Is the Latin 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 scanned parish registers and handwritten Latin?

Yes for scans and photos in general: upload a JPG, PNG or HEIC photo or a scanned PDF and the text is recognized before translation. Printed Latin usually comes through well, though in early printed books check words with the long s, which text recognition sometimes reads as f. Handwriting is the honest caveat. A clear, upright hand in a late register is often readable; a medieval charter in an abbreviated Gothic hand, a faded seventeenth-century burial entry or a secretary-hand court roll may come back partly wrong, and the abbreviation marks that carry whole syllables are the usual casualty. Treat handwritten results as a starting point, and check names, dates and ages against the page yourself.

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

Fast is good for reading a lot of Latin quickly, such as scanning a cartulary for the entry you need. Advanced runs a frontier model and is the right choice for anything you will rely on: it is the tier for the ablative absolute and the long periodic sentence, for the many meanings of cum and ut, for expanding abbreviations in context, and for keeping medieval, ecclesiastical and classical senses of a word apart. Neither tier is a substitute for a critical edition or a published scholarly translation, and for a document of record the original Latin remains the authority.

Can I use the translation for an official purpose, such as a citizenship or inheritance application?

Not on its own. Consulates, courts and registries that accept Latin-language church records, as citizenship-by-descent applications involving old parish registers often do, generally require a certified translation, and this output is not certified. Use it to understand what a record says, to find the right entries among hundreds of pages, and to prepare an exact draft for the certified translator, so that only the pages you actually need go for certification.

Which Latin does it handle: Classical, Medieval, Ecclesiastical, Neo-Latin?

All of them, from this page; the same engine reads each, and Classical, Medieval and Ecclesiastical Latin also have their own text translator pages if you want the register set explicitly. What differs is vocabulary and spelling more than grammar: villa is an estate or a village in a charter, miles a knight rather than a soldier, comes a count; michi, nichil and set for sed are ordinary medieval spellings; liturgical and theological terms carry church senses. Botanical, medical and legal Latin are jargon layers on top of the same language.

Can I translate an English document into Latin?

Yes. The output is literary Latin, and the Classical and Ecclesiastical Latin pages are there if you want the register set explicitly. This is composition rather than translation into a living language, and it is useful for a motto, a dedication, a certificate line, a school exercise or a comparison against your own prose composition. For anything to be engraved, printed or read aloud in church, have someone who reads Latin professionally check it: a frontier model writes plausible Latin, and plausible is not the same as correct in every case.

What file types can I upload, and does the layout survive?

PDF, DOCX (Word), PPTX (PowerPoint), XLSX (Excel) and EPUB, plus photographed or scanned pages as JPG, PNG or HEIC. The translator produces a translated file that aims to preserve the original layout, including tables, columns and headers; register columns, marginal notes and the two-column pages of many printed editions are part of that. Text size, fonts and line breaks may change, so review the result against the original. Free and Pro accept up to 20MB and 100,000 extracted characters per file; Scholar accepts up to 50MB and 1,000,000 characters.

Latin PDF & Document Translator — English ↔ Latin

Translate English to Latin or Latin 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.

1 / 6

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 Latin documents come out

Upload a Latin PDF, Word file or a photographed page and read it in English: a parish register of baptisms, marriages and burials, a medieval charter, a papal bull, a notarial deed, a doctoral thesis from the centuries when universities still wrote in Latin, an early printed book, or a school text. Classical, Medieval, Ecclesiastical and Neo-Latin all pass through the same engine. The translation comes back in the layout of the page, and English into Latin works for short compositions, mottos and exercises.

Latin uses the alphabet English uses, which hides how much varies from one document to the next. Classical texts in modern editions are clean; nearly everything else carries the conventions of its period. Medieval and early modern hands abbreviate relentlessly: a stroke over a letter marks an omission, most often m or n (cū for cum) or a whole contraction (dñs for dominus), a p with a barred descender is usually per, a p with a curl is pro, a 9-shaped sign at the end of a word is -us, ⁊ is et, and a q with a stroke may be quod or que; Cappelli's dictionary of these abbreviations runs to hundreds of pages. Spelling shifts too: ae becomes e or ę, mihi appears as michi, u and v are one letter distributed by position (vt, ciuis), and i and j are interchangeable, so Iohannes, Johannes and Joannes are the same name. Early printed books use the long s, which text recognition tends to read as f, turning ſunt into funt. Numbers are Roman, often with a final j (xiij), and dates come by feast day, by the Kalends, Nones and Ides, or by regnal or pontifical year. Nineteenth-century registers in parts of Central Europe add pre-printed Latin column headings. The translation is fitted into the original layout, with type size and line breaks adjusted where the English runs longer.

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 Latin

Parish registers and genealogy

Catholic parishes kept their baptismal, marriage and burial registers in Latin across much of Europe, in Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia, Lithuania, Ireland and the German lands well into the nineteenth century and sometimes the twentieth, so family research runs into pages of formulae: baptizatus est, filius legitimus, copulati sunt, sepultus est, patrini, obiit. Upload a photographed page or a scan and read the entries in English. Watch names: the engine may render Joannes as John where the family used Jan, János, Ján or Ivan, so check each against the parish's own language. Later printed registers with Latin column headings usually come through cleanly; older free-text entries in a scribe's hand vary a great deal and are a deciphering aid.

Charters, deeds and legal records

Medieval charters, cartularies, court rolls, wills, inquisitions and notarial acts were written in Latin across Western Europe, and in England the courts kept their records in Latin until 1733. These are formulaic documents, which helps: a grant runs through the same sequence of arenga, dispositio and witness list, and the dating clause gives a regnal year, a feast day or a date by the Kalends that has to be converted. Upload an edited cartulary, a calendar of documents or a modern transcription for the clearest results. A photograph of an original in a Gothic or secretary hand is a harder case, and abbreviated Law Latin, with its Latinized English words, is harder still.

