Is the Middle English 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 edition or a manuscript image?

Yes. Scanned PDFs and photos (JPG, PNG, HEIC) get text recognition before translation. Clean scans of modern editions read well, including þ and ȝ. Older printings scanned from library copies are the weak spot: thorn tends to become p and yogh 3 or z, which turns þe into pe and niȝt into ni3t, so check words that look wrong. Manuscript and archival images (Anglicana, Secretary, a clerk's abbreviations) are unreliable to read from an image; where a printed edition or calendar exists, upload that.

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

Fast is for gist, enough to follow a prose text or find a passage. Advanced runs a frontier model and is the right choice for verse, legal documents and anything you will cite: it reads dialect spellings as the same word, keeps thou and ye apart, handles the double negatives (ne ... nat) and the y- past participles, and treats false friends as the period words they are. It is a reading aid, not a substitute for a critical edition or a published translation, so compare it with one before you cite.

Will the translation keep my document's 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. Line-numbered verse, marginal glosses and facing-page translations are the cases to check: make sure translated lines still sit beside the right originals.

Can I use this for coursework or a publication?

As a reading aid, yes. For coursework, your instructor wants your own translation, and most courses say so; use this the way you would use the glossary at the back of the book, and follow the course rules. For publication or citation, work from a critical edition and a scholarly translation. The output here gets you through the text; it is not a source to cite.

Which Middle English: Chaucer's London, the North, the West Midlands, Kentish, early or late?

All of it, and the translation follows your text, but the range is wide. Early Middle English (the Ormulum, Layamon, the Ancrene Wisse) still looks half Old English; Kentish (the Ayenbite of Inwyt) and Northern texts have vowels and forms that surprise a Chaucer reader; the alliterative poets use a Norse-influenced vocabulary; late fifteenth-century prose in Chancery spelling reads almost like early modern English. Two things are not Middle English: Old English (Beowulf, roughly before 1150) and Shakespeare's Early Modern English; both have their own pages.

What file types can I upload?

PDF, DOCX (Word), PPTX, XLSX and EPUB, plus photographed or scanned pages as JPG, PNG or HEIC. Free and Pro accept up to 20MB and 100,000 extracted characters per file; Scholar accepts up to 50MB and 1,000,000 characters. A complete Canterbury Tales with notes and glossary exceeds the Free and Pro limit, so upload the tale you need or use Scholar.

Middle English PDF & Document Translator — English ↔ Middle English

Translate English to Middle English or Middle English 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 Middle English documents come out

Upload a Middle English PDF, Word file or scanned page and read it in Modern English: the Canterbury Tales or Troilus, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Piers Plowman, the Wycliffite Bible, a fifteenth-century will, a Paston letter, a recipe from the Forme of Cury or a medical receipt. The translated file keeps the layout of the edition, with line numbers, glosses and notes in place. Modern English into Middle English is possible for short pieces and creative work, and is discussed below.

Middle English was written in the Latin alphabet with a few letters that later vanished: thorn (þ), yogh (ȝ), in early texts eth (ð) and wynn (ƿ), and the scribal habit of writing y for þ that gives us ye for the. Spelling was never standardised, so one text can spell the same word three ways, and modern editions handle this differently. The Early English Text Society and most scholarly editions keep the manuscript letters and spelling; many student series and anthologies replace þ with th and ȝ with gh or y and regularise u/v and i/j; others go further and modernise. Editions also add punctuation, capitals and word division, and expand abbreviations (the stroke for a missing n or m, the p with a bar for per or par, the crossed þ for that). A clean PDF of a modern edition reads well through text recognition; nineteenth-century EETS volumes scanned from library shelves often lose þ and ȝ or turn them into p and 3. Manuscript images are harder again: Anglicana and Secretary hands, the Ellesmere and Hengwrt Chaucer, the Cotton Nero A.x Gawain manuscript, or a will written by a parish clerk carry abbreviations and letterforms that reading from an image does not resolve reliably. Verse adds an editorial layer of its own: marked caesuras in alliterative lines, the bob and wheel of Gawain, rhyme royal stanzas, and a final -e that some editors mark for scansion.

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 Middle English

Chaucer, Gower and the London poets

The Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Criseyde, Gower's Confessio Amantis and the shorter poems are the Middle English texts most people start with: the tale assigned for Thursday, a passage to check against a modern version, or a whole edition for a reader who wants the original with help at hand. Chaucer's London English of the late fourteenth century is the form most readers find easiest, but it still turns on final -e, on hem and hir for them and their, on thou against ye, and on words whose meanings have moved (sely, nice, buxom, lewed, sad). Use Advanced for verse you will discuss or cite and compare the result with the edition's glosses.

The alliterative poets and religious prose

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Patience and Cleanness in their North-West Midland dialect, Piers Plowman in its A, B and C versions, and the Wycliffite Bible in its early and later versions are a step harder than Chaucer: unfamiliar spellings, a Norse-influenced northern vocabulary, alliterative syntax, and in the Bible a Latinate word order following the Vulgate. Julian of Norwich, the Book of Margery Kempe, the Ancrene Wisse and the mystery plays of York, Chester and Wakefield are read in the same way. Dialect is the variable here, and a translation follows the text; expect more to check the further you move from London.

