This study investigates the text readability and comprehensibility of three prominent English retranslations of the Qur’ān: Abdel-Haleem (2004), Arberry (1955, revised edition 1983), and Yusuf Ali (1934, revised edition 1989). The study uses three quantitative approaches for the measurements of text readability and comprehensibility: the classic approach (i.e., classic readability formulae); the computational approach (i.e., automated evaluation of text and discourse with Coh-Metrix); and the human judgement approach (i.e., human ratings of text readability and ease of comprehension). This multimethod research employs multilevel theoretical frameworks of automated measures and human judgements to analyse and estimate the readability of the Qur’ān translations, based on the following primary text factors and reader characteristics: style, cohesion, literalness, genre, register, page layout, verse comprehensibility, comprehension aids, reader’s prior knowledge, and retranslation. This research provides evidence that the earlier translations of the 20th century, in comparison with Abdel-Haleem’s later version, are rendered using a more complex style of words and syntax, with higher rates of lexical repetition, semantic coherence, connectives, and literalness; lower rates of narrativity; greater use of linguistic features of register variation associated with text difficulty and discourse complexity; and greater source language orientation in terms of their adherence to source language syntax and cohesion. The translation with low text comprehensibility (i.e., Arberry’s) lacked comprehension aids (e.g., introductory information and footnotes in the Qur’ānic chapters). The human judgements differed significantly only in three elements of page layout: chapter title, chapter length, and verse number. Retranslation has been shown to reveal changes in text readability and comprehensibility when the timespan between the translations is long. Readers with low knowledge of the Qur’ān have been shown to better understand more from the more readable Qur’ān version (i.e., Abdel-Haleem’s), whilst high-knowledge readers have been shown to comprehend more from the less readable Qur’ān version (i.e., Ali’s). We argue that readers’ background knowledge and levels of understanding are influenced not only by text properties (i.e., those versions with high or low text readability), but also by non-textual factors related to retranslation such as the background characteristics of the translator and the role of powerful institutions and publishers. These factors could contribute to the comprehensibility of a Qur’ān translation. The findings converge with and validate other approaches. However, the classic formulae give an improper estimation of the reading grade levels of the Qur’ān versions and are less vi predictive of verse comprehensibility than the computational indices used in Coh-Metrix, including lexical, syntactic, semantic, and discourse features.
