Old English translator
Translate English to Old English (Anglo-Saxon) or Old English back to English, word by word. Free and private: nothing leaves your device.
Loading the Old English word list…Word-by-word lookup: no grammar or word order is applied, so treat the result as a vocabulary guide. Word list from Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed CC BY-SA 4.0, with a hand-written core vocabulary added.
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Everything you need to translate Old English
Both directions
Turn English into Old English or read Old English back into English, one tool, either way.
Live translation
The result updates as you type. No button to press.
13,000 Old English words
A real dictionary of Old English headwords with common inflected forms, not a short phrase list.
Honest about gaps
Words with no entry stay in [brackets] and are counted, so nothing is invented.
Anglo-Saxon letters
Accepts æ, þ and ð, with or without macrons, and writes core words with long-vowel marks.
100% private
Runs in your browser. Nothing you type is uploaded or stored.
Translate in three steps
- 1
Pick a direction
Choose English → Old English to translate a phrase, or Old English → English to read a line you already have.
- 2
Type or paste your text
Paste a sentence, a name or a line of verse. Old English letters such as æ, þ and ð are fine, with or without macrons.
- 3
Check the brackets and copy
The result updates as you type. Words with no entry stay in [brackets] instead of being guessed. Copy it or download a .txt.
Built for students, writers and curious readers
Old English is the language of Beowulf and the Anglo-Saxon chronicles, spoken in England until about 1150. People reach for it for tattoos, fiction and homework.
Students and teachers
Look up Old English vocabulary for Beowulf, a medieval history class or a language course.
Writers and game designers
Find period-flavoured names, mottos and place names for fiction, tabletop games and worldbuilding.
Tattoos and engravings
Get a starting point for a word or short phrase, then check it with a specialist before it is permanent.
Curious readers
Paste a line of Old English verse and see roughly what each word means.
Frequently asked questions
What is Old English?
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Old English, also called Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest form of English, spoken in England from about 450 to 1150. It is the language of Beowulf. It looks and sounds very different from modern English, with its own letters (æ, þ, ð), grammatical cases and word endings.
How accurate is this Old English translator?
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It is a word-by-word lookup, not a grammar engine. Each English word is matched to an Old English word from a dictionary of about 13,000 headwords, plus a hand-written list for common words like I, the, and, is and king. It does not apply cases, verb endings or Old English word order, so a real Old English speaker would reshape the sentence. It is good for names, single words, tattoos and flavour, and not a substitute for a scholar.
What does it do with a word it does not know?
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It leaves the word in [square brackets] and tells you how many it could not find. It never makes up a word. Modern coinages (computer, pizza) and most names have no Old English equivalent.
Why is the Old English word order the same as English?
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Because the tool translates each word on its own. Real Old English put verbs in different places and marked the role of each noun with endings. Treat the output as a vocabulary guide you can polish, not a finished sentence.
What are the letters æ, þ and ð?
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Æ (ash) sounds like the a in cat. Þ (thorn) and ð (eth) both stand for the th sounds in thin and this. Macrons over vowels (ā, ē) are modern editors' marks for long vowels and are not in the original manuscripts.
Is Anglo-Saxon the same as Old English?
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Yes. Anglo-Saxon is the older name for the language, Old English the modern scholarly one. The translator covers both searches.
Where does the word list come from?
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The Old English entries are taken from Wiktionary (licensed CC BY-SA 4.0), reduced to a compact list, with a hand-written core vocabulary added on top. Credit and licence are shown under the tool.
Is my text uploaded anywhere?
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No. The word list loads into your browser and the translation runs there. Nothing you type is sent to a server.
Translate Old English now
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