Aramaic Translation (English to Aramaic)

What is Aramaic?

Aramaic is a Semitic language with about 3,000 years of written history. It was the official language of the Persian Empire, the everyday language of Judea in the time of Jesus, and the language of parts of the books of Daniel and Ezra, the Talmud and early Christian literature in Syriac. Several modern forms, often called Neo-Aramaic or Assyrian and Chaldean, are still spoken today.

This translator writes Imperial/Biblical Aramaic in Hebrew square script by default, with a transliteration. The Syriac script is a different alphabet for a later dialect; this tool writes Biblical and Imperial Aramaic in square script.

How to use the Aramaic translator

1. Type or paste English. Up to 500 characters per translation on the free credits: a name, a motto, a message or a short passage.
2. Pick the direction. English → Aramaic is the default. Press ⇄ to read Aramaic words back into English.
3. Press Translate (or Ctrl + Enter). The result appears at once, with a reading line where the script needs one.
4. Listen. Press 🔊 Listen to hear it. Where your device has no voice for this language, it reads the transliteration with the closest voice and says “approximate”.
5. Copy it and read the notes under the result: they name any word we kept in English.

How the Aramaic translator works

This translator runs on our own server from a Aramaic dictionary and a set of grammar rules written for this language. It does not send your text to an outside service or an AI model, so results are instant and the same every time. The dictionary holds 1,737 words, 53 set phrases and 105 conjugated verbs. Its everyday vocabulary is drawn from the Aramaic entries of Strong’s dictionary (Open Scriptures), matched to the English words people use most, and checked against our own hand-written core dictionary, which always takes priority.

For each sentence it first looks for the longest known phrase, then translates word by word and applies the rules below:

• Biblical and Imperial Aramaic in Hebrew square script, read right to left
• nouns in the emphatic (“the”) form, as in Daniel and Ezra
• verbs as present participles, singular or plural to match the subject
• prepositions בְּ (in) and לְ (to) joined to the next word, with a transliteration

Examples: real Aramaic output

These results come straight from the tool, unedited:

Names, and any word the dictionary does not have, are spelled by sound in the Aramaic script and listed in the notes, so you can always see which words were translated and which were only written out.

Is this the best Aramaic translator?

Google Translate and DeepL do not offer Aramaic. General AI chatbots can produce text that looks right but contains invented words. This tool takes the opposite approach: every word comes from a checked dictionary entry, every ending from a written rule, and anything unknown is flagged instead of guessed. Short phrases, names, mottos and greetings come out best. For long passages, poetry or anything permanent such as a tattoo, use the result as a solid first draft and have it checked by someone who reads the language.

Common Aramaic words and phrases

Aramaic words and phrases recorded in the New Testament and other sources.

History and origins

Aramaic first appears in inscriptions of the Aramean city-states of Syria around the 10th–9th century BC. Assyria and then Persia adopted it as an administrative language, so it spread from Egypt to India. It replaced Hebrew as the everyday language of most Jews after the Babylonian exile, and Syriac, an Aramaic dialect of Edessa, became a major language of Christian literature from the 2nd century AD. Arabic gradually replaced Aramaic after the 7th century.

Writing system

Aramaic was originally written in an alphabet inherited from Phoenician. Its letters developed into the Hebrew square script, Syriac script, Nabataean (which led to Arabic) and many Central Asian scripts. Like Hebrew, it is written right to left and records mainly consonants; vowel points were added later.

How Aramaic sounded

Aramaic had emphatic consonants and throaty sounds like ʿayin and ḥet, as in Hebrew and Arabic. Pronunciation differed by region and century, so modern reconstructions of Jesus’s own accent are educated guesses.

Famous texts

• Aramaic chapters of the Bible: Daniel 2:4–7:28 and Ezra 4:8–6:18; 7:12–26.
• The Elephantine papyri from Egypt (5th century BC).
• The Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds.
• The Peshitta, the Syriac Bible.

Is Aramaic still used today?

Yes, in modern forms. Neo-Aramaic languages are spoken by Assyrian, Chaldean and Syriac communities in Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran and by diaspora communities worldwide, and Syriac is still used in church liturgy. Most are endangered.

How to learn Aramaic

Students of Biblical Aramaic often begin with Frederick Greenspahn’s An Introduction to Aramaic. For Syriac, Wheeler Thackston’s Introduction to Syriac is a common choice. Knowing Hebrew helps a lot.

Before you use a translation for a tattoo, motto or gift

• Know which Aramaic you need. Words from the Gospels are Galilean Aramaic; the Bible’s Aramaic chapters (Daniel, Ezra) are Imperial Aramaic, which this tool writes.
• Check direction when printing or tattooing: Aramaic reads right to left.
• Use attested phrases like maranatha or talitha koum when they fit, since their spelling is certain.

Sources

Frederick E. Greenspahn, An Introduction to Aramaic (2nd ed., 2003); Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon (Hebrew Union College); Holger Gzella, A Cultural History of Aramaic (2015).