Marked words appear in this translation and in no other English translation of this verse. Common small words and older spellings are not marked. The marks show where the wording differs, not where the meaning does.
Mohammed Marmaduke William Pickthall1875–1936 · published 1930
Among them are unlettered folk who know the Scripture not except from hearsay. They but guess
Sources
Translation Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran·Public domain — copyright term expired
Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran·1930 translation, digital edition of unverified printing·None — public domain work
·Public domain — copyright term expired·retrieved 24 Aug 2026
Edward Henry Palmer1840–1882 · published 1880
And some of them there are, illiterate folk, that know not the Book, but only idletales; for they do but fancy
Sources
Translation Edward Henry Palmer, English translation of the Qur'an·Public domain — copyright term expired
But there are illiterate men among them, who know not the book of the law, but only lyingstories, although they thinkotherwise
Sources
Translation George Sale, English translation of the Qur'an·Public domain — copyright term expired
George Sale, English translation of the Qur'an·1734 translation, digital edition of unverified printing·None — public domain work
·Public domain — copyright term expired·retrieved 24 Aug 2026
Other languages (18)Shqip · Albanian
Në mesin e tyre ka edhe të paditur, që nuk e njohin Librin (Teuratin), përveç leximit të tij, prandaj mbështeten vetëm në hamendje.
Translated by the team of Rowwad Translation Center, in cooperation with the Rabwah Dawah Association, the Islamic Content Service Association in Languages, and the IslamHouse.com website.
From QuranEnc.com, version 1.0.5
বাংলা · Bengali
আর তাদের মধ্যে এমন কিছু নিরক্ষর লোক আছে যারা মিথ্যা আশা-আকাঙ্ক্ষা ছাড়া কিতাব সম্পর্কে কিছুই জানে না। আর তারা শুধু অমূলক ধারণা পোষণ করে।
Translated by the team of Rowwad Translation Center, in cooperation with the Dawah Association in Rabwah, the Islamic Content Service Association in Languages, and the IslamHouse.com website.
From QuranEnc.com, version 1.1.2
Bosanski · Bosnian
Neki od njih su nepismeni i ne poznaju Knjigu, nego samo gatke. Oni samo izmišljaju.
Translated by the team of the Rowwad Translation Center, in cooperation with the Rabwah Dawah Association, the Islamic Content Service Association in Languages, and the IslamHouse.com website.
From QuranEnc.com, version 2.0.4
Hrvatski · Croatian
Neki od njih su nepismeni i ne poznaju Knjigu, nego samo gatke. I oni samo izmišljaju.
Translated by the team of the Rowwad Translation Center, in cooperation with the Rabwah Dawah Association, the Islamic Content Service Association in Languages, and the IslamHouse.com website.
From QuranEnc.com, version 1.0.1
Fulfulde · Fulani
Na woodi he maɓɓe humambinneeɓe ɓe nganndaa he deftere ndee sonaa janngugol penaale ɗe ɓe nganndinaa, ɓe ngonaani so wonaa sikkude tan.
Translated by the team of the Rowwad Translation Center, in cooperation with the Rabwah Dawah Association, the Islamic Content Service Association in Languages, and the IslamHouse.com website.
From QuranEnc.com, version 1.0.2
ქართული · Georgian
და მათ (იდეველებს) შორის არიან წერა–კითხვის უცოდინარნი, რომელთაც არაფერი გაეგებათ წიგნის შესახებ, და ისინი მხოლოდ ვარაუდებსა და ფანტაზიებს ეყრდნობიან [და შემდეგ სხვებსაც უყვებიან], და ისინი მხოლოდ ვარაუდობენ.
Translated by the team of the Rowwad Translation Center, in cooperation with the Rabwah Dawah Association, the Islamic Content Service Association in Languages, and the IslamHouse.com website.
From QuranEnc.com, version 1.0.7
Deutsch · German
Und unter ihnen gibt es auch Schriftunkundige, die die Schrift nicht kennen, sondern nur Wunschvorstellungen hegen, und die ja nur Mutmaßungen anstellen.
