Dualism of Soul-person in English Translated Texts of the Qur’an

Translated Texts of the Qur’an (especially in English) have the benefit of being a major access source into the meanings of the Noble Qur’an especially for non-Arabic speakers. The focus of surveys and other studies conducted on this genre used to address issues related to the translators’ method, style, strategies and techniques aiming at evaluating and assessing the translation process itself (see for example Kidwai, 1987, , Khan 1997, Abdul-Raof, 2001, , Khalil 2005, to name but a few). Despite their crucial role in shaping human perception, cognitive meanings - resulted in the process of translating the Noble Qur’an - were not given enough attention. This study is devoted to investigating the construal of ‘Soul-Person’ dualism in three English Translated Texts of the Noble Qur’an (ETTQs); Pickthall (1930), Ali (1982) and the Reformists group (2007/2010). Based on Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980), with the support of Corpus Linguistics, a mixture of qualitative and quantitative method is utilized to analyze the data. The study shows two major different conceptualizations for ‘soul-person’ dualism. One construal emphasizes on the dualism of the (material) physical part of a person with its abstract (immaterial) counterpart ‘soul’ as ‘SOUL IS A PERSON’ with 116 instances in Pickthall and 176 instances in Ali ETTQs. Neglecting its counterpart ‘soul’, the other construal of PERSON IS A PHYSICAL ENTITY puts more emphasis on the physical portion of the ‘soul-person’ dualism in all instances in the Reformist ETTQ.