Translation of Prophetic Hadeeths: Divine Challenges

Abstract

Unlike the Quran, the translation of Prophet Muhammad’s Sunnah (r) has not only been given little attention but also falls short of achieving its ultimatum divine message. This paper is an attempt to examine the divine challenges facing the translators of Prophetic hadeeths using contextualised linguistic, cultural and rhetorical elements as parameters in Muhammad Muhsin Khan’s summarised translation of Sahih Al-Bukhari (1994) as examples for discussion and analysis.  Results of the discussion and analysis of the samples used in this paper have indicated that there is an urgent need for Islamising rather than Christianizing or Jewishizing the translation of Prophetic Hadeeths. So as to achieve the objective of Islamising the translation, a list of suggestions and recommendations have been made for use by professional translators, teachers and students of translation as well as for those who are interested in carrying out further research in this field.