Pragmatic wrote:
Agreement seems a bit less formal than عهد. Perhaps pact?
Love "pact!" Exactly the word I was trying to find.
Quote:
In spite of Paradise being a cognate of الفردوس, I think its English use translates الجنة perfectly. I know this leaves a dilemma for how to translate الفردوس, but I feel that this is a minor issue in comparison with using a suboptimal translation for a central word like الجنة.
The word
الفردوس occurs twice in the Quran,
and
So, I think that this by itself makes the case for reserving a special word to translate it and "Paradise" is the only word that can. English has used "heaven" to translate
الجنة but it's not a particularly good translation of the Arabic word, though it's technically correct, because
الجنة refers specifically to a garden. The Arabic word means a garden that is so lush with vegetation that one cannot see what's in it behind all that green.