Translated by the team of the Rowwad Translation Center, in cooperation with the Rabwah Dawah Association, the Islamic Content Service Association in Languages, and the IslamHouse.com website.
From QuranEnc.com, version 1.0.15
Ελληνικά · Greek
Και υπάρχουν ανάμεσά τους αγράμματοι (απλοί άνθρωποι), που δεν γνωρίζουν από το Βιβλίο (την Τορά), παρά μόνο την απαγγελία του (χωρίς να κατανοούν τη σημασία του, και δεν έχουν παρά μόνο ψέματα που άκουσαν από τους λογίους τους) και, πράγματι, αυτοί μόνο νομίζουν (ότι αυτά τα ψέματα που άκουσαν από τους λογίους τους, είναι η αλήθεια από την αυθεντική Τορά).
Translated by the team of the Rowwad Translation Center, in cooperation with the Rabwah Dawah Association, the Islamic Content Service Association in Languages, and the IslamHouse.com website.
From QuranEnc.com, version 1.0.2
हिन्दी · Hindi
तथा उनमें से कुछ अनपढ़ हैं, जो पुस्तक का ज्ञान नहीं रखते सिवाय कुछ कामनाओं के, तथा वे केवल अनुमान लगाते हैं।
Translated by Azizul Haq Al-Omari
From QuranEnc.com, version 1.1.5
Italiano · Italian
E tra loro ci sono degli analfabeti, che non conoscono il Libro e inventano solo bugie infondate e supposizioni.
Translated by the team of the Rowwad Translation Center, in cooperation with the Rabwah Dawah Association, the Islamic Content Service Association in Languages, and the IslamHouse.com website.
From QuranEnc.com, version 1.0.2
Lietuvių · Lithuanian
78. Ir tarp jų (judėjų) yra beraščių žmonių, kurie nežino Knygos. Jie pasikliauja apgaulingais troškimais ir jie tik spėlioja.
Translated by the team of the Rowwad Translation Center, in cooperation with the Rabwah Dawah Association, the Islamic Content Service Association in Languages, and the IslamHouse.com website.
From QuranEnc.com, version 1.0.8
Afaan Oromoo · Oromo
Isaan irraas wallaaltota hawwii sobaa malee kitaaba hin beeknetu jira. Isaan kan shakkan malee hintaane. [30]
Translated by the team of the Rowwad Translation Center, in cooperation with the Rabwah Dawah Association, the Islamic Content Service Association in Languages, and the IslamHouse.com website.
From QuranEnc.com, version 1.0.0
Русский · Russian
Среди них есть и неграмотные, которые не знают Писания, а [знают] лишь пустые мечтания. Но они лишь предполагают.
Translated by the team of the Rowwad Translation Center, in cooperation with the Rabwah Dawah Association, the Islamic Content Service Association in Languages, and the IslamHouse.com website.
From QuranEnc.com, version 1.0.1
Српски · Serbian
Неки од њих су неписмени и не познају Књигу, него само гаталице. Они само нагађају.
Translated by the team of the Rowwad Translation Center, in cooperation with the Rabwah Dawah Association, the Islamic Content Service Association in Languages, and the IslamHouse.com website.
From QuranEnc.com, version 1.0.4
Kiswahili · Swahili
Na wamo miongoni mwao wasiojua kusoma; hawakijui Kitabu isipokuwa uongo wanaoutamani, nao hawana ila ni kudhania tu.
Issued by the Islamic Content Service Association in Languages
From QuranEnc.com, version 1.0.5
Svenska · Swedish
Och bland dem finns analfabeter som inte har kunskap om skriften, och som i stället håller sig till lögner [om den]. De följer endast lösa antaganden.
Translated by the team of the Rowwad Translation Center, in cooperation with the Rabwah Dawah Association, the Islamic Content Service Association in Languages, and the IslamHouse.com website.