Medieval Latin translator

Church documents, liturgy and papal texts

Latin is still the official language of the Holy See, and its major documents are generally published in Latin: encyclicals, apostolic constitutions, motu proprio letters, decrees, the Code of Canon Law, and the typical editions of the Missal and the Liturgy of the Hours, alongside centuries of bulls, briefs, synodal acts, dispensations and diocesan records. Clergy, canon lawyers, choirs and parish staff translate them to check a vernacular rendering against the Latin original, to read a document that was never translated, or to understand a text before it is sung. Ecclesiastical Latin has its own vocabulary, in which gratia, virtus, sacramentum and pietas do not mean what they meant to Cicero, and Advanced is the tier that keeps those senses apart.

Ecclesiastical Latin translator

Theses, early printed books and Neo-Latin

From the Renaissance to the nineteenth century, scholarship was published in Latin: Copernicus, Vesalius, Newton's Principia, Linnaeus, Euler and Gauss, along with thousands of doctoral dissertations, botanical descriptions (required in Latin until 2012), medical and legal treatises, and humanist letters. Most of this was never translated. Upload the PDF from a digital library and read it in English; Neo-Latin is grammatically classical but full of technical coinages and period spellings, and early printed pages bring the long s, ligatures and catchwords. School and university students use the same page for their course texts: Wheelock and Cambridge Latin Course readings, AP Latin selections from Vergil and Caesar, and exam passages to check against their own translation.

What to watch for in Latin document translation

Latin looks familiar, and that is the trap. Dates are the most common error: a.d. III Kal. Mart. is 27 February in a common year, not the third of March; a feast-day date (in crastino Sancti Martini, dominica in Albis, feria secunda for Monday) has to be resolved against the church calendar; in England the year began on 25 March until 1752; and Roman numerals with a final j (xviij) are misread by text recognition. Abbreviations come next: an expanded stroke changes a case ending, and a case ending changes who did what to whom, so filius Joannis and filius Joannes are not interchangeable. Names are Latinized in the record but were never spoken that way: Guilelmus is William, Wilhelm, Guillaume or Vilmos depending on the parish, and Posonium, Ratisbona and Lutetia are Bratislava, Regensburg and Paris. Medieval vocabulary drifts from the classical dictionary (villa, miles, comes, quondam as the late), and vel can mean and as well as or. Grammar does the rest: ablative absolutes and a main verb held to the end of a long period get detached by weak systems, cum is with, when or since, and ut is that, so that or as. In the other direction, English into Latin produces compositions that are grammatical more often than they are idiomatic, and a motto worth engraving is worth a second reader.

Latin document translation FAQ

Is the Latin 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 scanned parish registers and handwritten Latin?: Yes for scans and photos in general: upload a JPG, PNG or HEIC photo or a scanned PDF and the text is recognized before translation. Printed Latin usually comes through well, though in early printed books check words with the long s, which text recognition sometimes reads as f. Handwriting is the honest caveat. A clear, upright hand in a late register is often readable; a medieval charter in an abbreviated Gothic hand, a faded seventeenth-century burial entry or a secretary-hand court roll may come back partly wrong, and the abbreviation marks that carry whole syllables are the usual casualty. Treat handwritten results as a starting point, and check names, dates and ages against the page yourself.
How accurate is it? What is the difference between Fast and Advanced?: Fast is good for reading a lot of Latin quickly, such as scanning a cartulary for the entry you need. Advanced runs a frontier model and is the right choice for anything you will rely on: it is the tier for the ablative absolute and the long periodic sentence, for the many meanings of cum and ut, for expanding abbreviations in context, and for keeping medieval, ecclesiastical and classical senses of a word apart. Neither tier is a substitute for a critical edition or a published scholarly translation, and for a document of record the original Latin remains the authority.
Can I use the translation for an official purpose, such as a citizenship or inheritance application?: Not on its own. Consulates, courts and registries that accept Latin-language church records, as citizenship-by-descent applications involving old parish registers often do, generally require a certified translation, and this output is not certified. Use it to understand what a record says, to find the right entries among hundreds of pages, and to prepare an exact draft for the certified translator, so that only the pages you actually need go for certification.
Which Latin does it handle: Classical, Medieval, Ecclesiastical, Neo-Latin?: All of them, from this page; the same engine reads each, and Classical, Medieval and Ecclesiastical Latin also have their own text translator pages if you want the register set explicitly. What differs is vocabulary and spelling more than grammar: villa is an estate or a village in a charter, miles a knight rather than a soldier, comes a count; michi, nichil and set for sed are ordinary medieval spellings; liturgical and theological terms carry church senses. Botanical, medical and legal Latin are jargon layers on top of the same language.
Can I translate an English document into Latin?: Yes. The output is literary Latin, and the Classical and Ecclesiastical Latin pages are there if you want the register set explicitly. This is composition rather than translation into a living language, and it is useful for a motto, a dedication, a certificate line, a school exercise or a comparison against your own prose composition. For anything to be engraved, printed or read aloud in church, have someone who reads Latin professionally check it: a frontier model writes plausible Latin, and plausible is not the same as correct in every case.
What file types can I upload, and does the layout survive?: PDF, DOCX (Word), PPTX (PowerPoint), XLSX (Excel) and EPUB, plus photographed or scanned pages as JPG, PNG or HEIC. The translator produces a translated file that aims to preserve the original layout, including tables, columns and headers; register columns, marginal notes and the two-column pages of many printed editions are part of that. Text size, fonts and line breaks may change, so review the result against the original. 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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