Can I trust Google Translate for Quran verses?

Why machine translation struggles with the Quran

The Quran is in classical Arabic, with rich grammar, rare vocabulary and words that carry several layers of meaning. Machine translation tools are trained mostly on modern everyday text, so they tend to:

• pick the modern meaning of a word instead of the classical one,
• mix up who is speaking (Allah, a prophet, or a group of people),
• miss the context of the surrounding verses and the reason a verse was revealed,
• stumble over the special Quranic spelling and diacritics, giving odd or even shocking results.

A wrong translation of a recipe is annoying. A wrong translation of Allah's words can give you a false belief about your religion, and the Quran warns against speaking about what we don't know (Quran 17:36).

What to use instead

Human translations of the meaning of the Quran are made by teams who know Arabic, tafsir and English well. Popular choices include Saheeh International, The Clear Quran by Mustafa Khattab, and M.A.S. Abdel Haleem. Sites and apps like quran.com show several of them side by side with the Arabic, verse by verse, for free. See Which English translation of the Quran should I read?

Remember that any translation, even a good one, is a translation of the meaning, not the Quran itself. See Is a Quran translation still the Quran?

Is it ever okay to use it?

Using a translator app to look up a single Arabic word while you study is fine, as long as you double-check it in a word-by-word Quran tool or a dictionary. The problem is relying on it to tell you what a verse means, or sharing a machine-translated verse as if it were accurate.

Before you share a verse online

If you post a verse on social media, copy the translation from a known translator and add the reference (surah and verse number). That way people can check it, and you avoid spreading a meaning Allah never intended. See Can I quote Quran verses on social media?