Eurocentrism, Qurʾanic translation and decoloniality

Abstract

This thesis contributes to discussions of Eurocentrism in Translation Studies (TS) and engages with the concept through the lens of scholarship on Arabic and Qurʾan translation. It calls for a reignited interest in and a deeper consideration of Eurocentrism as essential for several ongoing debates in Translation Studies, including the discipline’s ‘scientific’ character and future development. It claims that the angle of Arabic and, especially, Qurʾan translation is a particularly valuable – and nearly unexploited – area where tensions between competing pulls in translation scholarship, including those underpinned by Eurocentrism, can play out in revealing ways. The study also draws connections between Eurocentrism, Qurʾan translation and decolonial thought – whose presence in TS remains equally marginal – in order to highlight ‘decoloniality’ as a useful framework for imagining a post-Eurocentric discipline.

Chapter I sets out a theoretical understanding of Eurocentrism and the problems it presents within Translation Studies. Chapters II and III adopt a mixed-methods approach to examine possible manifestations of Eurocentrism within a set of publications sampled from two major TS bibliographic databases (BITRA and TSB). Bibliometrics is used to examine publication dynamics within a corpus on Arabic translation in Chapter II and Thematic Analysis is deployed to inspect thematic patterns in a sub-corpus on Qurʾan translation in Chapter III. Finally, calling on concepts from decolonial thought at large, and decolonial Islam in particular, especially those of ‘border dwelling’, the ‘pluriverse of epistemologies’ and the Islamic principle of ‘tawhid’, Chapter IV concludes the study by exploring avenues to address some of the issues attributed to Eurocentrism in TS. It suggests alternative ways of thinking about Qurʾan translation as an illustration of how ideas from outside the current hegemonic mainstream can begin to problematise and advance our ingrained Eurocentric thinking on translation.

Date of Award	21 Jun 2022
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bristol
Supervisor	Carol M O'Sullivan (Supervisor) & Ahmed Elimam (Supervisor)