Is the Sumerian 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 photo of a Sumerian tablet or a hand copy?

A hand copy, yes, within limits: the drawn signs are flat and clear, and the translation is better still if the plate has a transliteration beside it. A photograph of a tablet is a different matter. Wedges are shadows that move with the light, Ur III tablets are written small, and one photo shows one face of a text that continues on the reverse, so sign reading from a picture is not reliable and should be treated as an aid rather than a reading. Nearly every published tablet has a transliteration on CDLI; upload that where you can.

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

Fast gives a rough sense of what a clean transliteration says and is fine for sorting a stack of administrative texts by type. Advanced runs a frontier model and is the tier for anything you will read closely, where the verbal chain, the case markers at the end of a noun phrase, the silent determinatives and the standard administrative and dedicatory formulae all have to be handled together. It is still a reading aid, not a substitute for ETCSL’s translation, a RIME volume or a critical edition, and any line you will cite should be checked against one.

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. Line-numbered transliterations and parallel columns of transliteration and translation are where the layout most often shifts.

Which Sumerian does it read: Old Sumerian, Ur III, Old Babylonian literary texts, Emesal?

All of them are the same language at different dates and in different registers, and the translator reads them from the same transliteration conventions. Old Sumerian inscriptions of the Early Dynastic period are terse and spell less of the grammar; Ur III administrative texts are formulaic; the Old Babylonian literary corpus is the fullest and the source of most grammar teaching. Emesal, used in laments and for the speech of women and goddesses, replaces many ordinary words with its own forms and is read as a register of Sumerian. Expect the most even results on Old Babylonian literary and Ur III administrative texts, which are the most abundant.

Can it translate English into Sumerian?

Yes, as composition. A short exercise sentence, a motto or a dedication in the style of a brick inscription usually comes out in transliteration, and the cuneiform text translator can render such a phrase in cuneiform signs. But Sumerian is reconstructed from a closed corpus by modern scholarship, so anything you will publish, teach from or display should be checked by a Sumerologist. Treat the output as a draft that follows attested vocabulary and word order, not as an ancient text.

What file types and transliteration conventions can I upload?

PDF, DOCX (Word), PPTX (PowerPoint), XLSX (Excel) and EPUB, plus photographed or scanned pages as JPG, PNG or HEIC. Transliteration in the Unicode style (ĝ, š, subscript numbers), the accented style (dù, sá), ETCSL’s ASCII style (c for š, j for ĝ) and CDLI’s ATF style (sz, j) are all readable, as is typed Unicode cuneiform. Free and Pro accept up to 20MB and 100,000 extracted characters per file; Scholar accepts up to 50MB and 1,000,000 characters.

Sumerian PDF & Document Translator — English ↔ Sumerian

Translate English to Sumerian or Sumerian 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 Sumerian documents come out

Read Sumerian in English from a transliteration, a hand copy, a grammar exercise or a photographed tablet, or turn a short English text into Sumerian for an exercise. Most files are ETCSL printouts, CDLI and ORACC transliterations, royal inscriptions, Ur III administrative texts and coursework, all written in the Assyriological conventions of hyphens, index numbers and superscript determinatives. Sumerian is a language isolate with no living relatives, so there is no cognate language to lean on and a line has to be read whole. English to Sumerian is composition to be checked, not an attested text.

Sumerian survives only in cuneiform, and almost everyone works from transliteration rather than from the wedges, so the conventions of transliteration carry information that must not be lost. Hyphens join the signs of one word (lugal-e, é-gal-la); index numbers or accents distinguish signs that sound alike (du₃ or dù, to build, against du₈, to open); determinatives are printed superscript (d before gods, ki after places, ĝiš before wooden objects, mušen after birds) and are not read aloud; a sign in capitals means the reading is uncertain or that the sign’s name is given instead of a value; x marks an illegible sign, and square or half brackets mark what is broken. The nasal written ĝ, ŋ or g̃ is one sound, and ETCSL’s ASCII files write c for š and j for ĝ, so cag₄ and jic are šag₄ and ĝiš. Scanned grammars and editions typeset before Unicode fonts sometimes lose subscripts and diacritics, and hand copies flatten wedges into ink with hatching for damage. Two further realities shape the documents: most Sumerian literature is preserved in Old Babylonian school copies from Nippur and Ur, written when Sumerian was no longer, or barely, a spoken language, and the tens of thousands of Ur III administrative tablets are formulaic, repeating the same receipt, expenditure, seal and year-name phrases with different names and quantities.

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 Sumerian

Literary texts and ETCSL printouts

The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature made the Old Babylonian literary corpus readable to anyone: Inanna’s Descent, the Sumerian Gilgamesh tales, the Lament for Ur, the Instructions of Šuruppak, Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, the Kesh Temple Hymn and the compositions attributed to Enheduanna. Students paste or print the transliteration and want a line-by-line English reading to set beside ETCSL’s own translation, or a rendering of the lines a class assigned. Because these are school copies with variant manuscripts, editions print composite texts with the variants in notes; upload the composite line and expect the translation to follow it rather than the variants.

Royal inscriptions, laws and dedications

The Gudea cylinders and statues, the inscriptions of Ur-Namma and Šulgi, Eannatum’s Stele of the Vultures, the laws of Ur-Namma and Lipit-Ištar, and the thousands of bricks, cones and door sockets with dedicatory formulae are the texts most often met in museums, in the RIME volumes and, for the laws, in Roth’s Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor. They are formulaic in a helpful way: a ruler’s name and titles, a deity, a building or an object, and a verb of building or dedicating. Museum bricks and cones photograph better than tablets because the signs are large, but the published transliteration is still the surer input, and a ruler’s standard inscription is usually printed in the catalogue.

