A list of the oldest renderings of the Holy Qur’an in eight languages has been published by an Egyptian website.
According to Youm7.com, the first Qur’an rendering into English was by Alexander Ross from a French translation. Later the first English translation of the Qur’an from the original Arabic was published by George Sale in 1734.
In French, the first translation of the Holy Book was by André Du Ryer, the consul general of France in Istanbul. It was first published in Paris in 1647 and was reprinted several times until 1775, IQNA reported.
A Hebrew translation of the Qur’an was first done by Hermann Reckendorf in 1857.
As for the Spanish language, it was first King Alfonso X (1221 –1284) who ordered a Surah (chapter) of the Qur’an, al-Isra, to be translated into Spanish by a physician named Ibrahim al-Doun.
In Italy, Ander Arivaben produced the first Italian translation in 1547 while the first rendering into Russian appeared in 1776 in Saint Petersburg.
According to the list, the first German translation was by Salomon Schweigger in 1616 in Nuremberg, which in turn was used to derive the first Dutch translation in 1641.
And it was Hans Fredrik Crustenstolpe, the Swedish consul general in Morocco, who translated the Quran into Swedish for the first time in 1842.
