About the translation

Summary

This site presents the Quran sentence by sentence: the Arabic text, divided according to its pauses, and under each sentence its translation. The translation is that of AbuIlyass (أبو إلياس), a Hanif: it reads the text through the text, with no authority but the text itself, and every word is rendered according to its root and the whole of its occurrences.

It was carried out in French, then aligned in English and in other languages, with the help of artificial intelligences that propose, contradict and verify. No change entered the text without a human decision. This module explains how the work was done and which rules it follows, and answers the questions a reader asks.

Fact sheet

Source text

The rasm of the Quran, in the reading of Hafs by default; the eight transmitted readings published by the King Fahd Complex can be consulted, together with the pronunciation the translation follows.

Unit of reading

The sentence: 9,942 sentences, divided at the pauses of the recitation.

Sealed languages

12 languages: Français, English, Español, Italiano, Bahasa Indonesia, Русский, Português, Deutsch, Türkçe, Nederlands, 中文, हिन्दी.

Apparatus

1,765 root entries, 2,329 reading notes, 56 established reading rules.

Beginning

2015: the Arabic text divided into sentences. 2026: the translation.

Sealing

26 October 2026. Since then, every correction is argued, decided, then applied in one movement to all the languages.

Licence

Translations and dictionary: CC BY 4.0. Arabic text, words and readings: CC0, public domain.

History of the project

1. 2015

   The text made readable

   AbuIlyass, a Hanif, wanted to present the Recitation in a readable form: not in continuous pages, but sentence by sentence, as it is recited. He started from the raw text of the rasm and worked on it with scripts written in bash and PHP. From it he first drew a table of all the words of the text, each with its position, its form and its root; then, from this table, the table of sentences, each sentence bounded by the pauses of the recitation. The site al-quran.fr then displayed the text in Arabic alone, sentence by sentence (see "Division into sentences").

2. 2015-2026

   A suspended translation

   The translation was the goal, but the scale of the task halted it: translating by the root means rereading, for every word, all the sentences where its root recurs, and holding to that choice everywhere. For a single man, it was the work of several lifetimes. The site remained in Arabic alone.

3. 2026

   Resumed with artificial intelligence

   Artificial intelligences made possible what had not been: rereading the whole corpus for every word, comparing thousands of occurrences, writing and verifying. A first bulk translation was made in French and English, in batches of suras; every word was checked, and every term that structures meaning was debated, two AIs taking turns as drafter and critic. AbuIlyass decided. The fixed terms and the root dictionary were born of these debates.

4. Autumn 2026

   Six layers of work

   The text was taken up six times, each layer with its own aim: the draft, the rereading of the corpus backwards, the finish sentence by sentence, the polishing of the dictionary against the translation, the reading of the Quran as a book from end to end, and the sealing (see "Method"). Spanish, Italian, Indonesian and Russian were aligned on French and English.

5. 26 October 2026

   The sealing

   The translation, the root dictionary and the reading notes were sealed: they are authoritative. The text can still be corrected, but only by an argument drawn from the text, presented with its before and after, and decided.

6. Since then

   The languages, and the human reading from end to end

   New languages are translated from the sealed French, each with its glossary, a complete independent review and two sealing tests: Portuguese, German, Turkish, Dutch, Chinese and Hindi are sealed; others follow, in order of their number of speakers. At the same time, AbuIlyass is rereading the whole text, from the last sura to the first, and noting every sentence that stops him. Each note is examined against the text; what is retained is corrected in all the languages, and the suras reread are marked as validated.

Who did what

In this module

• MethodeThe principles, the six layers of work, the Arabic text displayed, the checks.
• GliederungHow the text was divided into sentences, at the pauses of the recitation.
• LeseregelnThe reading rules observed in the text: those that are established, and those that were set aside, with their evidence.
• WortwahlThe choices of vocabulary that surprise, and why.
• FragenThe questions the reader asks, about the translation and about the text.