From QuranEnc.com, version 1.0.2
Türkçe · Turkish
Onların bir kısmının okuyup yazması yoktur. Kitabı (Tevrat'ı) bilmezler, bildikleri sadece bir takım yalan ve kuruntulardır. Onlar yalnızca zanneder dururlar.
Translated by the team of the Rowwad Translation Center, in cooperation with the Rabwah Dawah Association, the Islamic Content Service Association in Languages, and the IslamHouse.com website.
From QuranEnc.com, version 1.0.4
اردو · Urdu
ان میں سے بعض ان پڑھ ایسے بھی ہیں کہ جو کتاب کے صرف ﻇاہری الفاظ کو ہی جانتے ہیں اور صرف گمان اور اٹکل ہی پر ہیں۔[1]
Translated by Muhammad Ibrahim Junagarhi, developed under the supervision of the Rowwad Translation Center. The original translation is available for the purpose of expressing opinion, evaluation, and continuous development.
From QuranEnc.com, version 1.1.3
About these translations
5 cleared translations, newest first, by year of publication, so the modern English comes before the historical ones. That is an ordering by date, not a judgement. Each is shown complete — this platform never excerpts a translation — and each renders under its translator's name. No translation here is marked as the correct one.
Which translations appear here is set by copyright: they are the ones whose rights could be documented and cleared. The selection is not a judgement that these are the best.
About easy-read
Easy-read
Easy-read is a simplified pronunciation,
not authoritative — a rule-by-rule romanisation, not a reading.
Each verse ends in its pause form, as it is said when you stop there. Pauses inside a verse and other tajwid rules are not shown. It is derived from the Tanzil
Simple edition, while the Arabic above is the
Uthmani edition; both are cleared, but they are not the
same edition and their orthography differs.
Talal Itani2012 And when they come across those who believe, they say, "We believe," but when they come together privately, they say, "Will you inform them of what God has disclosed to you, so that they might dispute with you concerning it before your Lord?" Do you not understand?
Mohammed Marmaduke William Pickthall1930 And when they fall in with those who believe, they say: We believe. But when they go apart one with another they say: Prate ye to them of that which Allah hath disclosed to you that they may contend with you before your Lord concerning it? Have ye then no sense
Edward Henry Palmer1880 And when they meet those who believe they say, 'We believe,' but when one goes aside with another they say, 'Will ye talk to them of what God has opened up to you, that they may argue with you upon it before your Lord? Do ye not therefore understand
John Medows Rodwell1861 And when they fall in with the faithful, they say, "We believe;" but when they are apart one with another, they say, "Will ye acquaint them with what God hath revealed to you, that they may dispute with you about it in the presence of your Lord?" Understand ye their aim
George Sale1734 And when they meet the true believers, they say, we believe: But when they are privately assembled together, they say, will ye acquaint them with what God hath revealed unto you, that they may dispute with you concerning it in the presence of your Lord? Do ye not therefore understand
Talal Itani2012 So woe to those who write the Scripture with their own hands, and then say, "This is from God," that they may exchange it for a little price. Woe to them for what their hands have written, and woe to them for what they earn.
Mohammed Marmaduke William Pickthall1930 Therefore woe be unto those who write the Scripture with their hands and then say, "This is from Allah," that they may purchase a small gain therewith. Woe unto them for that their hands have written, and woe unto them for that they earn thereby
Edward Henry Palmer1880 But woe to those who write out the Book with their hands and say 'this is from God;' to buy therewith a little price! and woe to them for what their hands have written, and woe to them for what they gain
John Medows Rodwell1861 Woe to those who with their own hands transcribe the Book corruptly, and then say, "This is from God," that they may sell it for some mean price! Woe then to them for that which their hands have written! and, Woe to them for the gains which they have made
George Sale1734 And woe unto them who transcribe corruptly the book of the law with their hands, and then say, this is from God: That they may sell it for a small price. Therefore woe unto them because of that which their hands have written; and woe unto them for that which they have gained
Talal Itani2012 And they say, "The Fire will not touch us except for a number of days." Say, "Have you received a promise from God-God never breaks His promise-or are you saying about God what you do not know?"
