*

it is used here as a name and not as a title, it is therefor advisable to use the Arabic name.
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz...

--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 37 mins (2008-08-27 19:56:06 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

كيف يمكننا أن نجمع لقب آية الله؟
كيف ستترجم deterring the Ayatollahs?
and the sentence is about Iran so he is talking about the Iranian Ayatollahs, or the Iranian religious leaders, and this is علماء الدين or like Fathy put it مراجع وأعلام but I would add الايرانيون and not الشيعة because they only want to deter the Iranian Ayatollahs and not all Shiaa Ayatollahs

English term (edited): the ayatollahs

The term "Ayatollah" as used here does not refer to the specific clerical rank that the term denotes or even the functional office of the clergy as religious scholars. In other words, the term in this text has nothing to do with the term آية الله as used in both Arabic and Farsi (Persian/Iranian).

The term is used here to refer to the post-revolutionary ruling class in Iran. The members of this class are referred to in the title (but not in the subtitle) of this piece as "Ayatollah" in order to frame them as theocratic, culturally alien to the reader, and ludicrous. The writer does not hope to accomplish much more than that in the short title; that is why there is a subtilte. This is a common writing technique: The title is short, rhetorically effective, but has little content. The subtitle is longer, more prosaic, and has more substance.

For this reason, the translation approach used for the title is different from that used for the subtitle. What matters in the title is its rhetorical effectiveness, not its content.

In contemporary Arabic writings, you can find many examples of pejorative references to the ruling class of post-revolutionary Iran. Immediately after the Islamic Revolution, Arab writers had a hard time with the expression آية الله due their unfamiliarity with it; the superlative آية الله العظمى was even considered sacriligious by some. Tastes, change, however, and it appears that the catalyst for change was the influence of Western writing about Iran in which the term Ayatollah was used in a pejorative way. Gradually, this approach began to creep into Arabic writings. Witness, for instance, the book مدافع آية الله by Muhammad Hasanain Haykal. Since the term is used to ridicule the clerical rank (and its holders), Arab writers were no longer reluctant to use it.

You will find two expressions Arabic political commentary for the ruling class of post-revolutionary Iran

آيات الله
الآيات

Either one will work just fine. The choice depends on how your style and how you fashion the sentence as a whole.

,,,,

Ayatollahs




من الممكن أن يكونوا أتباع آية الله السيستاني أي أتباع سياسيته والمقصود هنا ردعهم