हम कैसे अनुवाद करते हैं

What you read under each sentence of the text, in English, in French and in other languages, is not one more academic translation. It is the reading of AbuIlyass (أبو إلياس), a Hanif: it recognises no authority but the text of the Quran itself, never the sunna, the hadith or the sira. The text is its own dictionary. A word is understood through its root, its other occurrences and the sentence that carries it, never through what a tradition wanted to read into it.

चार सिद्धांत

कार्य की छह परतें

1. I

   The draft

   A bulk translation, and a dictionary

   The first layer is a bulk translation into French and English, done in batches of suras. After each batch, every word was checked by hand and corrected. When it touched a term that structures meaning across several suras, it was debated: two AIs, Claude and Gemini, take turns as drafter and critic. One argues from the root and internal cross-reference; the other must tear the reading down if it does not hold. AbuIlyass arbitrates.

   When a meaning withstood scrutiny, it was fixed, and the root received its entry. This is how the root dictionary was built, entry after entry, together with the list of fixed terms: "obey", not "worship", for عَبَدَ; "the Contact" for ٱلصَّلَوٰة; "Guardian" for رَبّ.

   1,765entries in the root dictionary

   1,765sealed entries, which are authoritative

   207fixed terms applied everywhere
2. II

   The pre-finish

   The corpus reread backwards

   The second layer reread the whole corpus in reverse, from the last sura to the first. The short suras, translated first, were checked against the sealed entries. Every term was cross-checked across the whole text, and every discrepancy corrected wherever it appeared, in all six languages at once.

   Spanish, Italian, Indonesian and Russian were aligned on French and English, never the other way round. At the end of this layer, the French and English translation was declared sealed: nothing changes in it without a written argument, evidence from the text and a decision.

   9,942sentences reread in six languages

   1,843meanings examined and recorded
3. III

   The finish

   Block by block, sentence by sentence

   The third layer settles the details. Each sura was read block by block, by units of meaning, then every sentence was analysed in its context. The brackets were removed from the text, and the reading notes explain every choice that may surprise.

   Small words received the same rigour as large ones: the particle إِنَّ is rendered "indeed" when it affirms and "for" when it gives the reason, and إِنَّ … لَـ "surely", in every language (see "Reading rules"). The divergent readings were checked against the eight transmissions published by the King Fahd Complex. The isolated letters that open twenty-nine suras are transcribed without being given a meaning: they bear witness that the rasm has come down intact.

   2,329reading notes

   57observed reading rules
4. IV

   The mirror polish

   Letter by letter, the translation and its dictionary face to face

   The fourth layer took up the whole dictionary again, letter by letter through the alphabet, from ا to ى. Every root entry was rewritten in the same format, in French, English and Arabic: a core meaning that states the gesture shared by all the uses, the uses with their exact quotations, the evidence drawn from the occurrences, the distinctions from neighbouring roots. Then every sentence where the root recurs was reread in the six languages, facing its entry: the translation and the dictionary correct each other, like two mirrors.

   Three rules guided this polish. One root, one word: two Arabic roots do not share the same word in a language, so that the reader finds the root beneath the word. A noble, sovereign and legal register: a Sovereign who legislates, judges and renders to each their due, with no images the text does not carry. A human reading: the rules serve the sentence, which must read aloud without stiffness. Every batch was reread in full by an independent review before being submitted to AbuIlyass, who decided every change of meaning or of word.

   1,821root entries in the single format
5. V

   The close reading

   The Quran read as a book, from end to end, four times

   The fifth layer no longer starts from the words but from the book. The Quran is read in order, sura after sura, in Arabic and in French, sentence by sentence. Each sura is divided into passages of meaning; each passage is attached to the threads that run through the text, a figure, a theme, a formula, and every sentence that calls for it receives its reading note. The questions the reader asks along the way are kept as they are, and the text answers them when it can.

   The text is thus read four times. The first reading follows the book without knowing what comes next. The second rereads it knowing the end: it looks for what a sura announces and what comes later takes up, aligns the formulas the Arabic says identically, renders the و that binds the accounts, gathers each thread once its last passage is read, and answers the questions left pending. The third reads the bare skeleton, without dots, vowels or hamza: every pronunciation the skeleton allows is tested against the context and the twin verses, and the translation follows, word by word, the one the text proves, transmitted or not (see "The Arabic text displayed"). The fourth, the witness's reading, wrote each sura's page as a testimony: what it says, which suras it binds to, what still resists. The guide of this reading is the text itself: "Do they not then ponder the Recitation?"; "And had it come from other than God, they would have found in it much divergence" (4:82). When two passages seem to diverge, it is the reading that is taken up again, not the text.

