أعلن في وقت سابق أنه بدأ في إعداد بحث في مقارنة الأديان ليُعلن إسلامه فيما بعد

[Andijani Uzbek]

as-Salaamu a’laykum

I have the following text: أعلن في وقت سابق أنه بدأ في إعداد بحث في مقارنة الأديان ليُعلن إسلامه فيما بعد
I have also attached the screenshot to ensure that the above sentence is copied as-is from the source.
This sentence is causing a dilemma in my mind due to the word “إعداد”. There are 2 translations I have come up with:
1. “Previously, he announced that he started comparative study of religions, to get ready for his announcement of (the acceptance of) Islam later on.” This translation seems to be more logical to me, since I conjure that the preposition لـِ is connected to إعداد. But the distance between the two causes doubts in me as to the correctness of the translation.
2. “Previously, he announced that he has begun the preparation for the study of comparative religion, to announce his Islam later on.” This also seems to be a good translation.

Please help me determine which translation is right?

 

[elroy]

Neither translation is correct.

He previously revealed that he had started to work on a comparative religions study, and he later revealed that he was a Muslim.

What is the context?

 

[Andijani Uzbek]

He previously revealed that he had started to work on a comparative religions study, and he later revealed that he was a Muslim.

Well, I am shocked greatly that my translation is not correct, but I can’t understand something in your translation: you don’t seem to have translated the word إعداد. Or is “إعداد بحث“ itself an idiom which just translates to “a research/study”?

Another question I am interested in is you seem to have translated the preposition لـِ as “and”, which I didn’t know it had such a meaning. In my 2 failed translation I translated the preposition as “to”.

 

[analeeh]

إعداد بحث = 'put together a study', 'write a study', 'prepare a study'. بحث is a noun meaning 'a study' here.

لـ is not really a preposition here, it's a conjunction. This is a slightly funny structure that is very common in written Arabic but has no straightforward counterpart in English. I would say it implies a relationship between the two structures, but not a very precise one. You could think of it as similar to 'he began a study... only to later announce his conversion' in terms of how it links two sentences together, although the implied connection isn't quite the same most of the time.

 

[elroy]

I think a better approximation in this case would be "he went on to..."

"...only to..." was the first thing I thought of -- probably because of its syntactic similarity to the Arabic structure -- but as you say it doesn't fit in this example (but it does in other cases).

you don’t seem to have translated the word إعداد.

I did: he had started to work on a comparative religions study

 

[Sadda7]

Would "undertake" here sound natural? And if so, would you use it as "has undertaken..." or "undertook..."?

 

[elroy]

If I wanted to use a "fancy" word I would probably use "conduct." And I would say "had started to conduct."

"to conduct a study" is a very common (formal) collocation.

 

[analeeh]

Neither. 'Had undertaken' would be the form I'd use. But I think it's OK semantically, even if it's not the word I'd immediately leap to: 'he'd undertaken a study...'

 

[Andijani Uzbek]

I did: he had started to work on a comparative religions study

Oh, I would like to just note that then your translating إعداد as “to work on” is very interesting because in the (Arabo-Russian) dictionary by Х. К. Баранов (an indispensable dictionary for (usually) all those studying Arabic in Central Asia) the meaning is given as “preparation”. I also looked the word up in H. Wehr and it had more entries on it.

 

[elroy]

My translation was a contextual one. If dictionaries were sufficient, you could just use your dictionaries to translate everything and wouldn't need this forum.