Analysis of Morphological Shifts of Gender and Number in Arabic – Amharic Translation of the Holy Qur’an

Abstract

Abstract

The main objective of this study is to analyze morphological shifts of gender and number in Arabic–Amharic translation of the Holy Qur’an. The study is a qualitative study with descriptive and content analysis design. It relies on primary linguistic data. The data are obtained from the Holy Qur’an and its Amharic version translated by co-translators MuhammadThani and Sayyid (1969). The data are extracted using purposive sampling technique. The findings of the study reveal that agreement in number and gender is sensitive to word order in Arabic. For example, when the subject follows the verb the suffixes that show agreement are absent, but they are obligatorily present if the subject precedes the verb. Therefore, sometimes agreement in number and gender may not be strict in Arabic. However, in Amharic there should always be strict agreement in gender and number. Therefore, shifts in number and gender have been obligatorily made by the translators of the Holy Qur’an from Arabic into Amharic to produce grammatical sentences in the target language structure. However, in some instances, as discussed in the article, the translators closely adhered to the source language structure which produced ungrammatical or unknown structures in the target language structure. This may make some structures in the target text incomprehensible. This study suggests that other morphological shifts such as person, tense, and voice shifts have to be studied to have general picture of morphological shifts in Arabic-Amharic translation of the Holy Qur’an.