Wills, letters and household records

By the fifteenth century English was displacing Latin and French in wills, letters, guild returns and household accounts, and genealogists, local historians and archivists meet Middle English in exactly those documents: the Paston, Stonor and Cely letters, probate wills, inventories and town records. They are formulaic, dated by regnal year and feast day (the morrow after Michaelmas in the xiij yere of Kyng Harry the vj), reckoned in pounds, shillings, pence and marks in Roman numerals, and often written in Secretary hand with heavy abbreviation. Printed calendars and editions are the workable input; a photograph of the original is a different task. Earlier records are mostly Latin or Anglo-Norman French, which have their own document pages.

Recipes, remedies and practical texts

The Forme of Cury and other cookery collections, herbals, medical receipts, books of secrets, treatises on hunting and husbandry, and the prose of Mandeville's Travels are read by food historians, re-enactors and historians of medicine. These texts are short-sentence and imperative, which suits translation, but they are full of obsolete measures (a dragme, a quarteron), plant and spice names in medieval forms (galingale, saunders, powdour douce), and instructions (seeth, hewe, temper, streyne) whose modern equivalents need care. Middle English into Modern English is the main direction; the reverse, for a menu card, a game, a novel or a classroom exercise, is composition and needs a reader who knows the period to check it.

What to watch for in Middle English document translation

Middle English looks familiar enough to be misread rather than not read, which is its particular trap. Words have shifted: sely is blessed, innocent or hapless, not silly; nice is foolish or fussy; buxom is obedient; lewed is unlearned or lay; sad is steadfast or serious; wood is mad; mete is food; wit is to know; corage is heart; gentil is noble; harlot is a rascal, usually a man; and anon is at once. Grammar carries meaning that modern readers skip: thou and ye mark intimacy and rank, ne ... nat is a normal double negative, y- before a verb marks a past participle, hem and hir are them and their, and word order in verse bends to rhyme and metre. Spelling varies by scribe and region, so the same word appears as chirche, kirke and cherche, and a reader who sorts by modern spelling misses matches. Scribal y for þ produces ye for the and yt or yat for that, which a careless translation turns into you. Editions add layers: sounded final -e, marked caesuras, glosses in the margin and a critical apparatus at the foot, none of which is part of the text. Documents bring dates by regnal year and feast day, money in marks and Roman numerals, and names spelled several ways in one will. Every one of these is a judgement call, which is what Advanced is for.

Middle English document translation FAQ

Is the Middle English 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 edition or a manuscript image?: Yes. Scanned PDFs and photos (JPG, PNG, HEIC) get text recognition before translation. Clean scans of modern editions read well, including þ and ȝ. Older printings scanned from library copies are the weak spot: thorn tends to become p and yogh 3 or z, which turns þe into pe and niȝt into ni3t, so check words that look wrong. Manuscript and archival images (Anglicana, Secretary, a clerk's abbreviations) are unreliable to read from an image; where a printed edition or calendar exists, upload that.
How accurate is it? What is the difference between Fast and Advanced?: Fast is for gist, enough to follow a prose text or find a passage. Advanced runs a frontier model and is the right choice for verse, legal documents and anything you will cite: it reads dialect spellings as the same word, keeps thou and ye apart, handles the double negatives (ne ... nat) and the y- past participles, and treats false friends as the period words they are. It is a reading aid, not a substitute for a critical edition or a published translation, so compare it with one before you cite.
Will the translation keep my document's 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. Line-numbered verse, marginal glosses and facing-page translations are the cases to check: make sure translated lines still sit beside the right originals.
Can I use this for coursework or a publication?: As a reading aid, yes. For coursework, your instructor wants your own translation, and most courses say so; use this the way you would use the glossary at the back of the book, and follow the course rules. For publication or citation, work from a critical edition and a scholarly translation. The output here gets you through the text; it is not a source to cite.
Which Middle English: Chaucer's London, the North, the West Midlands, Kentish, early or late?: All of it, and the translation follows your text, but the range is wide. Early Middle English (the Ormulum, Layamon, the Ancrene Wisse) still looks half Old English; Kentish (the Ayenbite of Inwyt) and Northern texts have vowels and forms that surprise a Chaucer reader; the alliterative poets use a Norse-influenced vocabulary; late fifteenth-century prose in Chancery spelling reads almost like early modern English. Two things are not Middle English: Old English (Beowulf, roughly before 1150) and Shakespeare's Early Modern English; both have their own pages.
What file types can I upload?: PDF, DOCX (Word), PPTX, XLSX and EPUB, plus photographed or scanned pages as JPG, PNG or HEIC. Free and Pro accept up to 20MB and 100,000 extracted characters per file; Scholar accepts up to 50MB and 1,000,000 characters. A complete Canterbury Tales with notes and glossary exceeds the Free and Pro limit, so upload the tale you need or use Scholar.

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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