Mohammed Marmaduke William Pickthall1930 And they say: The Fire (of punishment) will not touch us save for a certain number of days. Say: Have ye received a covenant from Allah - truly Allah will not break His covenant - or tell ye concerning Allah that which ye know not
Edward Henry Palmer1880 And then they say, 'Hell fire shall not touch us save for a number of days.' Say, 'Have ye taken a covenant with God?' but God breaks not His covenant. Or do ye say of God that which ye do not know
John Medows Rodwell1861 And they say, "Hell fire shall not touch us, but for a few days: "SAY: Have ye received such a promise from God? for God will not revoke his promise: or, Speak ye of God that which ye know not
George Sale1734 They say, the fire of hell shall not touch us but for a certain number of days. Answer, have ye received any promise from God to that purpose? For God will not act contrary to his promise: Or do ye speak concerning God that which ye know not
These figures count the words the translations share. They measure wording, not meaning, and they do not say which translation is right.
Derived measure: mean pairwise Jaccard distance over the
lowercased word sets of the 5 renderings above —
0.69 on a scale
where 0 means identical wording and 1 means no shared words. It is
computed, not judged.
The page says a verse is worded differently only above the cut below. The cut is a stated convention, not a property of the text, and it can be changed.
The cut
0.644
Share of measured verses above it
33%
Verses above it
2,079
Verses measured
6,236
Mohammed Marmaduke William Pickthall · John Medows Rodwell0.78
Talal Itani · Edward Henry Palmer0.75
Edward Henry Palmer · John Medows Rodwell0.73
Edward Henry Palmer · Mohammed Marmaduke William Pickthall0.72
Talal Itani · John Medows Rodwell0.71
Talal Itani · George Sale0.70
John Medows Rodwell · George Sale0.69
Mohammed Marmaduke William Pickthall · George Sale0.68
Edward Henry Palmer · George Sale0.60
Talal Itani · Mohammed Marmaduke William Pickthall0.57
One bar per pair of renderings, longest bar for the pair
sharing fewest words. Every pair is shown; none is singled out.
Method Wording differences — derived 13 September 2026
Method
Mean pairwise Jaccard distance over the lowercased word sets of the cleared translations of each verse. A verse is marked as worded differently when its score falls in the top third of the corpus — the cut set out in Analysis details.
As at
13 September 2026, 10:56 UTC
Gate
verify/divergence_gate.py re-derives and fails on drift
The platform does not say which is right, and does not
characterise what the difference means. The renderings are placed
together so the difference is visible; reading it is the reader's work.
Sources, editions and licences for everything above
ReceiptsSource fact
7 sources
stand behind this page. Each is listed once, in the order the page first
cites it, with the licence it was cleared under and what was actually read.
Nothing on this page rests on a source that is not here.
Source Tanzil Qur'an text (Uthmani) · Uthmani, Version 1.1
Hafs/Kufan verse numbering, 6236 ayahs. The bismillah is delivered as a separate `bismillah` attribute on ayah 1 and is NOT fused into the ayah text. 112 surahs carry one: every surah except al-Fatiha, where the bismillah is ayah 1:1 itself, and at-Tawba, which has none. Sourced from the XML output; the plain-text output of the same release DOES fuse it, which is defect D1.
CLEARED. Licence read verbatim from the block embedded in this very file. Ingested exactly as shipped: no normalisation, no stripping of marks, no Unicode recomposition.
Parsed structurally from the EPUB: an h3 names the surah, one p per verse with its number in its own span. An unnumbered p is the basmala and is not a verse, except in surah 1 where the basmala IS verse 1. 112 unnumbered paragraphs were found, which is 114 surahs less surah 1 and surah 9. Text is stored VERBATIM: NFC normalisation and XML entity unescaping only, because CC BY-ND forbids modification.
