How do I compare translations and read two side by side?
A verse, a passage or a chapter opens in several translations at once, verse against verse. You can start from any chapter or from the compare page.
- On any chapter, press a verse, then “Compare translations” on the panel.
- Open the tab of the language you need.
- Press translations to add them to the list.
- The “Move up” and “Move down” buttons, or dragging by , change the order of the columns.
- Press “Compare”.
- To read on, press “Compare the whole chapter”.
Open the compare page.
- Choose a book in the list.
- Enter the chapter number.
- Press “Compare”: the choice of translations opens.
- Press one or two translations to add them to the list.
- Press “Compare” again.
- The columns stand side by side, verse against verse. On a phone the translations go one under another.
- The name of a translation opens the chapter in that translation.
- “Choose translations” takes you back to the list.
Traditions number verses differently: Psalm 90 in the Russian Synodal Translation is Psalm 91 in other editions. The site puts the same text side by side and shows each edition’s own number. The note “matched approximately” means that an exact match is not guaranteed.
A comparison starts from one translation: from a chapter, it is the one you are reading. Verses are matched by its numbering, so it always comes first and cannot be removed or moved. To put another translation first, open the chapter in it.
Not every translation has every verse: where a verse is missing, there is a dash. If the first translation lacks it, a “Not in: …” mark with the names appears by the verse number.
Up to six. To add one more, first remove one you do not need from the list.
The “Compare” button remembers your set by itself, and a comparison opened from a link has a “Remember these translations” button. A new set replaces the old one. To have comparisons open in it without choosing, tick “Open comparisons in my translations right away”. The set can be removed completely only with the “Reset” button in the settings, on the last tab, “Settings”. Be careful: this button resets all the site settings, not only the translations, for example the theme and the copy settings.
The compare page has two collections: “Well-known passages” and “Where translations differ”.