Is the Bohairic Coptic document translator free?

You can try it free, with no account needed, and signing in gives you a larger daily allowance. Pro and Scholar are there for longer documents and regular use.

Can it read a scanned service book or a photo of a Coptic page?

Yes. Upload a scanned PDF or a JPG, PNG or HEIC photo and the text is recognised before translation. Clean printed Coptic usually comes through well, though small or faint jinkim and the bars over nomina sacra can be lost and should be checked where the sense depends on them. Bilingual pages with Arabic need a look at column order. PDFs typeset in old non-Unicode Coptic fonts carry a scrambled text layer, so upload those pages as images or as an image-only scan to have the text recognised from the picture. Photographs of manuscripts are a different matter: expect partial results and treat them as a starting point.

How accurate is it? What is the difference between Fast and Advanced?

Fast gives a rough sense of a hymn or a reading. Advanced runs a frontier model and is the tier to use for Bohairic, where the nomina sacra have to be expanded, Greek liturgical vocabulary and whole Greek hymns in Coptic letters recognised, the Bohairic articles and verb prefixes kept straight, and the parallelism of the Psalmody followed. For a text that will be printed or read aloud, it is still a draft for someone who knows Coptic to check.

Will the translation keep my document’s original layout?

The translator produces a translated PDF, Word, PowerPoint, Excel or EPUB file that aims to preserve the original layout, including tables, columns and headers. Text size, fonts and line breaks may change, so review the result against the original. Bilingual pages with a right-to-left Arabic column and hymn texts set as verse and refrain are where the layout most often shifts.

Can I use the translation in church or in a printed service book?

Use it to understand the Coptic and to prepare drafts. The Coptic Orthodox Church and its dioceses have their own approved English (and Arabic) liturgical texts, and a parish will expect those in a service book, on a projection screen or in a lectionary. A translation produced here is not a substitute for them or for a bishop’s or priest’s review; it helps you follow the Coptic, prepare teaching material and check a hymn’s meaning line by line.

What is the difference between Bohairic and Sahidic, and does pronunciation matter?

Bohairic is the dialect of the Nile Delta that became the liturgical language of the Coptic Church and is what nearly every service book, hymn and modern Coptic class uses; Sahidic is the older literary dialect of Upper Egypt, the earliest Coptic Bible and the Nag Hammadi codices. They share most vocabulary but differ in spelling (ϧ, the aspirates, the articles ⲡⲓ, ϯ, ⲛⲓ) and in some grammar, so choose the page that matches your text. Pronunciation (the reformed pronunciation used in most churches, or the older Old Bohairic) does not affect a written translation at all.

What file types can I upload?

PDF, DOCX (Word), PPTX (PowerPoint), XLSX (Excel) and EPUB, plus photographed or scanned pages as JPG, PNG or HEIC. Unicode Coptic is read from the text; pages set in legacy Coptic fonts have a scrambled text layer and are better uploaded as images or an image-only scan. Free and Pro accept up to 20MB and 100,000 extracted characters per file; Scholar accepts up to 50MB and 1,000,000 characters.

Bohairic Coptic PDF & Document Translator — English ↔ Bohairic Coptic

Translate English to Bohairic Coptic or Bohairic Coptic to English while preserving your document’s layout. Upload your file, choose the target language, and get a natural translation that keeps the meaning of the original.

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See “Keep formatting” in action

Real examples of the “Keep formatting” option: original on the left, translated document on the right. Click either page to enlarge.

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A civil complaint filed in Mexico City, Spanish to English. Caption block, numbered pleadings, the evidence table and the signature block all keep their places. — Original — A civil complaint filed in Mexico City, Spanish to English. Caption block, numbered pleadings, the evidence table and the signature block all keep their places.

An Italian birth certificate, photographed rather than scanned. The framed masthead, the field grid, the marginal annotations and the round seal all hold their positions. — Original — An Italian birth certificate, photographed rather than scanned. The framed masthead, the field grid, the marginal annotations and the round seal all hold their positions.

A handwritten archaeological field notebook from 1974. The engine reads the hand and keeps the ruled inventory table intact. — Original — A handwritten archaeological field notebook from 1974. The engine reads the hand and keeps the ruled inventory table intact.

