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. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.