Old English Translator
Old English, sometimes known as Anglo Saxon, is a precursor of the Modern English language.
It was spoken between the 5th and 12th century in areas of what is now England and Southern Scotland.
Words can be entered directly including æ þ ð characters EG ofþryccaþ. Alternatively .ae (dot ae) will be substituted with æ, .th with þ, and .dh with ð. So ofþryccaþ could be written of.thrycca.th. Fuzzy matching: Can't find that Old English word, add :ia (or try :ca) to the end and repeat the search. e.g. try bewulf:ia Translation notes:
Words can be entered directly including æ þ ð characters EG ofþryccaþ. Alternatively .ae (dot ae) will be substituted with æ, .th with þ, and .dh with ð. So ofþryccaþ could be written of.thrycca.th. Fuzzy matching: Can't find that Old English word, add :ia (or try :ca) to the end and repeat the search. e.g. try bewulf:ia Translation notes:
Old English Translator — Live Website
SW Version 3.3.4 DB Version 20240723
Try the beta version - new DB 11/11/2026
Old English Translator Beta — Beta Website
SW Version 3.3.4 DB Version 20261110
NEW! 10/11/2026 Updated database of words
Version 3.3.3
Translating Old English to Modern English
To translate an Old English word into Modern English, the simplest method is to type (or copy/paste) the word into the area to the right of "Translate this word" and click / press the 'To Modern English' button and the results will then be displayed.
The character set you can use can contain the following characters:
ƿǣāċēġīōþȳáéíóúýæðÞ ABCDEFGHIJLMNOPQRSTUVWXYÐ abcdefghijlmnopqrstuvwxy
Words can be entered directly including these characters EG ofþryccaþ. Alternatively .ae will be substituted with æ, .th with þ, and .dh with ð. So ofþryccaþ could be written of.thrycca.th
Old English is an inflected language with each word having a number of different forms for the different cases. Supposing you saw the word 'ofþryccaþ' in a text and wanted to translate it. If you looked in a dictionary that simply contained the root words you would not find it as 'ofþryccaþ' is not the root word.
The Old English Translator includes many grammatical forms of words in its database, making it possible to recognise forms that may not appear as separate entries in a conventional dictionary. The database is extensive but not complete, and some valid words or endings may still be missing or incorrectly identified.
For a simple explanation of cases and word endings, see the Old English Grammar guide.
The other problem that is often encountered is that the characters themselves often have a number of forms. In some cases these forms mean something and in others they don't.
For example; if you are looking for 'ofþryccaþ' and the dictionary has the word 'ofÞryccaÞ' or 'ōfþryccāþ' (note the different character formats) and a simple match is performed, the word will not be found.
The Old English Translator normalises character variations to improve the chances of finding a matching word. If you are interested in how the software and dictionaries developed, you can read the project history.
For example, if you paste in the word: ofþryccaþ (or ōfþryccāþ or of.thrycca.th) and click on the 'To Modern English' button, you get the following results:
You can see that ofþryccaþ is derived from ofþryccan and relates to the present indicative plural case and the Imperative plural case.
If you paste in the word: éðelcyninges, you get the following results:
You can see that the supplied word is in red and is in the genitive singular.
Fuzzy matching Old English words against root word. NEW for version 3.2
What if you did not have an exact spelling of the word. I believe there is sometimes variations across different dialects? Or you were researching a word. Possibly looking for words containing sets or characters, or words that were something like a particular word.
With version 3.2 of the Old English Translator you can now 'fuzzy' match your word against all the root words (not against the inflected forms) in the database.
Three matching forms are currently available:
- Contains approximately (:ca) - each root word in the database is checked against your word and if it contains 'something like' your word it is returned.
- Is approximately (:ia) - each root word in the database is checked against your word and if it is 'something like' your word it is returned.
- Contains exactly (:ce) - each root word in the database is checked against your word and if it contains exactly your word it is returned.
To access this feature, you type (or copy/paste) the word into the area to the right of "Translate this word" and append the fuzzy identifier (:ca or :ia or :ce - colon followed by either ca, ia, or ce) to the word and then click on 'To Modern English'.
For example, supposing you did not know the correct spelling of Beówulf. If you enter bewulf:ia ( :ia - is approximately - look for words that are approximately like bewulf) and then click on 'To Modern English' you find the word Beówulf.
Also, supposing you want the find all the words containing something like 'monn'. Enter monn:ca (:ca contains approximately - look for words that contain something like 'monn') and then click on 'To Modern English'. You find a great number of words that meet this criteria.
- mann - only one character substitution
- Acemannesburg or Géolmónaþ or Midsumermónaþ - one character substitution contained in a longer word
- celmertmon - one character deletion contained in a longer word
Translating Modern English to Old English.
Type (or copy/paste) a word into the area to the right of "Translate this word" and click / press the 'To Old English' button. The Old English equivalent of Modern English words where the search word is found is the description are shown.
For example, type 'land' and click on 'To Old English'!
Notes:
- To prevent Old English Translator exceeding it's allowable resource quota, the number of 'first time' Modern English to Old English translation requests in a given time period is limited to one per ten seconds.
- From version 3.3 adding another level of indexing allows multiple Old to Modern translations in a given time period.
- To avoid the dreaded 'system oversubscribed...' message, as far as possible, the design implements a form of application level caching. If you ask to translate a word that has already been translated it gets the translation from a cache (which is quick and doesn't cause a forced delay before another translation) rather than by searching the whole database. As the cache builds up and more words have been translated, the need for an enforced delay becomes less and the more words will get an immediate response. The effectiveness of this technique will depend on the degree to which people translate a common subset of words. Note that fuzzy searching does not use the cache.
Changes:
- v 3.3.3 Minor changes to front end.
- v 3.3.2 Algorithms that organise data have been extensively changed resulting in improved database.
- v 3.3.1 Updated DB and further changes to caching. Cache has timeout allowing DB updates to become more frequent.
- v 3.3 Another level of indexing allowing multiple Old to Modern translation requests in any time period.
- v 3.2 Fuzzy matching against root word.
- v 3.1 Front end re-written to make website mobile conformant.
- v 3.0 This version runs using utf-8. This will allow better facilities to be used to improve it over time and more features can be added.
Background work:
I am working on improving the database of words, their endings and meaning in the background. This database was mostly computer generated from many external sources. In cases where it has generated incorrect word endings or the derivations are poorly written, I am now manually making changes to the data and improving my algorithms that process the data. This will be a long process taking years but at regular intervals the GA version will be updated with the changes to date.
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What started as a hobby has grown into a resource used by people around the world.
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