Administrative and legal tablets

Ur III receipts, ration lists, animal deliveries, work rosters and court records make up the bulk of published Sumerian, with tens of thousands transliterated on CDLI. They are short and formulaic (šu ba-ti, received; ba-zi, expended; ki PN-ta, from PN; kišib PN, seal of PN; ĝìri PN, via PN; a year name introduced by mu) and heavy with personal names, quantities and measures. The translation renders the formulae and names; quantities in gur, barig, bán and sìla should stay as measures rather than being converted to litres. For a photograph of a tablet rather than a transliteration, the cuneiform page describes what a picture can and cannot give.

Cuneiform documents: photos, hand copies and sign lists

Grammars, coursework and Emesal

Sumerian grammar is where readers most want a second opinion: the verbal chain packs subject, object and dimensional prefixes into one form, cases are marked at the end of a noun chain rather than on the noun, and the ergative alignment trips anyone coming from Akkadian or Latin. Exercises from Foxvog’s Introduction to Sumerian Grammar, Thomsen’s The Sumerian Language, Edzard’s Sumerian Grammar or Zólyomi’s introduction, ePSD vocabulary lists and lecture handouts are common uploads. Emesal, the register of laments and of goddesses’ speech, spells familiar words differently (ga-ša-an for nin, dimmer for diĝir, mu-lu for lú) and is read as Sumerian, not as another language. Bilingual Sumerian–Akkadian texts have their Akkadian half covered on the Akkadian page.

Akkadian documents

What to watch for in Sumerian document translation

The most common error in Sumerian translation is treating the language as a string of words. A single verb form carries prefixes for the subject, the object and the dimensional relations, so mu-na-an-dù is he built it for him, and a word-by-word gloss loses everyone but the verb. Case markers attach to the end of an entire noun chain, so lugal kalam-ma-ke₄ is the king of the land as an agent, with genitive and ergative stacked on the final word. Sumerian is ergative: the agent of a transitive verb takes -e and the subject of an intransitive verb does not, and a reader trained on Akkadian or Latin reverses who did what. Signs with the same sound but different index numbers are different words (du₃ to build, du₈ to open, du₁₁ to speak); capitals mean uncertainty, not emphasis; and the ETCSL spellings c and j are š and ĝ, not typos. Emesal forms look like new vocabulary but are the same words in another register. Year names are dates: mu ús-sa is the year after, and mu ... ba-hul is the year such a place was destroyed, so a date line names an event. Quantities use sexagesimal numbers and capacity measures, personal names are phrases or sentences (Ur-Namma, Lugal-zage-si) that should be transliterated rather than translated, and reconstructions in brackets are the editor’s conjecture.

Sumerian document translation FAQ

Is the Sumerian 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 photo of a Sumerian tablet or a hand copy?: A hand copy, yes, within limits: the drawn signs are flat and clear, and the translation is better still if the plate has a transliteration beside it. A photograph of a tablet is a different matter. Wedges are shadows that move with the light, Ur III tablets are written small, and one photo shows one face of a text that continues on the reverse, so sign reading from a picture is not reliable and should be treated as an aid rather than a reading. Nearly every published tablet has a transliteration on CDLI; upload that where you can.
How accurate is it? What is the difference between Fast and Advanced?: Fast gives a rough sense of what a clean transliteration says and is fine for sorting a stack of administrative texts by type. Advanced runs a frontier model and is the tier for anything you will read closely, where the verbal chain, the case markers at the end of a noun phrase, the silent determinatives and the standard administrative and dedicatory formulae all have to be handled together. It is still a reading aid, not a substitute for ETCSL’s translation, a RIME volume or a critical edition, and any line you will cite should be checked against one.
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. Line-numbered transliterations and parallel columns of transliteration and translation are where the layout most often shifts.
Which Sumerian does it read: Old Sumerian, Ur III, Old Babylonian literary texts, Emesal?: All of them are the same language at different dates and in different registers, and the translator reads them from the same transliteration conventions. Old Sumerian inscriptions of the Early Dynastic period are terse and spell less of the grammar; Ur III administrative texts are formulaic; the Old Babylonian literary corpus is the fullest and the source of most grammar teaching. Emesal, used in laments and for the speech of women and goddesses, replaces many ordinary words with its own forms and is read as a register of Sumerian. Expect the most even results on Old Babylonian literary and Ur III administrative texts, which are the most abundant.
Can it translate English into Sumerian?: Yes, as composition. A short exercise sentence, a motto or a dedication in the style of a brick inscription usually comes out in transliteration, and the cuneiform text translator can render such a phrase in cuneiform signs. But Sumerian is reconstructed from a closed corpus by modern scholarship, so anything you will publish, teach from or display should be checked by a Sumerologist. Treat the output as a draft that follows attested vocabulary and word order, not as an ancient text.
What file types and transliteration conventions can I upload?: PDF, DOCX (Word), PPTX (PowerPoint), XLSX (Excel) and EPUB, plus photographed or scanned pages as JPG, PNG or HEIC. Transliteration in the Unicode style (ĝ, š, subscript numbers), the accented style (dù, sá), ETCSL’s ASCII style (c for š, j for ĝ) and CDLI’s ATF style (sz, j) are all readable, as is typed Unicode cuneiform. 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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