1. Focus on stuff for kids. Write off the adults, they’re too set in their ways. Prepare materials for about the first five years before publishing much and then try to keep up as a generation used to reading things in the language they speak grows up.

2. Focus on getting them to write in the local language. A big factor in emerging literacy is the presence of authors. You get a half dozen people writing books in a language and they’ll make the effort to get people to read them. In terms of kids, lots and lots of writing contests with attractive prizes.

3. Focus on modern things. Too often emerging literacy gets bogged down in folklore and recording traditions the young may not be interested in. Those are important but the primary focus should be in creating a medium for learning what they want about the world and not just things they already know (or don’t want to know)

I think this might also tie in with another theory I’ve come across (but can’t cite very well) that real hardcore fusha has never been spoken as such but was sort of a conlang.

Back to translation, I would assume that Quranic translation will develop in non-Arabic speaking contexts. It’s all well and good to tell Turkish or Indonesian speakers that the version of the Quaran they can understand isn’t real but the version that will be psychologically real to them is the version in their own language.

As for colloquial Arabic translations. I’d assume that would start more with translations of popular literature.
I mean, how interesting can Harry Potter or the latest anime be in fusha? I bet Egyptian or Algerian kids would get much more into localized versions. And once people develop a taste for public language that they can easily use and understand, then all bets are off.

I can assure you that this will never happen, not because it’s deemed “sacrilegious”, but simply because it’s in Arabic which is comprehensible to all arab and islamic countries. it is true that very few people use the “classical” arabic as a means of daily communication but don’t forget that it is the language of education, newspapers, press, official communication. having dialects in arabic is as simple as having english dialects or versions..(welsh..scottish..or indian Eng..French Eng..)
so having the Quran in different dialects will be just a funny idea!!

I suspect that any such revolution in Moslem literature will arise from the non-Arabic peripheries of the faith - consider that the most populous Moslem countries are Indonesia, Malaysia (whose near-identical Bahasa Melayu/Indonesia language is a) simple to learn and b) regionally important as a wider lingua franca - ask the Moslem Thais and Mindanao Filipinos), India & Pakistan (ditto Hindi/Urdu), and Nigeria - which apart from the major local languages, of course, is mainly culturally unified by… English. How wd that be for an idea? The language (ultimately) of Shakespeare, Dickens and Ronald Reagan becoming the Word of the Prophet.

On the same lines, as European Christianity either fissures into Protestant sub-sects or disappears altogether (what price Polish Catholicism after 100 years of freedom & open borders?), and the Third World’s Christian populations gain in importance, what about Spanish and Portuguese (and African varieties of French) becoming the next link in the relay race from Hebrew and Greek, through Latin, old Slavonic, German and English? Que le bon Dieu vous bendice.