A handwritten archaeological field notebook from 1974. The engine reads the hand and keeps the ruled inventory table intact. — Translation — A handwritten archaeological field notebook from 1974. The engine reads the hand and keeps the ruled inventory table intact.

A German hospital discharge summary. Diagnoses with ICD codes, lab values and the medication table survive the translation unchanged. — Original — A German hospital discharge summary. Diagnoses with ICD codes, lab values and the medication table survive the translation unchanged.

A German hospital discharge summary. Diagnoses with ICD codes, lab values and the medication table survive the translation unchanged. — Translation — A German hospital discharge summary. Diagnoses with ICD codes, lab values and the medication table survive the translation unchanged.

A 1747 parish baptism register in Latin. Ruled columns, godparents and marginal notes stay aligned, so the genealogy still reads as a register. — Original — A 1747 parish baptism register in Latin. Ruled columns, godparents and marginal notes stay aligned, so the genealogy still reads as a register.

A 1747 parish baptism register in Latin. Ruled columns, godparents and marginal notes stay aligned, so the genealogy still reads as a register. — Translation — A 1747 parish baptism register in Latin. Ruled columns, godparents and marginal notes stay aligned, so the genealogy still reads as a register.

A scanned 17th-century Italian index of sermons. Two columns of dense small print, translated in place. — Original — A scanned 17th-century Italian index of sermons. Two columns of dense small print, translated in place.

A scanned 17th-century Italian index of sermons. Two columns of dense small print, translated in place. — Translation — A scanned 17th-century Italian index of sermons. Two columns of dense small print, translated in place.

How Bohairic Coptic documents come out

Translate a Coptic Orthodox service book, lectionary page, hymn or Bible passage between Bohairic Coptic and English. Most uploads are scanned or PDF liturgical books (the Psalmody, the Euchologion, the Katameros, the Holy Pascha book, the Difnar), often printed with Arabic or English in parallel columns, plus Sunday-school sheets and grammar exercises. The Coptic alphabet with its jinkim marks, the abbreviated nomina sacra and the Greek loanwords of the liturgy are all part of the reading. For anything that will be sung, read in church or printed, have someone who reads Coptic check the result.

Bohairic is written in the Coptic alphabet: the Greek letters plus signs taken from Demotic for Egyptian sounds (ϣ, ϥ, ϧ, ϩ, ϫ, ϭ, ϯ), and ϧ is the letter that marks a text as Bohairic, since Sahidic does not use it. Bohairic also writes ⲫ, ⲑ and ⲭ for aspirated ⲡ, ⲧ and ⲕ where Sahidic keeps the plain letters, so the same word looks different in the two dialects (Bohairic ⲉⲑⲟⲩⲁⲃ, Sahidic ⲉⲧⲟⲩⲁⲁⲃ, holy; Bohairic Ⲫⲛⲟⲩϯ, Sahidic ⲡⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ, God). Above the letters sits the jinkim, a dot or short stroke marking a consonant or vowel that forms its own syllable; it is small, often lost by scanners and older fonts, and it changes how a word divides. Nomina sacra are abbreviated under a line: ⲡ̅ⲟ̅ⲥ̅ for Ⲡϭⲟⲓⲥ, the Lord, ⲫ̅ϯ̅ for Ⲫⲛⲟⲩϯ, God, ⲓ̅ⲏ̅ⲥ̅ ⲡ̅ⲭ̅ⲥ̅ for Jesus Christ, and the same bar over a letter turns it into a numeral. Liturgical books mix in whole Greek hymns in Coptic letters (Ⲁⲅⲓⲟⲥ ⲟ Ⲑⲉⲟⲥ, Ⲕⲩⲣⲓⲉ ⲉⲗⲉⲏⲥⲟⲛ), rubrics and tune labels in Arabic or English, and are usually printed bilingual, Coptic in one column and Arabic or English in the other, sometimes with a third column of Coptic spelled phonetically in Arabic letters for chanters who do not read the script. Many PDFs from parishes and websites were set in fonts from before Unicode Coptic, so their text layer is gibberish; upload such pages as images or as an image-only scan so the text is recognised from the picture rather than taken from the broken text layer.

