Quran Translator Aims to Render Quran Exegesis into Russian
Zeynalov was among winners of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s
Book of the Year Awards who received his award from Iranian President Hassan
Rouhani earlier this week.
In an interview with IQNA, he talked about the translation and his work on rendering Al-Mizan Quran interpretation into the Russian language.
Zeynalov said he worked 5 years on the Quran rendering. "I had it on my mind to do it since 10 years ago. Finally, I began the translation 6 years ago and completed it last year.”
He said he first referred to the available Russian Quran translations as well as Persian translations of the Quran by AyatollahMakarem Shirazi, Ayatollah Meshkini, Mojtabavi and Fouladvand.
"Of course, a Quran translator should also be familiar with Quran interpretations as well. So I also referred to the existing Quran exegeses, especially Al-Mizan and Nemuneh.”
He said when he faced problems in translating the verses, he would go to these exegeses as well as Hadiths narrated from the Ahl-ul-Bayt (AS) to solve the problem.
Zeynalov said he edited the work after the translation was completed.
The rendering then went through 10 more editing phases done by experts in Iran
and Russia under his own supervision.
But it is not the end of it yet, as he said a Quran translation is a work that should be edited as long as the translator is alive.
As for other translations of the Quran in Russian, he said he said currently there are 20 available.
The first one came at the time of Peter I. It was rendered into Russian not from the original Arabic but from French, he stated.
Zeynalov said none of the available Russian renderings are accurate enough.
He said he tried to present an accurate rendering based on a combination of word-for-word and meaning-based translation methods.
As for his other plans, Zeynalov said he is currently working on translation of the Al-Mizan Exegesis of the Holy Quran.
Nazim Zeynalov was born in 1979 in Derbent, a city in the Republic of Dagestan, Russia.
He started learning the Quran at the age of ten. After finishing school, he came to Iran and started studying religious sciences in the holy city of Qom.
Zeynalov is the director of the Noor Islamic Center and Friday prayers leader in mosques in Derbent and Moscow.
