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B. SYNTACTIC CORRESPONDENCE
Anyone who attempts to examine word-for-word translations
will not be surprised to discover an incredible number of word
combinations which either make no sense or give precisely the
opposite meaning of the original. Syntactic miscorrespondences in
word-for-word translations are ascribed mainly to the failure in
grasping structural relationships between constituent elements in
word combinations. NIda (1964) classifies word combinations into
three major groupings: (1) phrase, (2) clause and sentence, (3)
discourse. On the phrasal level distinctions in word formation may
cause serious structural problems for translators. Co-ordinate
phrases, such as the introduction to and the conclusion of the
opening chapter of the Koran and the Lord's Prayer, if
translated word-for-word into English and Arabic respectively, may
result in syntactically erroneous mismatches. In Arabic, the
preposition literally means 'with', is used to indicate the
instrument with which the action is fulfilled, eg. 'Arabs eat with
their right hands'. If 'with' was substituted for 'in', a word-
for-word translation of the co-ordinate phrase 'In the name of
Allah' would be meaningless. Similarly, the conclusion to the
Lord's Prayer, if rendered word-for-word into Arabic, would
certainly lose its semantic load, that is, the trinitarian concept
implicit in the co-ordinate phrase would not be sufficiently
explicated. Therefore, the Arabic translation becomes 'B IS* al-Abb
wal-Ibn wal-Rouh al-Qudus. Ila'hun wa'hid. Ameen'. 'Ila'hun Wahid'
has been inserted in the Arabic translation of the conclusion to
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