QUESTION:

Akhi, why don't you write your name under your translations? Answer: If the point of including my name is for the sake of reliability and to remove anonymity, then I believe it is sufficient that the piece is posted on an official channel such as this. But if the point of including my name is to showcase my translation ability, then I feel embarrassed to do this. How dare I write, "translated by Abu Fulān..." when all I've done was copy and paste readily available translations of Qur'anic Āyāt and ḥadiths (credit to 'Qur'an' app & sunnah.com) and assembled them together. Yes, I skim through these translations and make any necessary amendments before including them in the post, but to attribute the whole piece solely to myself, I feel this is a disservice to other people's hard work, which is why I prefer not to include my name. With the advent of 'Google translate' and the up and coming AI technology, I'm sure we'll have more translators popping up. But we need to be honest with ourselves; who has put in the most work? And thus whose name should be written after "translated by..."? Google translate, Sunnah.com, the Qur'an app translation I use, my name, or all of the above? Furthermore, I'm not the best translator, which is why I tend to paraphrase and summarise rather than translate word for word; also, translating word for word is more time consuming and you tend to end up with an English piece that resembles something from Shakespeare; it doesn't make for a pleasant read. والله المستعان