What is a good version of the Qu'ran for an outsider?

To be honest most translations in english that ive read are quite bad. The international one (abdullah yusuf ali) uses archaic words and doesnt translate the word God into english making it seem like the arabic word "Allah" is a proper name..whreas it simply translates to "The God".

There is the Dr. Muhsin Khan translation which adds hadith into the translation and provides almost every possible translation for arabic words which can have more than one english equivalent. However this is far too confusing for someone who wants to just study the quran in its pure form.

There was a nice project which attempted to translate the quran into english and keep the rhyming prose. It was very good and captured alot of the beauty from the original arabic but it wasnt completed (the immaculate rose was its title). Here is an extract. (Chapter 94 consolidation)

It is possible that the majority of translations are bad because the translators are native english speakers and hence lose the essence of the more advanced arabic literary techniques in the quran. The best english translation ive come across which use clear easy to comprehend fluent english are by native arabic speaking translators.

The best (in my opinion) by an egyptian translator

• The Qur'an (2004), by M.A.S. Abdel-Haleem, is published by Oxford World Classics.

Followed closely by a jewish iraqi convert who does a good job of linking certain verses to the old scriptures

• The Koran (1956) by N. J. Dawood is published by Penguin. Dawood, a native Arabic speaker from Iraq's now defunct Jewish community, is said to have preferred comprehensibility to literalism in translation, making his version comparatively easy to read. The first edition of the Dawood translation rearranged the chapters (suras) into more or less chronological order, but later editions restored the traditional sequence.

Finally. If you want to study it more deeply. Word for word. There is the online arabic corpus (corpus.quran.com). It allows you to check the exact meaning of each arabic word and its usage throughout the quran. Including root words.