How We Translate

Step 1 — The Arabic source

Most works come from the public Shamela library, imported page by page and volume by volume so that nothing is dropped and nothing is reordered. (Our page numbering follows the digital library's sequence, so it can differ from the printed edition's page numbers.) The Arabic text is stored exactly as it reaches us: we do not rewrite, abridge, or "improve" it. Where the source marks speaker changes, Qur'anic citations, or editorial insertions, we preserve that structure so the page reads the way it was set.

Works that exist only as scanned images go through our double-pass extraction: two separate AI readings of the same page are compared word by word. Only where both passes agree is the text accepted automatically; every disagreement — even a single character — is flagged and resolved by a person before the page enters the library. A page that cannot be confidently read is not published half-guessed.

Step 2 — A glossary before a single page is translated

Classical Islamic scholarship has a precise technical vocabulary — terms of jurisprudence, hadith criticism, and theology whose established renderings matter. Before translation begins we maintain a curated glossary: each Arabic term is paired with the exact wording it must receive in German and English, together with notes on its intended sense. The glossary is reviewed by hand, and every translation request carries it, so that a term is rendered the same way on page 3,000 as on page 3.

The glossary fixes wording, never meaning: when a word is used in a different, everyday sense in a particular passage, it is translated according to its context — the glossary entry applies only where the technical sense does.

Step 3 — Translation with context, not in fragments

Classical texts do not break neatly at page boundaries — a sentence often begins on one page and ends on the next. Our pipeline therefore never translates a page in isolation. Each translation window receives the surrounding Arabic context and the already-published translation bordering it, and is required to continue that text seamlessly: same terminology, same register, no re-translated overlaps, no dropped clauses at the seams.

The main text (matn) and the editor's footnotes (taḥqīq) are translated as separate streams, because they are different kinds of text: running scholarly prose on the one hand, dense citation apparatus on the other. Footnote numbers, bracketed editorial remarks, and the source's own paragraph and line structure are preserved.

Step 4 — Automated checks before anything is published

Every translated window must pass validation before it is stored. Among other things we verify that:

• every requested page came back — none missing, none duplicated, none reordered;
• no Arabic was left untranslated and no passage was simply echoed back in the source language;
• the translation's length is plausible for the source — a strong signal of dropped or invented text;
• the seams match: text continuing across a page boundary must join the already-published wording without repeating or contradicting it.

A window that fails these checks is retried with stricter instructions; if it still fails, it is withheld and flagged for human review. We would rather show you an honest "not yet translated" notice than a page that failed its own quality gate.

Step 5 — Human review and the status you see

AI translation, however carefully constrained, is a draft — and we label it as such. Every translated page carries a status you can see:

• AI translation — produced by the pipeline and validated automatically, not yet checked by a person.
• Human-reviewed — a person has read this page's translation against the Arabic and corrected it where needed.
• Verified — the translation has passed a final human confirmation.

Reviewed pages are protected: an automated re-run can never silently overwrite a translation a person has corrected. Review proceeds continuously, and reader reports (see below) move pages up the queue.

Limitations — read this before relying on a translation

We are transparent about what this library is: a reading aid produced with AI assistance under human oversight, not a substitute for the Arabic original or for qualified scholarship. Machine translation can miss nuance, mishandle rare constructions, or flatten a deliberately ambiguous phrase. That is why the Arabic original is always available beside the translation — one tap away, never hidden — and why every page states its review status.

For religious practice, legal rulings, or academic citation, consult the Arabic original and qualified scholars. Our translations are a bridge into the text — they are not a fatwa, and they are not the text itself.

Found a mistake? Tell us — it genuinely helps

Signed-in readers have a feedback control on every reading page, and the contact page is open to everyone. Reported passages are checked against the Arabic by a person, corrected where needed, and marked as human-reviewed. Reader corrections are among the most valuable contributions this project receives: they improve the very page you were reading, for everyone who comes after you.