This study deals with the problems that encounter translators while translating Islamic literature from Arabic into English. We have selected a novel written by Najīb Al-Kaylānī, who is by far one of the pioneers of Islamic literature. The study argues that translation equivalence is a matter of approximation rather than equation. In his/her endeavor to find out exact equivalence in the target language, a translator of Islamic literature in general and Al-Kaylānī in particular will encounter various problems at various levels. Based on Koller’s (1979) classification of translation equivalence, the study investigates the problematization of the concept of equivalence at the denotative, connotative, text-normative, pragmatic and formal levels.
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