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.
Compare translations (4)Mohammed Marmaduke William Pickthall1875–1936 · published 1930
Those before them said it, yet (all) that they had earned availed them not
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
Those before them said it too, but that availed them not which they had earned
Sources
Translation Edward Henry Palmer, English translation of the Qur'an·Public domain — copyright term expired
Those who were before them, said the same: But that which they had gained, profited them not
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
Kështu thanë edhe ata që ishin para tyre, por ajo që fituan nuk u bëri dobi.
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
অবশ্যই তাদের পূর্ববর্তী কাফিররাও এ ধরনের কথা বলেছিল; কিন্তু তারা যা অর্জন করেছে, তা তাদের কোন উপকারে আসেনি।
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
Tako su govorili i oni prije njih, pa im nije koristilo ono što su bili stekli,
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
Tako su govorili i oni prije njih, pa im nije koristilo ono što su bili stekli,
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
Gooŋɗii ɓeen adinooɓe ɓe mbi'iino ɗum. Kono kon ko ɓe paggitotonoo, nafaani ɓe.
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
უკვე თქვეს (ეს) იმათ, ვინც მათზე უწინ იყვნენ, და ვერ გადაარჩინეს ისინი (ალლაჰის სასჯელისგან) იმან, რაც მათ მოიხვეჭეს, (ვერც შვილებმა და ვერც სიმდიდრემ).
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
Das haben ja bereits diejenigen, die vor ihnen waren, gesagt. Da nützte ihnen aber nicht, was sie zu erwerben pflegten.
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
Πράγματι, (αυτά τα προαναφερόμενα λόγια που τα λένε και οι άπιστοι από τη φυλή Κουράις) τα είχαν πει και εκείνοι που ήταν πριν απ' αυτούς (όπως ο Καρούν και άλλοι άπιστοι), αλλά δεν τους προστάτεψαν σε τίποτα (από την τιμωρία του Αλλάχ) αυτά που κέρδισαν (από πλούτη, ούτε η λατρεία τους προς τα είδωλα),
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
यही बात, उन लोगों ने भी कही थी, जो इनसे पूर्व थे। तो नहीं काम आया उनके, जो कुछ वे कमा रहे थे।
Translated by Azizul Haq Al-Omari
From QuranEnc.com, version 1.1.5
Italiano · Italian
Lo dissero i loro antenati, ma non servì loro ciò che hanno accumulato.
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
50. Iš tiesų, tie, prieš juos, sakė tai, tačiau vis tiek (viskas) ką jie įgijo, nedavė jiems naudos.
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.
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
Уже говорили это те, которые были до них, — но не принесло им пользы то, что они приобретали.
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
Тако су говорили и они пре њих, па им није користило оно што су били стекли,
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
Waliyasema haya wale waliokuwa kabla yao, lakini hayakuwafaa waliyokuwa wakiyachuma.
Issued by the Islamic Content Service Association in Languages
From QuranEnc.com, version 1.0.5
Svenska · Swedish
De som levde före dem sa samma sak, men det de hade förvärvat hjälpte dem inte det minsta.
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
Kendilerinden önce gelenler de böyle söylemişti. Fakat kazandıkları kendilerine fayda sağlamamıştı.
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 سے اگلے بھی یہی بات کہہ چکے ہیں پس ان کی کارروائی ان کے کچھ کام نہ آئی.[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 There will appear to them the evils of their deeds, and they will be surrounded by what they used to ridicule.
Mohammed Marmaduke William Pickthall1930 And the evils that they earned will appear unto them, and that whereat they used to scoff will surround them
Edward Henry Palmer1880 and the evils of what they have earned shall appear to them; but that shall close in on them at which they mocked
John Medows Rodwell1861 And their own ill deeds shall be clearly perceived by them, and that fire at which they mocked shall encircle them on every side
George Sale1734 and there shall appear unto them the evils of that which they shall have gained; and that which they mocked at shall encompass them
DIN 31635faʾiḏā massa l-ʾinsāna ḍurrun daʿānā ṯumma ʾiḏā ḫawwalnāhu niʿmatan minnā qāla ʾinnamā ʾūtītuhu ʿalā ʿilmin bal hiya fitnatun walākinna ʾakṯarahum lā yaʿlamūna
Talal Itani2012 When adversity touches the human being, he calls on Us. But then, when We favor him with a blessing from Us, he says, "I have attained this by virtue of my knowledge." However, it is a test, but most of them do not know.
