To me, this is quite the important point!
There are many aspects to the Qur'an.
I've heard it sung by excellent singers. It's very beautiful. It's an artistic masterpiece.
There's the actual words. Obviously, I don't know a thing about those. Clunky translations into an entirely different language just don't have the same meanings. The best Chinese translator isn't going to really translate Shakespeare into Chinese either. It's just not possible.
Which is why I'm less interested in whatever someone claims the Qur'an says than how it gets put into practice. No matter what anybody tells me, if I can understand it, it's not in the Qur'an. It's what someone wants me to believe the Qur'an meant.
Tom
Just out of curiosity though, since things like literature and comprehension and things like that matter to me, and also because the English language versions are some of the most widely read and influential (like the English Bible is more widely read and comprehended and influential than the Greek or Hebrew these days), out of those numerous translations on each page, is there one or more that you noticed after looking at it that seem like they seem less clunky and easier to read? If one were to take it just as English, which one of those do you like? I think I tended to prefer Shakir maybe, and as for the reciters or singers of the Qur'an, I like Mishary Al Afasy a lot for his recitals which are on Youtube with some videos with nice stock video imagery attached by people. Other than Shakir's English, I've extensively or completely read the Qur'an in Pickthal or Pickthall's version and Yusuf Ali, and those three I think are some of the biggest or most widely known and promoted versions, but now there are lots more. There is one that really seems to add a lot of words, but most seem to stick very closely to what the "Word for Word" translation seems to show also, and an occasional word or definition and the ideas associated with them are occasionally disputed, like when it comes to the punitive measures on wives or other things here and there, but most of the translations for the vast majority of the Qur'an seem to be very much saying the same thing, and that same thing seems to be this (over and over):
There is One God, All Powerful, and Judgment Day is Real and Coming, so Prepare yourselves by worship and good deeds such as charity, and then you will die, and be raised up again and face your Judgment by a God and a force of beings (angels) that can not be fought against, who will administer Justice and sort you and all people and other races such as the Jinn into paradise, called Jannah, which means something like the Concealed Garden (Earth 2's surface) or Jahannam (Gehenna, which seems to be inside Earth 2 and below the surface).
Since the English version is so popular these days and used by so much of the modern world and online, even by people who are trying to learn and understand Classical Arabic, it is stands as a literary piece of its own very powerful influence, possibly currently a greater influence than the Classical Arabic version and that version grows in its popularity and thus power every day in how it influences the minds and behaviors of people, both Muslim and Non-Muslim as they interact or conflict with one another. In the Islamic view, this shift or gain in power of a certain linguistic version in how it reaches people and influences their minds might be considered the work of the Islamic God (believed to be the only God), known by the Muslim's as Allah (I think its pronounced like uh-luh or uh-lah). In the Islamic view of things, Allah at the very least monitors and manipulates the lives and events on Earth, and so the English translation becoming so influential and being the source of first contact for many people and what they interact with most would be believed to be very much the activity of God presently at work.
Typically, what is expected or believed to happen is this:
A person is born into whatever conditions and grows to a certain point and then by various means receives some sort of point of contact or further contact, which they either are unable to receive or outright reject, or which leads them to begin their journey towards Islam, which one can hear on Youtube for example numerous authentic seeming accounts of people becoming Muslim through weird ways they personally believe was God manipulating events and contacting them through these means. Very often in these stories, a Muslim agent, even someone who is not particularly familiar with Islam but is associated with it or known by the term "Muslim" somehow is an early step, and then one of the more powerful steps is direct contact with a version of the Qur'an which they can read or understand, very commonly some English version.
This typically has two possible results, possibly a few more varying options, but the main two are that the Qur'an they read or whatever they read appears as incomprehensible gibberish, and this is in some cases after years where they were unable to even open it or approach it or read the copy they had access to. The Muslims believe that is miraculous activity and proof that the person is blocked from the Qur'an by God, a covering put over their senses so that its basically encrypted and the person is not permitted to comprehend it much even if they do look into it. The other option is that the person is able to read it and comprehend it, and finds themselves feeling, due to the way its written and translated, that it is speaking to them. Sometimes this turns into a conflicted battle with this book, arguing with the verses and against them as if its personally speaking to the person, and in other cases it takes a very powerful effect on the person (reading in English and never having heard it read in Arabic), where the person acknowledges or considers the content to be truly special and furthermore divine. There are also those who read it, appreciate it, but also don't care much or do anything about it, but still manage to praise it occasionally. The group that is able to get all the way to the point of reading it and thinking that its actually God talking to them through this book and that its true communication from God, often convert at some point or start practicing Islam more, which is mostly just incorporating worship into the daily activities if one can, which is probably the biggest change, otherwise people are mainly just behaving as they always did, but feeling as though they have a little extra magical advantage by having this lifeline or contact with God, perhaps giving a possible elitism, arrogance, or even humility, depending on how this notion works on the mind of a person, but I can't think that there is absolutely no influence upon the mind or behavior by thinking that one has been able to deal with something special, divine, or miraculous, which usually surrounds their contact with the Qur'an (still in English) according to many accounts I have listened to.
The Qur'an is in some senses a divisive book, in that it presents a somewhat black & white or simplistic view of things, though in many cases it is incredibly nuanced and complex in its depth, the two main factions it presents seem to be The Good Guys and The Not Good Guys, or The Believers and most particularly the Muslims and the Kaffirs, including sub-sections like the Hypocrites and Ignorant and Cruel, so varying in degrees. Yet, what people who become Muslim tend to get influenced by a lot is simply the division that is repeated frequently in the Qur'an, that there are those who are the real believers who are described in various ways and those who are not and are actually not allowed to be, while the Muslims are chosen by God to understand the message and act upon it. When a Muslim goes out into the world, they are thus quite likely to view the world or people and interactions in this dichotomous fashion, where all people are mortals, but are split into the mortals who are believers accumulating good deeds and the mortals who are disbelievers accumulating bad deeds (even by things which are normal to their non-Muslim cultures, like drinking and sexual contact outside of marriage for example).
The Qur'an also has a way of influencing the mind to think in an almost economic fashion, where deeds or conduct somehow translate into points or rewards or merits, perhaps not entirely different from some versions or understandings that the average populace may have had about karma or the accumulation of merit and its results. So, I think it is not uncommon for Muslims to almost think in numbers, and this tendency towards numbers and quantities may appear in things like reciting names, amount of prayers, amount of charity or acts of charity, things like that.
So, even if you don't end up trying to read the whole Qur'an again in any of those translations, if it isn't too much trouble, if you could read through just a little of those pages I linked to which show various translations and tell me if one of them looks sort of better or easier to read for you, it might give me an idea of which one might be a better one for people to share with people who have had difficulties with other versions like you mentioned. If not though, that is alright too, I was just curious! Anyone else can also take a look and let me know, the idea of preference in sentence structures is very interesting to me!
