A Corpus-based Study of the Meaning of the Word ‘Nur’ (light) in the Holy Qur’an and its English Translation

The word ‘nur’ (light) is mentioned in the Holy Qur’an forty three times. Each time has a different meaning and connotation. This study investigates the metaphorical meanings of the word stem ‘nur’ in the Holy Qur’an and its translation into English. The study is limited to two translations of the Holy Qur’an: King Fahd Complex edition and The Holy Qur’an Translation by Abdullah Yusuf Ali. The study is conducted within the framework of conceptual metaphor theory first proposed in George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s book, Metaphors We Live By (1980) which was republished in 2003.
Lakoff and Johnson (2003) state that metaphor is “understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another” (p.5). In other words, conceptual metaphor is to understand an abstract concept in terms of a concrete entity. Metaphor is ‘majaz’ in Arabic. Elmessiri (2006) claims that ‘majaz’ in Arabic is derived from the verb ‘jaza’ which means to go beyond something or to transfer (p. 12).  
 Newmark (1988) states that “. . . the more important the language of a text, the more closely [translation] should be”. Thus, the accuracy of the translation of the Holy Qur’an is of a great necessity. In this paper, the text of the Holy Qur’an and its English translations are analysed using corpus linguistic analysis. AntConc (2022) is used to conduct this corpus-based analysis on the English translation. AntConc is a freeware for text concordance and analysis. In addition, Qur’anic Arabic Corpus (2017) is used to analyse the Holy Qur’an in Arabic.    
The word ‘nur’ or light is used in the Holy Qur’an both literally and metaphorically. For instance, in the verse number 16 in surat Noah “وَجَعَلَ الْقَمَرَ فِيهِنَّ نُورًا” “And made the moon a light therein”, the word ‘light’ is used literally to mean the light reflected by the surface of the moon. Whereas in the verse number 257 in surat Al-baqara (The Cow) “اللَّهُ وَلِيُّ الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا يُخْرِجُهُمْ مِنَ الظُّلُمَاتِ إِلَى النُّورِ” “Those who believe, He brings them out from darkness into light”, the word ‘light’ is used metaphorically meaning guidance to faith.
This study investigates the depiction of the metaphorical meaning of the word ‘nur’ in the translations of the Holy Qur’an within the framework of conceptual metaphor theory and by the help of the corpus analysis toolkit AntConc and Qur’anic Arabic Corpus to show the importance of understanding metaphors properly to get the meaning represented accurately in the translation.