Old English Translator

What is Old English?

Old English, also called Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest form of English, spoken in England from about AD 450 to 1150. It is the language of Beowulf and King Alfred, and it looks foreign to modern readers: “Hwæt! Wē Gār-Dena in geār-dagum…”. Yet everyday words like mōdor (mother), hūs (house) and wæter (water) are recognisable once you know the spelling.

This translator turns modern English into Late West Saxon Old English, the standard literary dialect, and translates Old English texts back into modern English.

How to use the Old English 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 → Old English is the default. Press ⇄ to read Old English 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 Old English translator works

This translator runs on our own server from a Old English 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 661 words, 66 set phrases and 82 conjugated verbs.

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

• Late West Saxon spelling with þ, ð, æ and long-vowel marks
• verbs conjugated (ic lufie, þū lufast, hē lufaþ, wē lufiaþ)
• nouns in the right case after verbs and prepositions
• every result also written in Anglo-Saxon futhorc runes

Examples: real Old English output

These results come straight from the tool, unedited:

Names, and any word the dictionary does not have, are kept as you wrote them and listed in the notes, so you never get an invented word.

Is this the best Old English translator?

Google Translate and DeepL do not offer Old English. 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 Old English words and phrases

Attested words and phrases, many from surviving poems.

History and origins

Old English came to Britain with Germanic settlers, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, from the 5th century. It absorbed Latin words with Christianity from 597 and many Norse words from Viking settlers in the 9th and 10th centuries. After the Norman Conquest of 1066, French became the language of the ruling class, and English changed fast: by about 1150 it had become Middle English.

Writing system

Early Anglo-Saxons wrote with runes, the Futhorc. Christian missionaries brought the Latin alphabet, to which scribes added letters for English sounds: þ (thorn) and ð (eth) for “th”, æ (ash) for the vowel in “cat”, and ƿ (wynn) for w. Modern editions usually print w instead of wynn and add macrons for long vowels, as this translator does.

How Old English sounded

Every letter was pronounced: cniht (knight) began with a k. sc sounded like “sh” (scip, ship) and c before e or i was usually “ch” (cild, child). The stress fell on the first syllable of most words, which is why Old English poetry alliterates on stressed sounds.

Famous texts

• Beowulf, the longest Old English epic, about 3,182 lines.
• The Wanderer and The Seafarer, elegies from the Exeter Book.
• The Dream of the Rood, partly carved in runes on the Ruthwell Cross.
• The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a year-by-year history begun under King Alfred.

Is Old English still used today?

No one speaks Old English natively, but it is the direct ancestor of modern English. Most of the 100 most common English words come from it: the, and, is, you, he, have, word, good. It is taught at universities and loved by fantasy readers: J.R.R. Tolkien, a professor of Old English, drew on it for the Riders of Rohan.

How to learn Old English

Good starting points are Peter Baker’s Introduction to Old English and Mitchell and Robinson’s A Guide to Old English. Learn the pronouns and the article first, then the strong verb classes. Reading a short prose text like Ælfric’s Colloquy comes before poetry.

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

• Don’t confuse it with Shakespeare. “Thou art” is Early Modern English; Old English is “þū eart”.
• Mind the special letters. Keep þ, ð and æ; replacing them with “th” and “ae” makes the text look modern.
• Read the notes. Many modern ideas have no Old English word; the notes list anything we kept in modern English.

Sources

Bosworth–Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (online, Charles University); J.R. Clark Hall, A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (4th ed.); Peter S. Baker, Introduction to Old English (3rd ed., 2012).