Talk:George Sale

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This article incorporates public domain text from: Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London, J.M. Dent & sons; New York, E.P. Dutton.

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One of the most famous English translations was by George Sale in 1734, who included a detailed explanatory discourse. Sale depended largely on Maracci's Latin version (he could not fully master the Arabic language). His tutor was an Italian named Dadichi, the king's interpreter at the time. Although Voltaire asserted that Sale had spent "five and twenty years in Arabia where he had acquired a profound knowledge of the Arabic language and customs," this was ruled out in his biography by the historian R.A. Davenport as being "opposed by the stubborn evidence of dates and facts."

Undeniably Sale's translation of the Quran contains many faults, each one indicating that he could not have fully grasped the Arabic language. But despite its many inaccuracies, Sale's version has gone through some thirty editions; it was retranslated into Dutch in 1742, German in 1764, French in 1750, Russian in 1792, Swedish in 1814, and into Bulgarian in 1902.

http://www.cyberistan.org/islamic/translate.htm

--Striver 04:12, 17 December 2005 (UTC)