The Dynamic of Semantic Loss in Indonesian’s Translation of Al-Qur’an

Abstract

The phenomenon of semantic loss in the Qur'an, either in the form of expansion of meaning, narrowing of meaning or total change is interesting to be studied, because it will have implications for social and religious life. This study aims to explain the forms and factors underlying the occurrence of semantic loss in the Indonesian translation of the Qur'an. To explore these objectives, the qualitative research was used with a library study approach, where data was collected in a documentary with an interactive analysis model adopted from Miles and Huberman. This study concludes that semantic loss contains in the translation of the Qur'an is in the form of expansion of meaning, narrowing of meaning, total change of meaning, and amelioration, that is the process of changing meaning where the new meaning is perceived to be higher or better than the old meaning. The factors underlying the occurrence of semantic loss are linguistic and non-linguistic factors. Linguistics factors include phonetic aspects, morphological aspects, and syntax, while non-linguistics factors include historical factors, socio-cultural factors that analyze culture based on world views in the socio-cultural context of the perpetrators of language, psychological factors of speakers and speech partners, factors of scientific and technological development.