<p>Past literature on rendering the Qur’an often focused on the transcreation of sense, a relation within language. By comparison, reference, a relation between language and the world, appears to have attracted much less attention, in spite of its great importance for the translation and interpretation of the Qur’an. This article addresses such a significant gap by examining the intricate process of (re)structuring and translating Qur’anic reference into English through text and text-world prisms. Toward this aim, it extracts a purposive convenience dataset sample from the Qur’anic Arabic Corpus (QAC) that comprises seven parallel English translations of the Qur’an conducted by translators from diverse educational and sociocultural backgrounds and allows a compara(s)tive analysis of referential expressions in selected verses. It undertakes a qualitative content analysis to investigate referring expressions and their English renderings, employing a comparative method that integrates componential and relevance theories in referential analysis wherever applicable. The results reveal that transposing reference is truly more challenging than transposing sense, causing noticeable referential difficulties and differences across translations. The results also demonstrate great challenges for (re)interpreting and (re)translating single–multiple, generic–specific, and constant–variable reference, using strategies of explicitation, implicitation, generalization, and specification and departing from (ep)exegetical interpretations. This study stresses the need for a more theoretically informed approach to reference in sacred-text translation and, therefore, proposes a systematic methodology for rendering reference. Without this systematic methodology, translations of the Qur’an would distort its referential discourse. Further research on reference across languages is essential for enhancing the viability of the proposed methodology and reinforcing the fidelity of reference translation.</p>