Koranas (literatūrinių prasmių vertimas) (Sigitas Geda)

Koranas ("a translation of the literary meanings") is the first complete translation of the Qur'an into Lithuanian, by the poet Sigitas Geda, printed in 2008 in 1,000 copies that sold out quickly. ¹

Lithuania's Tatar Muslims have an old tradition of Islamic learning but mostly use Polish, so a Lithuanian translation came late. ¹ Geda (1943–2008), a graduate in Lithuanian language studies from Vilnius University, was one of the country's best-known writers and poets and a politician; never formally trained in Arabic, he relied mainly on the Russian translations of Sablukov and Krachkovsky. ¹

In the last month of his life, Muslim activists, mostly from the Arab diaspora in Lithuania, criticised the translation on local websites for distorting Qur'anic terms, and the Lithuanian scholar Egdūnas Račius and other academics were also critical. ¹ The mufti of Lithuania, Romas Jakubauskas, offered to revise it, and a much-changed edition appeared in 2010 with him as second translator and the Muftiate's approval, correcting most of the criticised passages. ¹

With no alternative available, it is still cited, even in academic work, and Mykhaylo Yakubovych sees it as an example of how a religious community's approval can change a text's fate. ¹

• Mykhaylo Yakubovych, "Qur'an translation of the week #148", The Global Qur'an, 2023. ¹