Analysis of Morphological Shifts of Active Participles in Arabic-Amharic Translation of the Holy Qur’an

Abstract

The main objective of this study is to analyze morphological shifts of Arabic active participles in the Arabic–Amharic translation of the Holy Qur’an. The study is a qualitative study with a descriptive and content analysis design. It relies on primary linguistic data. The data are obtained from the Holy Qur’an and its Amharic translation by co-translators Shaikh Sayyid Muhammadsadiq and Haji MuhammadThani Habib (1969). The data are extracted using purposive sampling technique. The findings of the study reveal that the Arabic active participle forms can be translated into Amharic as verbs, relativized verbs, converbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs. One has to know the syntactic class to which a certain Arabic active participle form belongs so as to be able to choose its appropriate Amharic translation. The translators employed grammatical shifts as a strategy to translate Arabic active participles into Amharic.