Translate your document and keep its structure

The translator keeps your file’s structure while translating the text in context. The downloaded format depends on the source file.

PDFs and scanned pages: The translated PDF follows the page visually, with translated pages rendered as images. Selectable PDF text and identical fonts are not guaranteed.
Word documents and PowerPoint presentations: Start with DOCX or PPTX when you have it. Native paragraphs, table text and slide text can stay editable in the corresponding file format. Translated text inside pictures remains image content; review text wrapping and font changes in your editor.
Excel workbooks and EPUB books: Use the original XLSX or unprotected EPUB for a translated workbook or ebook. Review formulas, numbers and text cells in a workbook; check chapter order, navigation and text flow in your ebook reader.

What people translate to and from Bohairic Coptic

Liturgical service books and hymns

The Euchologion with the Liturgies of St Basil, St Gregory and St Cyril, the Annual and Kiahk Psalmody with its Theotokias, doxologies and psalis, the Katameros lectionary, the Difnar, the Holy Pascha book and the deacons’ responses are what chanters, deacons and choir members most often upload, usually to understand what they already sing. The texts are heavily formulaic and full of Greek (ⲁⲗⲗⲏⲗⲟⲩⲓⲁ, ⲁⲅⲓⲟⲥ, ⲇⲟⲝⲁ ⲡⲁⲧⲣⲓ), which should come through in English (Alleluia and Amen apart) rather than as transliterated Greek. The parish’s or diocese’s approved English text remains the reference for anything used in a service; this is a way to follow the Coptic line by line.

Bilingual Coptic–Arabic and Coptic–English pages

Most printed Bohairic is bilingual: Coptic beside Arabic in Egypt, Coptic beside English (and often Arabic too) in the diaspora, with rubrics and refrains in the second language and sometimes a phonetic column of Coptic in Arabic letters. A scan of such a page contains a left-to-right script and a right-to-left one in adjacent columns, and column order is where reading most often goes wrong, so check that the English follows the Coptic column and not the Arabic. The Coptic is the text this page reads; for the Arabic half of a book, the Arabic document page is the right tool, and for a wholly Arabic Synaxarium or Agpeya it is the only one you need.

Arabic documents

Bohairic Scripture, manuscripts and scholarship

The Bohairic New Testament (Horner’s edition of 1898 to 1905 remains the fullest printed edition), the Bohairic Pentateuch, Psalter and Prophets, the lives and martyrdoms of saints, and the medieval Coptic–Arabic word lists known as scalae are read by students of the Coptic Bible, church historians and clergy. Printed editions with clear type come through far better than photographs of manuscripts from Wadi el-Natrun or of pages in a library catalogue, where the hand, the abbreviations and the losses make any reading a guess. A translation here is a working aid; it is not a substitute for a critical edition or a published scholarly translation.

Learning Coptic in the parish and at home

Coptic language classes run in parishes, Sunday schools and diaspora communities, and learners upload alphabet sheets, vocabulary lists, exercises from Mallon’s Grammaire copte and modern parish textbooks, and short passages set for reading. The translator reads Bohairic exercises into English, and going the other way, from English into Bohairic, produces a draft for a greeting, an icon caption, a verse for a card or a class exercise. That direction is composition rather than attested text, so have a teacher or priest check it before it is printed or displayed. Sahidic, the older literary dialect of the Nag Hammadi codices and the monastic writers, has its own page.