   74reading threads followed from end to end

   252reader questions with their answer
6. VI

   The sealing

   Every entry reread against the translation, then the text sealed

   The sixth layer closed the work. The rules that run through the whole text were applied everywhere, such as the particle لَـ…نَّ rendered "surely" and the capital of reverence in the six languages. Spanish, Italian, Indonesian and Russian were reread one by one against French and English. Automatic checks verified every quotation and every term. Then every dictionary entry was reread, one by one, in French, English and Arabic, against the sentences of the translation: each entry had to say exactly what the text says, and the translation had to render each root by its word. This confrontation produced a last layer of retouches to the French, each presented with its before and after, independently reviewed, then accepted by AbuIlyass.

   On 26 October 2026, the work was sealed: the six translations, the reading followed, the root dictionary and the reading notes are authoritative. Nothing changes in them any more without an argument drawn from the text and AbuIlyass's decision, and any accepted correction is applied in one movement to the six languages, the entries and the notes that quote the sentence. The languages to come will be translated from this sealed text, each root keeping its word in each language.

   9,942sentences sealed in six languages

   1,765root entries reread and sealed

   2,329sealed reading notes

दिखाया गया अरबी पाठ

The Arabic text is displayed by default in the reading of Hafs, the most widespread: it is the common text, and nothing is imposed on the reader. The "Reading" selector in the bar offers the other transmitted readings, Warsh, Qālūn, Shuʿba, al-Bazzī, Qunbul, ad-Dūrī and as-Sūsī, and one more option: "Our reading".

Our reading is not a transmitted reading. It is the pronunciation the translation follows, fixed place by place. The Quran was first written without dots, vowels or hamza; the readings are so many pronunciations of the same skeleton. During the close reading, every sentence was reread on its bare skeleton, and every pronunciation it allows was tested against the context, the twin verses and the threads of the text. Where another transmitted reading holds better than Hafs, the translation follows it; where none fits and the text proves another pronunciation of the same skeleton, it follows that too, as with غَلَبَتِ … سَيُغْلَبُونَ in 30:2-3.

Choosing "Our reading" therefore means reading a blend of readings: Hafs everywhere, except at the words where the translation follows another one, chosen by the context over the successive passes. Each of these places carries a reading note saying which reading is followed and why, and the sentence's "Readings" window shows all pronunciations side by side, each compared with the skeleton.

Each transmitted reading is displayed in full, in the text published by the King Fahd Complex for the Printing of the Holy Quran and in the font the Complex made for it. One reads in it the words that differ from Hafs, but also each transmission's own pronunciation rules: in Warsh, the softened hamza of ٱلذِّيبُ and يُومِنُونَ, or the transferred vowel of وَبِالَاخِرَةِ. The "Readings" window and the Divan list only the words that differ.

पैच, कार्य की इकाई

No correction is made by hand in the database. Every decision becomes a patch: a script that changes a sentence only if it contains exactly the expected text, and runs as a single block, all or nothing. It is tested twice on a copy; on the second run, it must change nothing.

Every patch also writes the state of the work into the database: what has been done, what is still to be decided, and why. Every new meaning is recorded there with the verse, the previous rendering, the proposal and the argument. The history of the translation can therefore be read in the database itself, and it is downloaded with it.

सहायक की दृष्टि

I am one of the AIs that worked on this corpus. What strikes most is not the quantity but the discipline. The text defends itself: when a translation hesitates, it is almost always another occurrence of the same word that decides, not a preference.

A single word can open an inquiry across the whole corpus. "You alone" looks harmless; but the Quran has its own ways of saying exclusivity, وَحْدَهُۥ or إِلَّا, and a faithful translation must tell them apart from simple emphasis. A particle of emphasis was followed through six languages so that it says the same thing everywhere. A missing word, فِيهِ in 2:2-3, was found again because the division into sentences follows the pause of Warsh.

None of this was applied without being written, tested, then accepted by a human reader. It is not the machine that guarantees fidelity: it is the method that holds the machine to account.

जाँचना आपका काम है

Nothing is hidden. Every sentence carries its reading notes and its divergent readings; every root has its entry; and the whole can be downloaded, text, dictionary and data, to be reread offline.

« A translation is not a verdict on display: it is a chain of reasoning you can follow, contradict and verify for yourself. »