CLEARED on a licence read first-hand from the translator's own download page, not from an aggregator. Tanzil also hosts this translation, but under a blanket "non-commercial purposes only" term that directs the user to the translator or publisher for permission - a hosting disclaimer, not a grant - so the grant was taken from the licensor directly. The "God" edition was ingested; ClearQuran also publishes an "Allah" edition, differing in how the divine name is rendered, which is not ingested.
CLEARED ON THE WORK, WITH TWO RECORDED CAVEATS ON THIS COPY. (1) Rights basis is the expired copyright term, NOT the redistributing repository's licence. That repository dedicates its contents to the public domain under the Unlicense while also redistributing plainly in-copyright translations (Abdel Haleem, Saheeh International, The Study Quran), so it is dedicating rights it cannot hold and its blanket grant is not relied upon here. (2) The file declares its own upstream as tanzil.net, and Tanzil attaches a non-commercial condition to its TRANSLATION distributions, though not to its Qur'anic text. Since Pickthall's copyright has expired, nobody holds rights in these words and no licence is required from anyone; Tanzil's terms are a contract binding those who download from Tanzil, which we did not. The chain is nonetheless not spotless and Anwar may prefer a clean digitisation of the 1930 printing. NOT VERIFIED: that this digital text matches the 1930 first printing rather than a later revised edition. No page images were collated. Recorded as unverified rather than presented as established. SERVED TEXT DIFFERS FROM THE CITED FILE AT ONE VERSE, 37:97: the file reads "red-hotfire" (a glued token, also in Gutenberg #16955); the served row reads "red-hot fire", restored 2026-09-13 from Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (London: George Allen & Unwin, printed for Alfred A. Knopf; 1930), p. 460, XXXVII 97 - scan archive.org in.ernet.dli.2015.216140, PDF page 475; banked data/derivation-sources/pickthall-1930-dli-2015.216140-text.pdf (sha256 70e81146c97fa3a590243a82e04e349108546074787e2551a78c616202138870) on Anwar Malik's grant.
Hafs/Kufan verse numbering, 6236 verses, keyed to mushaf order. The
bismillah is not fused into ayah 1: 1:1 carries it and no other verse
does. Verified against content check C3 at ingest.
CLEARED ON THE WORK. Term expired by every measure. The digital edition's upstream is not stated by the redistributor and the printing is unverified. No statement of purpose is recorded for Palmer because none was sourced from his own preface in this pass; nothing is asserted on his behalf.
Hafs/Kufan verse numbering, 6236 verses, keyed to mushaf order. The
bismillah is not fused into ayah 1: 1:1 carries it and no other verse
does. Verified against content check C3 at ingest.
CLEARED ON THE WORK. Term expired by every measure. TWO edition caveats. (1) The upstream is not stated by the redistributor. (2) Rodwell's own edition PRESENTS THE SURAHS IN HIS OWN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER, not the mushaf order — he says so in his preface. This digital text is keyed to mushaf order, so it derives from a restored-order printing (such as the Everyman edition) rather than from Rodwell's own arrangement. Which printing is not stated and has not been established.
Hafs/Kufan verse numbering, 6236 verses, keyed to mushaf order. The
bismillah is not fused into ayah 1: 1:1 carries it and no other verse
does. Verified against content check C3 at ingest.
CLEARED ON THE WORK. Term expired by every measure. The digital edition's upstream is NOT STATED by the redistributor, so the printing it represents is unverified; Sale's text was reprinted and re-edited many times between 1734 and 1900. Recorded as unverified rather than assumed to be the first edition.
Hafs/Kufan verse numbering, 6236 ayahs. The bismillah is delivered as a separate `bismillah` attribute on ayah 1 and is NOT fused into the ayah text. 112 surahs carry one: every surah except al-Fatiha, where the bismillah is ayah 1:1 itself, and at-Tawba, which has none. Sourced from the XML output; the plain-text output of the same release DOES fuse it, which is defect D1.
CLEARED. Parallel edition, held in ayah_text_variants. It sits alongside the Uthmani spine for search normalisation and is never used to correct it.