بَلْ تُؤْثِرُونَ ٱلْحَيَوٰةَ ٱلدُّنْيَا
Easy-read (simplified)bal tu'thiroona l-hayaata d-dunyaa
DIN 31635bal tuʾṯirūna l-ḥayāta d-dunyā
EditionTanzil Qur'an text (Uthmani) ·Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
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.
But ye prefer the life of the world
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
But you prefer the present life.
Talal Itani, ClearQuran ·ClearQuran, "God" edition, EPUB·Talal Itani / ClearQuran.com ·Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International·retrieved 7 Sep 2026
Translation by Talal Itani, ClearQuran.com https://clearquran.com
Nay! but ye prefer the life of this world
Translation Edward Henry Palmer, English translation of the Qur'an·Public domain — copyright term expired
Edward Henry Palmer, English translation of the Qur'an ·1880 translation, digital edition of unverified printing·None — public domain work ·Public domain — copyright term expired·retrieved 24 Aug 2026
But ye prefer this present life
Translation John Medows Rodwell, English translation of the Qur'an·Public domain — copyright term expired
John Medows Rodwell, English translation of the Qur'an ·1861 translation, digital edition of unverified printing·None — public domain work ·Public domain — copyright term expired·retrieved 24 Aug 2026
But ye prefer this present life
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
Por ju i jepni përparësi jetës së kësaj bote,
বরং তোমরা দুনিয়ার জীবনকে (পরকালের জীবনের ওপর) প্রাধান্য দিচ্ছ।
Ali, vi više život na ovom svijetu volite,
Ali, vi više život na ovom svijetu volite,
Ko woni, ko hoɗon ɓurna nguurndam adunaoon.
მაგრამ, თქვენ მაინც ამქვეყნიური ცხოვრება გირჩევნიათ,
Vielmehr zieht ihr das diesseitige Leben vor,
Στ’ αλήθεια, προτιμάτε (ω, άνθρωποι) την εγκόσμια ζωή,
बल्कि तुम सांसारिक जीवन को प्राथमिकता देते हो।
Voi invece preferite la vita terrena,
16. Tačiau jūs teikiate pirmenybę žemiškajam gyvenimui,
Inumaa isin jiruu addunyaa filattu.
Нет, напротив, вы предпочитаете мирскую жизнь,
Међутим, ви више волите пролазан живот,
Lakini nyinyi mnapendelea maisha ya dunia!
Men ni föredrar det jordiska livet,
Fakat sizler, dünya hayatını tercih ediyorsunuz.
لیکن تم تو دنیا کی زندگی کو ترجیح دیتے ہو.
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.
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.
shown so it's never read alone
قَدْ أَفْلَحَ مَن تَزَكَّىٰ
Easy-read (simplified)qad aflaha man tazakkaa
DIN 31635qad ʾaflaḥa man tazakkā
Successful is he who purifies himself.
He is successful who groweth
Prosperous is he who purifies himself
Happy he who is purified by Islam
Now hath he attained felicity who is purified by faith
وَذَكَرَ ٱسْمَ رَبِّهِۦ فَصَلَّىٰ
Easy-read (simplified)wadhakara sma rabbihi fasallaa
DIN 31635waḏakara sma rabbihi faṣallā
And mentions the name of his Lord, and prays.
And remembereth the name of his Lord, so prayeth
and remembers the name of his Lord and prays
And who remembereth the name of his Lord and prayeth
and who remembereth the name of his Lord, and prayeth
87:16 — the verse above
وَٱلْـَٔاخِرَةُ خَيْرٌ وَأَبْقَىٰٓ
Easy-read (simplified)wal-'aakhiratu khayrun wa'abqaa
DIN 31635wal-ʾāḫiratu ḫayrun waʾabqā
Though the Hereafter is better, and more lasting.
Although the Hereafter is better and more lasting
while the hereafter is better and more lasting
Though the life to come is better and more enduring
Yet the life to come is better, and more durable
إِنَّ هَٰذَا لَفِى ٱلصُّحُفِ ٱلْأُولَىٰ
Easy-read (simplified)inna haadhaa lafee s-suhufi l-'oolaa
DIN 31635ʾinna hāḏā lafī ṣ-ṣuḥufi l-ʾūlā
This is in the former scriptures.
Lo! This is in the former scrolls
Verily, this was in the books of yore
This truly is in the Books of old
Verily this is written in the ancient books
EditionTanzil Qur'an text (Uthmani) ·Uthmani, Version 1.1·Tanzil Project ·Creative Commons Attribution 3.0·retrieved 24 Aug 2026
بَلْ تُؤْثِرُونَ الْحَيَاةَ الدُّنْيَا
EditionTanzil Qur'an text (Simple) ·Simple, Version 1.1·Tanzil Project ·Creative Commons Attribution 3.0·retrieved 24 Aug 2026
In plain words — none yet for this verse
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 — 0.45 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.
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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.
SourceTanzil Qur'an text (Simple) ·Simple, Version 1.1·Tanzil Project ·Creative Commons Attribution 3.0·retrieved 24 Aug 2026
SourceTanzil Qur'an text (Simple) ·Simple, Version 1.1·Tanzil Project ·Creative Commons Attribution 3.0·retrieved 24 Aug 2026
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
CLEARED. Parallel edition, held in ayah_text_variants. It sits alongside the Uthmani spine for search normalisation and is never used to correct it.
Qur'anic text from the Tanzil Project. Copyright (C) 2007-2026 Tanzil Project License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Source: tanzil.net · Updates: tanzil.net/updates/ https://tanzil.net/updates/