rendering the Qurʾānic Arabic words for glad tidings known as al-bush'rā ( ى َ رْ شُ الب) into English result in the gain or loss of meaning in translation - an issue that cannot be avoided. This study, conducted from an Islamic professional ethical perspective, examined that gain and loss through three well-known translations of the Holy Qur’ān which were sourced from The Qur’ānic Arabic Corpus, namely Abdelhaleem (2004), Al-Hilali and Khan (1996) and Pickthall (1930). A qualitative descriptive design was adopted together with Hervey and Higgins’s (1992) concept of loss of meaning in translation which is a critical aspect of any translation. The study found that, in terms of the loss and gain in the translation of the Qurʾānic Arabic al-bush'rā ( ى َ رْ شُ الب) into English, the aforementioned translators utilized different translation strategies such as reduction and omission. The study concludes that any loss has a significantly negative impact on the reader’s understanding and interpretation of the Holy Qur’ān in general and the words found in the Qurʾānic Arabic al-bush'rā ( ى َ رْ شُ الب) in particular. Index Terms—glad tidings, Holy Qur’ān, perspective, translation, professional ethics I. INTRODUCTION Rendering the Holy Qur’ān into English is one of the most challenging and complex tasks for translators as it requires them to transmit the message accurately while remaining faithful to the form and content. Any translator of the Holy Qur’ān finds it difficult to convey meaning accurately without sacrificing either form or content (Abdelaal & Rashid, 2016). Put simply, a translator of the Holy Qur’ān is rarely successful in maintaining both form and content specifically when translating Qur’ānic Arabic-specific lexica into English as it may lead to loss in translation. The issue of loss or gain in the translation of such lexica into English is due to the significant differences between Arabic and English such as the cultural inaccuracies that occur when Qurʾānic Arabic words such as al tayamum م التيم) ) and al e’tikad عتكاف ا) ) have no equivalents in the English language (Alhumaid, 2015; Kashgary, 2011). Hence, the process of translating Qurʾānic Arabic culture-specific words into English is more arduous because of the large discrepancies between the English and the Arabic language systems and the unavailability of an English equivalent for some Qurʾānic Arabic linguistic items. As Bassnett (1991) states, these factors may lead to losses or gains in the meaning of the items in the target language text. The English and Arabic languages are derived from different language families. That is, Arabic is a Semitic language while English is derived from the Indo-European languages. Therefore, those who are translating Arabic into English and vice versa encounter difficulties with the semantic, syntactic, stylistic and lexical features of a language. This applies, for example, to Qurʾānic Arabic culture-specific items in general and Qurʾānic Arabic glad tidings lexemes in particular. As Nida (1982) opined, because no two languages are similar either in the implications offered by equivalent symbols or in the approaches wherein such symbols are systematically arrayed in expressions and clauses, it appears reasonable that there can be no out-and-out resemblance and symmetry between tongues. Therefore, it is reasonable to postulate that the more painstaking and perfect the text content is, the more it is anticipated that there will be losses in translation. Indeed, this is evident in the many renderings of the Holy Qur’ān. Gain, on the other hand, is unusual and not always possible. It is a challenging and demanding task to obtain some gains in the translated script or target text, and a skilled translator has to apply particular translation strategies such as those found in free semantic translation, explication translation, and addition translation (As-Safi, 2006; Omer, 2017). Few studies have examined the concept of gain and loss in the translation of the Holy Qur’ān into English in general. However, the current study adopts an Islamic professional ethical perspective which is a new research approach. This study was conducted to address the gap in the literature since there are relatively few studies on the translation of ISSN 1799-2591 Theory and Practice in Language Studies, Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 233-240, January 2024 DOI: https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1401.27 © 2024 ACADEMY PUBLICATION