Mohammed Marmaduke William Pickthall1930 Now when hurt toucheth a man he crieth unto Us, and afterward when We have granted him a boon from Us, he saith: Only by force of knowledge I obtained it. Nay, but it is a test. But most of them know not
Edward Henry Palmer1880 And when harm touches man he calls on us; then, when we grant him favour from us, he says, 'Verily, I am given it through knowledge!' nay, it is a trial,- but most of them do not know
John Medows Rodwell1861 When trouble befalleth a man he crieth to Us; afterwards, when we have vouchsafed favour to him, he saith, "God knew that I deserved it." Nay, it is a trial. But the greater part of them knew it not
George Sale1734 When harm befalleth man, he calleth upon Us; yet afterwards, when We have bestowed on him favour from Us, he saith, I have received it merely because of God's knowledge of my deserts. On the contrary, it is a trial; but the greater part of them know it not
Easy-read (simplified)fa'asaabahum sayyi'aatu maa kasaboo walladheena zalamoo min haa'ulaa'i sayuseebuhum sayyi'aatu maa kasaboo wamaa hum bimu'jizeen
DIN 31635faʾaṣābahum sayyiʾātu mā kasabū wallaḏīna ẓalamū min hāʾulāʾi sayuṣībuhum sayyiʾātu mā kasabū wamā hum bimuʿǧizīna
The translators word this verse differently
Talal Itani2012 The evils of their deeds caught up with them. And the wrongdoers among these will also be afflicted by the evils of what they earned, and they cannot prevent it.
Mohammed Marmaduke William Pickthall1930 But the evils that they earned smote them; and such of these as do wrong, the evils that they earn will smite them; they cannot escape
Edward Henry Palmer1880 and there befell them the evil deeds of what they had earned: and those who do wrong of these (Meccans), there shall befall them too the evil deeds of what they had earned, nor shall they frustrate Him
John Medows Rodwell1861 And their own ill deeds recoiled upon them. And whoso among these (Meccans) shall do wrong, on them likewise their own misdeeds shall light, neither shall they invalidate God
George Sale1734 and the evils which they had deserved, fell upon them. And whoever of these Meccans shall have acted unjustly, on them likewise shall fall the evils which they shall have deserved; neither shall they frustrate the divine vengeance
Easy-read (simplified)awalam ya'lamoo anna llaaha yabsutu r-rizqa liman yashaa'u wayaqdiru inna fee dhaalika la'aayaatin liqawmin yu'minoon
DIN 31635ʾawalam yaʿlamū ʾanna llāha yabsuṭu r-rizqa liman yašāʾu wayaqdiru ʾinna fī ḏālika laʾāyātin liqawmin yuʾminūna
Talal Itani2012 Do they not know that God extends the provision to whomever He wills, and constricts it? In that are signs for people who believe.
Mohammed Marmaduke William Pickthall1930 Know they not that Allah enlargeth providence for whom He will, and straiteneth it (for whom He will). Lo! herein verily are portents for people who believe
Edward Henry Palmer1880 Have they not known that God extends His provision to whom He pleases, or doles it out? verily, in that are signs unto a people who believe
John Medows Rodwell1861 Know they not that God giveth supplies with open hand, and that He is sparing to whom He will? Of a truth herein are signs to those who believe
George Sale1734 Do they not know that God bestoweth provision abundantly on whom He pleaseth, and is sparing unto whom He pleaseth? Verily herein are signs unto people who believe
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 —
0.56 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 Rodwell0.76
Edward Henry Palmer · John Medows Rodwell0.71
Talal Itani · John Medows Rodwell0.70
Mohammed Marmaduke William Pickthall · George Sale0.62
Talal Itani · George Sale0.62
Edward Henry Palmer · George Sale0.50
John Medows Rodwell · George Sale0.47
Talal Itani · Mohammed Marmaduke William Pickthall0.47
Talal Itani · Edward Henry Palmer0.41
Edward Henry Palmer · Mohammed Marmaduke William Pickthall0.31
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.