Sahidic Coptic documents

What to watch for in Bohairic Coptic document translation

The Greek is the first thing to watch: a Bohairic hymn may be half Greek in Coptic letters, an abbreviation like ⲡ̅ⲟ̅ⲥ̅ must become the Lord and not a string of letters, ⲭⲉⲣⲉ (from Greek chaire) is hail, and ⲁⲙⲏⲛ and ⲁⲗⲗⲏⲗⲟⲩⲓⲁ stay as they are. The jinkim is the second: a dropped or misplaced mark changes syllable division and can turn one word into another, and scans lose it easily. Bohairic grammar sets its own traps for a reader trained on Sahidic or on Greek: the definite articles come in two sets (ⲡⲓ, ϯ, ⲛⲓ beside ⲡ, ⲧ, ⲛ), and in native words the aspirated ⲫ, ⲑ, ⲭ are ⲡ, ⲧ, ⲕ in disguise rather than Greek f, th and ch. A bar over a letter can mark a numeral rather than a sacred name, so ⲁ̅ is 1 and ⲓ̅ⲃ̅ is 12. Coptic dates run in the Coptic months (Tout, Baba, Hatour, Kiahk and so on) and in the Year of the Martyrs, which begins in 284. Rubrics, tune names (Adam and Watos) and the cues for the people or the deacon are instructions, not text to be sung, and the Arabic column of a bilingual page must not be read as if it were the Coptic. Finally, Bohairic and Sahidic are close enough for a translation to slip between them; a text with ϧ or the articles ⲡⲓ and ⲛⲓ is Bohairic and should be read as such.

Bohairic Coptic document translation FAQ

Is the Bohairic Coptic document translator free?: You can try it free, with no account needed, and signing in gives you a larger daily allowance. Pro and Scholar are there for longer documents and regular use.
Can it read a scanned service book or a photo of a Coptic page?: Yes. Upload a scanned PDF or a JPG, PNG or HEIC photo and the text is recognised before translation. Clean printed Coptic usually comes through well, though small or faint jinkim and the bars over nomina sacra can be lost and should be checked where the sense depends on them. Bilingual pages with Arabic need a look at column order. PDFs typeset in old non-Unicode Coptic fonts carry a scrambled text layer, so upload those pages as images or as an image-only scan to have the text recognised from the picture. Photographs of manuscripts are a different matter: expect partial results and treat them as a starting point.
How accurate is it? What is the difference between Fast and Advanced?: Fast gives a rough sense of a hymn or a reading. Advanced runs a frontier model and is the tier to use for Bohairic, where the nomina sacra have to be expanded, Greek liturgical vocabulary and whole Greek hymns in Coptic letters recognised, the Bohairic articles and verb prefixes kept straight, and the parallelism of the Psalmody followed. For a text that will be printed or read aloud, it is still a draft for someone who knows Coptic to check.
Will the translation keep my document’s original layout?: The translator produces a translated PDF, Word, PowerPoint, Excel or EPUB file that aims to preserve the original layout, including tables, columns and headers. Text size, fonts and line breaks may change, so review the result against the original. Bilingual pages with a right-to-left Arabic column and hymn texts set as verse and refrain are where the layout most often shifts.
Can I use the translation in church or in a printed service book?: Use it to understand the Coptic and to prepare drafts. The Coptic Orthodox Church and its dioceses have their own approved English (and Arabic) liturgical texts, and a parish will expect those in a service book, on a projection screen or in a lectionary. A translation produced here is not a substitute for them or for a bishop’s or priest’s review; it helps you follow the Coptic, prepare teaching material and check a hymn’s meaning line by line.
What is the difference between Bohairic and Sahidic, and does pronunciation matter?: Bohairic is the dialect of the Nile Delta that became the liturgical language of the Coptic Church and is what nearly every service book, hymn and modern Coptic class uses; Sahidic is the older literary dialect of Upper Egypt, the earliest Coptic Bible and the Nag Hammadi codices. They share most vocabulary but differ in spelling (ϧ, the aspirates, the articles ⲡⲓ, ϯ, ⲛⲓ) and in some grammar, so choose the page that matches your text. Pronunciation (the reformed pronunciation used in most churches, or the older Old Bohairic) does not affect a written translation at all.
What file types can I upload?: PDF, DOCX (Word), PPTX (PowerPoint), XLSX (Excel) and EPUB, plus photographed or scanned pages as JPG, PNG or HEIC. Unicode Coptic is read from the text; pages set in legacy Coptic fonts have a scrambled text layer and are better uploaded as images or an image-only scan. Free and Pro accept up to 20MB and 100,000 extracted characters per file; Scholar accepts up to 50MB and 1,000,000 characters.

See “Keep formatting” in action

Real examples of the “Keep formatting” option: original on the left, translated document on the right. Click either page to enlarge.

1 / 6

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