Quranic Book of the Year Award Long Overdue

-- Establishing a Quranic book of the year award is long overdue, says a Quran researcher and head of the committee for collective translation of the Quran.

Hojat-ol-Islam Mohammad Ali Rezaee Esfehani told IQNA that best works published every year in the fields of translation of the holy Quran and Quran interpretation should be selected and awarded.

This will be an opportunity for assessing Quran translations, he said, “Something that has been absent in the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Book of the Year Award.”

Noting that criteria for choosing the best translation of the Quran should be based on principles, he said that in first edition of the Quranic book of the year award, all the translations of the noble Quran rendered in the past 30 years (after the victory of the Islamic revolution) need to be reviewed in order to select the best ones.

He underlined the importance of new translations of the holy book. “Every year we need to have a new Quran translation for the new generation as the Persian language is constantly changing with new words and expressions entering it and some of its words becoming obsolete.”

Hojat-ol-Islam Esfehani also urged that specialized translations of the Quran be prepared for special target groups. “We are now translating the Quran for people of letter. We need to render another translation for the ordinary people. There is also a need for embarking on thematic translation of the Quran.”