Questions and answers
Frequently Asked Questions
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Why don’t all the verses match the Arabic al-Qur’an text?
Sometimes the source and target text don’t match up completely as they should; often viewable as an offset or displacement of a given verse (or discourse) as compared with the Arabic al-Qur’an text or other translations.
Often this isn’t an error or displacement from our side, but rather the style of the translator. Some translators have been more liberal in translating in either a phrase-by-phrase or verse-by-verse order than others. Mostly the reasons behind such measures, as explained by the translators, are founded in the complex word arrangement, linguistic differences and other language barriers between the source and target texts.
Why can’t I find the translation I’m searching for?
This could be due to one or more reasons:
- Naming translators: some translators are best known by their name in the target language and when transliterated there is often a number of ways a given name can be presented in English. We do not transliterate translator names in the strict sense where all given names are equally labeled – instead, we use the most common way a translations name is presented in English. This will result in some naming conflicts as e.g. ‘Muhammad’, ‘Mohammed’, ‘Mohammad’ etc. could in fact refer to a first name of the one and same person. Try instead to search for another part of the name, which would be either first, middle or last name. If this doesn’t work try manually to browser down the list of translations for the specific language to see if the translation is available. You can also filter translators by language by pressing the icon here.
- Translation name: Virtually all translations are credited by the translators’ name, e.g. “Abdullah Yusuf Ali” rather than the book title, in this instance “The Holy Qur’an”. This normally works fine, but with some special translations, they are more popularly known by the title or some other label of the work, e.g. “Sahih International” by “Umm Muhammad et al.”. In these special cases, the title or label has been used as the title for the translation. If you think this is the case, try to browser the translator by the title of the work or manually browser down the list of translations for the specific language.
- Available translations: We have included almost all the translations known to be freely available in the public domain. The ones not included are either being processed or prepared. Sometimes external reasons, often lacking funds, are restricting the time and effort that is needed to prepare these translations for online use. To help us accommodate this, please refer to the donate page.
- Copyright issues: we have previously included some translations that were later found to be toprotected by copyright or other legal restrictions that don’t comply with our fair use, Terms of Service – thus removed them from the project webpage.
Note: If you know of a translation not included in the project page, which at the same time is available in the public domain, consider dropping us a mail.
Why is the website lacking advanced navigation features?
The website employs a great deal of javascript as well as HTML5; if your browser does not support either, you will be served a basic site that allows you to browse, but without access to advanced navigation features.
Specifically, if you have disabled javascript, ot you are tunning Internet Explorer 8 or other older versions, you will be served a basic site. This is accomodate those that have disabled javascript for security reasons, or simply don't have access to new standard-compliant browser versions.
Can I still view the old 'Online Quran Project' version?
Yes, we have made the legacy (old) version accessible and available online. You can browser it by visiting: oqp.al-quran.info.
A note on caution: this version of the site is no longer updated (since 2012) and can only be used as is.
Where are the different View Mode options?
In a previous versions of the project webpage, we included the option of either navigation thought the project page in Chapter or Page view mode. This option has been removed from the current version; users are now only able to browser in Chapter view mode. This doesn’t limit the user experience; on the contrary, now the whole chapter is available when a specific chapter and verse is selected.
Where is the Display view options?
In previous versions of the project webpage, we included the option of either viewing the project page in table rows or continuous text format. Both options have been replaced with the new inline display mode. There have been user request to include the continuous text format (i.e. side-by-side display mode) and we are looking into this for further project updates.
All other settings, including Display, are available here
What other improvements have been made?
Improvements include
Client side caching of translations, do reduce the load on bandwidth. The cache for the website can be cleared by clicking here, or by using your browsers cache-cleanup function
Search Results paging; this enables you to browse among large nr of search results
Easy auto-complete access to Quran Roots in the search field.
The website adapts to a range of different display sizes for mobile, tablets and desktop computers.
And many more...
The website has frozen and doesn't respond to clicks with the mouse anymore!
This occurs when a error occurs in the code. If a refresh of the browser doesn't solve this, then the cache has likely become corrupted and must be cleared. Click here to do that. If you can find out what steps causes the error to occur, please share it with us here: feedback site